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The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas · Chapters XXV to XXXVII

Tijuca, The Black Butterfly, and Eugênia

AmbitionAppearance and RealityDesireLanguage and Narration

Chapter XXV: In Tijuca

Section summary

After the seventh-day mass, Brás Cubas refuses his father and his sister Sabina (his brother-in-law Cotrim nearly takes him by force) and isolates himself in Tijuca with Prudêncio, books, and a rifle. Tired of solitude within a week, he decides to visit Dona Eusébia, recently moved nearby, because Prudêncio reminds him that she dressed his mother's body. Brás had isolated himself because his spirit was stunned, and he expressly asked that he be left alone.

Analysis

Brás makes mourning a refinement and has the reader learn the expression: the dead man savors again, with irony, a sadness that already had something of a pose. The cure comes without effort ("youth reacted"), and on hearing Dona Eusébia's name he recalls the episode of 1814 (chapter XII) and justifies himself before any meeting: "events had given me reason."

I believe it was then that hypochondria began to unfold within me, that yellow, solitary, morbid flower, with an intoxicating and subtle scent.
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Chapter XXVI: The Author Hesitates

Section summary

The father of Brás Cubas goes up to Tijuca with two projects, a seat as deputy and a marriage, and wants a definitive answer. Brás responds with mockery and scribbles words at random; from "virumque" comes "Virgílio," and the father exclaims that the bride is called Virgília. Brás does not answer because he feels stunned: one part of him thinks that a beautiful wife and a political position are goods worthy of esteem, another says no, and his mother's death appears to him as an example of the fragility of things.

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Chapter XXVII: Virgília?

Language and Narration

Section summary

Brás Cubas recognizes in the bride Virgília, who in 1869 will attend his last days, and portrays her at fifteen or sixteen: pretty, fresh, willful, ignorant, childish. Addressing her, he explains that he can restore the truth from so long ago because each phase of life corrects the previous one.

Analysis

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Chapter XXVIII: Provided That...

Ambition

Section summary

The father describes the bride to Brás Cubas as the daughter of Councillor Dutra, "a political influence," and wants an answer. Brás agrees to examine the candidacy and the marriage, provided he is not forced to accept both; the father yields, provided he does not become useless and obscure, and hypochondria gives way to the love of renown.

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Chapter XXIX: The Visit

Section summary

Brás Cubas accepts the candidacy and the marriage his father proposes, and his father embraces him. Instead of descending, he visits Dona Eusébia, who receives him with excitement, speaks of his mother, and asks for news of his love affairs; he recalls the episode of 1814 when a voice calls "Mamãe..."

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Chapter XXX: The Flower of the Thicket

Section summary

Dona Eusébia introduces her daughter Eugênia to Brás Cubas; he gives her seventeen years, the mother corrects it to sixteen, and the girl barely hides her satisfaction at being called a young lady. A black butterfly enters the veranda, Dona Eusébia shrieks at it, Brás drives it out and laughs at both of them; in the afternoon he waits, in vain, for Eugênia to turn her head as she passes on horseback.

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Chapter XXXI: The Black Butterfly

Section summary

The next day, another black butterfly, larger, enters the room of Brás Cubas and lands on his forehead and on his father's portrait. Irritated by its mocking air, he kills it with a towel, takes pity on it, and consoles himself with jokes: it should have been born blue, and it took him for "inventor of the butterflies."

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Chapter XXXII: Lame From Birth

Section summary

Brás Cubas was about to descend, but Dona Eusébia invites him to dinner and he goes. At the country house he notices that Eugênia, simply dressed, limps; he asks whether she hurt her foot, and she answers without hesitation that she is lame from birth. Brás had accepted the dinner because Dona Eusébia insisted strongly and because he thought he owed her that compensation.

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Chapter XXXIII: Blessed Are Those Who Do Not Descend

Desire

Section summary

Brás Cubas returns turning over the riddle of the pretty, lame girl, and postpones going down by a week, at Eugênia's side. On Saturday she asks him "Do not descend," and on Sunday she gives him the first kiss; he, thinking of 1814 and her blood, suspects her origin. Dona Eusébia comes in, and Eugênia pretends to fix her braid.

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Chapter XXXIV: To a Sensitive Soul

Section summary

Brás Cubas imagines a sensitive soul, among the five or ten who read him, who trembles for Eugênia and calls him a cynic. He protests: he is not a cynic, he was a man, with a brain in which the eagle and the hummingbird fit, and also the slug and the toad.

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Chapter XXXV: The Road to Damascus

Appearance and Reality

Section summary

Eight days later, on what he calls his road to Damascus, Brás Cubas hears within himself a voice that tells him to descend, born of pity for the candor of Eugênia and of the terror of truly loving a lame woman. He tells her he is descending; she says he does well to flee the ridicule of marrying her, and she does not believe his vows. Brás comes down embittered and a little satisfied.

Analysis

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Chapter XXXVI: Apropos of Boots

Section summary

The father of Brás Cubas embraces him, grateful, and Brás takes off his tight boots and draws from it the theory of cheap happiness; his heart also takes off Eugênia, whom he then evokes, solitary and silent until death.

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Chapter XXXVII: At Last!

Section summary

Brás Cubas asks his father, before visiting Councillor Dutra, whether there is a marriage arrangement: none; his father only spoke of his wish to see him a deputy and imagined that, by marrying Dutra's daughter, he would reach the post sooner. Dutra finds the candidacy legitimate but asks for months; Virgília does not deny the eulogy, and within a month they are intimate.

Analysis

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