Sofia

Who She Is

Wife of Cristiano Palha, 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 mansion in Botafogo; she learns to enjoy being seen and keeps her heart, and the narrator gives her, chapter by chapter, an inner life of her own. In the prologue to the third edition, Machado refuses the request to continue the book with Sofia in a third part of a trilogy, because she is entirely here.

Trajectory

Rubião, still in Botafogo, remembers Sofia and believes himself loved by her (Chapter III). She enters the scene on the train, seated with Palha opposite him, silent: the one who talks of slaves and Europe is Palha, and she only moves her eyes and says merely "No, sir," when Rubião asks whether she has been to Europe (Chapter XXI).

At the first dinner in Santa Teresa, she is the lady of the house and talks more than on the train (Chapter XXIV); she sends strawberries and a note summoning Rubião to dinner by her husband's order (Chapter XXXII). The narrator portrays her as ever more beautiful, shown off in low-cut dresses by Palha, who foresaw the bankruptcies of 1864 and spends everything on her: Sofia likes to be seen, but keeps her heart (Chapter XXXV).

In the evening, while a lady sings at the piano, Rubião gazes at her and she looks back (Chapter XXXVI). In the garden, by moonlight, she leads him by the arm and, when he speaks, does not know whether she should understand or pretend not to understand (Chapter XXXIX).

She wants to return to the drawing room and begs him to let her go (Chapter XLI); when Major Siqueira appears, it is she who invents the anecdote of Father Mendes to cover the delay (Chapter XLII).

Later that night, she tells Palha what Rubião did in the garden, and he, after downplaying it, confesses that he owes his friend a great deal of money, and the narrator reveals that the strawberry note had been drafted by him and merely copied by her; she promises to cool relations gradually (Chapter L). The next day she wakes dejected, blames herself, and fears that the major will spread the story (Chapter LI). In the street, a young man greets her: it is Carlos Maria, who danced with her at a ball, and a mail carrier falls, and she laughs (Chapter LII).

She receives Rubião without rancor and introduces him to her aunt and cousin, Maria Benedita, a country girl (Chapter LXIV); she introduces her cousin to city life (Chapter LXVIII). At a ball, she dances with Carlos Maria, who declares himself to her (Chapter LXIX); at home, she calls the soirée tedious, accepts her husband's affection, and in the morning looks in the street for signs of the man from the beach (Chapter LXXI). She swears to forget the episode, but the declaration returns to her memory like a stubborn musical phrase (Chapter LXXIII).

When she promises her cousin a fiancé and it is Rubião himself, she cannot let go of his name: she does not want him, but cannot bear to give him to the girl (Chapter LXXVII).

She receives Rubião in Flamengo, among the seamstresses making her mourning clothes, and tells him about the ladies' committee for Alagoas (Chapter XCII). When he pours out to her what he feels and hands over the letter, she asks for repentance and sees him leave without hearing her (Chapter CIII, Chapter CIV); alone, she discovers that it was the committee's circular, thinks of Carlos Maria, and, out of anger at herself, breaks the porcelain mandarin (Chapter CV).

On receiving the birthday diamond, she thinks that that man adores her; that night, she explains the letter to Rubião with a tear and tells him of Maria Benedita's engagement (Chapter CXV). When the newlyweds leave for Europe, she feigns illness and, in her room, among his gifts, recalls the promise to make her an empress (Chapter CXXV).

Praised by the press, she purges her friendships, corrects her servile husband, and passes old acquaintances with averted eyes (Chapter CXXXVIII). When Rubião invites her to Tijuca, she postpones the outing (Chapter CXXXIX), her imagination gallops like a steed and returns to the stable (Chapter CXL), the roses and other plants tell her that the fault is hers (Chapter CXLI, Chapter CXLII); on the outing, she falls from her horse (Chapter CXLIII) and, at home, shows her bruised knee to her husband, who swears that nothing was seen (Chapter CXLIV).

Rubião gets into her coupé (Chapter CL); she loses her voice, fears the scandal (Chapter CLI), feels aversion and begs him to get out (Chapter CLII), and hears him speak of a meeting that never took place, with the sincerity of one who has seen it (Chapter CLIII). Once the fright has passed, she plunges into reverie and imagines who the man in the calash might have been (Chapter CLIV); seeing in his illness the effect of love for her, she feels compassion, made of sympathy and egoism, and forgives him (Chapter CLVII). The letter from Maria Benedita, happy and a mother, gives her spite (Chapter CLVIII), and on the rainy morning she sincerely lets herself remain dead, and then the names pass like flashes of lightning (Chapter CLIX).

The sun sends its ray back so as not to light up her desire (Chapter CLX); she dreams that Carlos Maria is killed before her and wakes screaming (Chapter CLXI), and the imperious will turns into whim (Chapter CLXIII). She flees from Rubião in a bookshop, but insists, despite Palha's complaint, when Dona Fernanda thinks he may recover (Chapter CLXIV).

In the end, Palha and Dr. Falcão commit Rubião, after Sofia has left forgotten the promise she had made (Chapter CLXXXV); in the abandoned house on Rua do Príncipe she barely disguises her disgust (Chapter CLXXXVIII) and, free of it, resumes her good manners and invites Dona Fernanda to see the mansion in Botafogo (Chapter CLXXXIX). She avoids visiting the patient and reports that Palha came up with three contos and two hundred from his assets (Chapter CXCI), and in October she inaugurates the salons with a ball, wearing a necklace from Rubião's first gifts (Chapter CXCII).

Themes Embodied

The standard themes that run through her are Desire, Appearance and Reality, and Loyalty and Betrayal. The symbol that accompanies her on stage is the Southern Cross, which Rubião asks her to gaze at (Chapter XLI) and which she did not want to gaze at, as the narrator recalls in the close (Chapter CCI).

The text never decides whether Sofia consents. She is described as a shop window, she learns to enjoy being seen, and the narrator insists that the door of the heart remains locked, but the same Sofia dreams of Carlos Maria, lets the beach declaration return as music, and calls whim, after a few hours, what seemed imperious will. The moral refuge the narrator gives her is the unblemished body, and the book goes no further.

Sofia accepts from Rubião the diamond, the subscription, and the admiration, and returns to him, when she needs to, only a tear. The book belongs to Rubião in money and to Sofia in desire, and her desire appears only in dreams, in reverie, and in objects that answer for her: the broken mandarin, the necklace worn at the ball, the roses in the garden.

Relationships

• Rubião: the admirer whom she uses, avoids, and fears, and who brings her to the most strained scene in the book, that of the coupé.
• Cristiano Palha: the husband who shows her off, to whom she tells the garden episode and who first turns pale, then downplays it, and only at the end confesses the debt he owes Rubião.
• Carlos Maria: the young man who declares to her the lie about the beach, and whom she keeps in memory and in nightmare.
• Maria Benedita: the cousin she introduces to the city, and for whom she promises a fiancé she cannot bear to give up.
• Dona Fernanda: the companion in the abandoned house on Rua do Príncipe, where she is moved by the lean dog and Sofia barely disguises her disgust.