Marcela

Who She Is

The Spanish woman whom Brás Cubas loves at seventeen in The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas, the "pretty Marcela" of the young men, luxurious, impatient, fond of money and of young men, and the first affair that costs him dearly. The book gives two versions of her origin, daughter of a market gardener or of a scholar from Madrid, and does not choose. Brás loses her in the reckoning of fifteen months and eleven contos, and finds her again later, changed.

Trajectory

When Brás sees her, Marcela is the Spaniard whom the young men call the "pretty Marcela" and who, that year, "was dying for love" of the wealthy and consumptive Xavier; he follows her as a page and kisses her on the stairs, after a supper at her house (chapter XIV). The affair takes thirty days to be born and passes through two phases, one in which Brás reigns with Xavier and another in which he reigns alone, and the reign costs money. Marcela protests against the gifts, denies the story of the gold cross, promises "Never, never," and, when Brás brings her the necklace she said she did not want, tries to throw it into the street and keeps it (chapter XV).

Brás later corrects the verb: she did not "die" for Xavier, she "lived," and the jewels are part of the trade in hearts (chapter XVI). When Brás's father decides to send him to Europe, Marcela refuses to leave, invoking her father killed by Napoleon, answers his humiliation with "Don't Bore Me," and agrees only after looking at the ivory comb with three diamonds that he brings her (chapter XVII).

In the dark corridor, Brás sees her look upon a nose that is at once that of Bakbarah, the deceived lover of The Thousand and One Nights, and his own, and tries to convince himself that she loves him (chapter XVIII). Later he finds her again, old, marked by smallpox, owner of a goldsmith's shop on Rua dos Ourives; she recognizes him, sends for a new watch crystal, tells him her life, and offers him jewels at low prices (chapter XXXVIII). When the daughter of a neighboring watchmaker offers her the Our Father, Marcela kisses her, and her voice trembles with joy (chapter XXXIX).

Brás compares the end of his friendship with his sister to the end of Marcela's beauty, which faded with the smallpox (chapter XLVI), and still rereads her letters among the old papers (chapter CXVI). Marcela dies in the hospital, ugly and decrepit, on a day when Brás was serving in the Third Order, the same day he meets Eugênia in a tenement (chapter CLVIII).

Themes Embodied

The themes that run through her are Desire and Appearance and reality.

Desire: desire puts the young man at her service, "as much a page as the other one," and makes him spend his father's inheritance (chapter XIV, chapter XV).

Appearance and reality: she says she sells appearances and keeps reality for a few, and the beauty Brás paid for fades with the smallpox (chapter XV, chapter XXXVIII).

The book shows Marcela only through Brás, and gives her two faces that he admits he did not understand in his youth (chapter XV): the candid laugh, and the woman who gathers gold coins into a little iron box. The reunion with the old goldsmith does not settle the doubt, because the trembling joy before the girl is the rare point where Brás records a feeling of hers without irony (chapter XXXIX).

Relationships

• Brás Cubas: the young man who supports her with his inheritance and who finds her again old.
• Bento Cubas: the father who redeems the bonds and sends his son to Europe because of the eleven contos.
• Virgília: the young woman in whose face Brás sees Marcela's smallpox.
• Eugênia: the other woman from Brás's past whom he meets again on the day of Marcela's death.