Quincas Borba

Characters

Character Map

Who is who, and who belongs to whom. Click a name to open the character page.

Rubião Professor from Barbacena, in Minas, who becomes the nurse and only friend of the philosopher Quincas Borba (the philosopher) and inherits his entire fortune, on one condition: look after the dog Quincas Borba (the dog) as if it were a person. The book opens... Sofia Cristiano Palha's wife, the beautiful married woman whom Rubião meets on the train to Rio and who comes to dominate his desire. She lives in Santa Teresa, then in Flamengo, and ends up inaugurating the salons of the Botafogo mansion; she learns to enjoy being... Cristiano Palha Sofia's husband, the man Rubião meets on the train and who guides him through every step in Rio: the lawyer, the house, the shopping, the inventory, the business partnership. He prospers through shares, bonds, and war supplies, dreams of a mansion and a... Quincas Borba (the philosopher) Joaquim Borba dos Santos, one of the two Quincas Borbas the title holds, inherited from the Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas: the shipwrecked man of existence who appeared there as a beggar, an unexpected heir, and the inventor of a philosophy, and whom the... Quincas Borba (the dog) The dog that Quincas Borba (philosopher) names after himself and entrusts to Rubião, and that the will obliges the heir to treat as a person. It accompanies Rubião from Barbacena to Rio, lives between caresses and mistreatment, is regarded by him as a... Carlos Maria Slow, cold, and superior young man who eats at Rubião's table and dances with Sofia. Cousin of Dona Fernanda, he sees himself as the center of others' admiration and invents, with the ease of someone who does not care, the beach line that makes Sofia think of... Maria Benedita Cousin of Sofia, a country girl who arrives with her mother at the Santa Teresa house and is introduced to city life. She learns French and piano, refuses to waltz, loves Carlos Maria in silence since the ball on Rua dos Arcos, and ends up married to him at... Dona Fernanda Wife of the deputy Teófilo, mother of little Nuno and cousin of Carlos Maria. She acts out of pity and a taste for command: she arranges her cousin's marriage to Maria Benedita and, later, is the only one moved by Rubião's madness. The book places her as the... Camacho Dr. Camacho, a bachelor of Recife and political journalist who changes his adjectives according to the government, becomes a deputy, wants to be minister and fails, and lives off his law practice. At the head of the Atalaia newspaper, he feeds Rubião's...

Other characters

Piedade: widow of Barbacena and sister of Rubião, whom Quincas Borba courted; she resists his sighs and dies of pleurisy, and this frustrated courtship is what binds the two men (chapter IV).
Angélica: Rubião's comadre in Barbacena, to whom he sends the dog as a gift and who keeps it in a pen until Rubião comes to fetch it (chapter XVII); later, she shelters Rubião, feverish, when he returns to the town (chapter CXCIX).
Brás Cubas: a friend of Quincas Borba, in whose house the philosopher dies in Rio; he writes to Rubião a note with the news, the dead man's thanks, and the information that the rest will be handled through the forms of the court (chapter XIII).
Freitas: a man of about forty-five whom Rubião meets at a store and who begins to lunch and dine at his table, praising everything and leaving with cigars in his pockets; he falls ill at Praia Formosa and dies, and Rubião pays for the funeral (chapter XXIX, chapter CI).
Dona Tônica: Major Siqueira's daughter, a thirty-nine-year-old spinster who sees in Rubião the husband Heaven would have destined for her, and notices, at the soirée in Santa Teresa, the exchange of glances between him and Sofia (chapter XXXVII); later, she becomes engaged to Rodrigues (chapter CLXXX).
Major Siqueira: Dona Tônica's father, a retired major who drowns Rubião in stories, catches him with Sofia in the garden, advises him to marry and, later, complains that the Palhas, now enriched, have forgotten him (chapter XXXIV, chapter CXXX).
Deolindo: a boy of three or four whom Rubião pulls from in front of a carriage on Rua da Ajuda; later, he shouts "Ó gira!" with the street boys who follow the crazed Rubião, until his mother pulls him out of the group (chapter LX, chapter CLXXXII).
Dona Maria Augusta: Sofia's aunt and Maria Benedita's mother, a widow with a small farm, slaves and debts; she feigns crankiness to delay her daughter's marriage, since the other daughter ran away to marry, and later dies on the farm (chapter LXIV, chapter LXXXIII).
Dondon: a seamstress who makes Sofia's mourning dresses and lives on Rua da Harmonia; by mentioning her to Rubião, she feeds the suspicion the driver planted, and he runs after a woman's figure he takes to be her (chapter XCIII, chapter XCV).
Teófilo: Dona Fernanda's husband and a deputy, a hard-working man of the cabinet; he despairs when the newspaper swaps "dúvida" (doubt) for "dívida" (debt) in his speech, is left out of the new Ministry, and ends up accepting a first-rank provincial presidency (chapter CXIX, chapter CLXXVII).
Lucien: a French barber on Rua do Ouvidor who goes to Rubião's house and, copying the bust of Napoleon III, leaves him only the goatee and moustache of the emperor, while Rubião answers him in Portuguese, believing he is speaking French (chapter CXLVI).
Pio: one of Rubião's dinner guests; on hearing of his friend's move to Rua do Príncipe, he is the first to say it should have been done long ago, and in Rubião's delirium he becomes Marshal Pio (chapter CLVI, chapter CLXV).
Dr. Falcão: a deputy and physician, skeptical and discreet, whom Dona Fernanda asks to examine Rubião; he believes Rubião can recover, but concludes, from the delirium, that he and Sofia were lovers (chapter CLXVII, chapter CLXXXVI).
Rodrigues: a middle-aged widower, a clerk in an office of the War Ministry, who comes to spend his evenings with Dona Tônica, to whom he is engaged; he dies three days before the wedding (chapter CLXXX, chapter CXCII).