Who She Is
Washerwoman at the tenement, a woman from Bahia, who lives with one man at a time and refuses marriage, spends everything she earns and throws the best pagodes in the tenement. She is Firmo's lover when the book introduces her, and begins living with Jerônimo after he, drawn by her dance and her scent, abandons Piedade. The narrator shows her first through the mouths of the neighbors and through Jerônimo's gaze, and only at some moments gives her a thought of her own.
Trajectory
The washerwomen talk about her in her absence, missing for eight days on a spree with Firmo, and describe her by the money she does not save (chapter III).
Bom coração tem ela, até demais, que não guarda um vintém pro dia de amanhã. Parece que o dinheiro lhe faz comichão no corpo, She has a good heart, too much so, she doesn't save a single coin for tomorrow. It seems money makes her itch all over
She comes back after three months in Jacarepaguá, and the whole tenement crowds around her; she jokes with the old Libório, announces a pagode and tells Leocádia she does not want to marry, because marriage is captivity (chapter VI).
Não há como viver cada um senhor e dono do que é seu!, There is no way for each one to live as master and owner of what is his own!
On Sunday, when Alexandre warns that Miranda is spying on them from the window, she answers that nobody has to bother them for being at home with their friends (chapter VII).
Pois então a gente não é senhora de estar um domingo em casa a seu gosto e com os amigos que entender, Well then, aren't we entitled to spend a Sunday at home as we please and with whichever friends we choose
At night she dances the chorado in the middle of the circle, and it is in her that Jerônimo concentrates the impressions of the land (chapter VII).
ninguém como a Rita; só ela, só aquele demônio, tinha o mágico segredo daqueles movimentos de cobra amaldiçoada; aqueles requebros que não podiam ser sem o cheiro que a mulata soltava de si e sem aquela voz doce, quebrada, harmoniosa, arrogante, meiga e suplicante., nobody like Rita; only she, only that demon, had the magic secret of those movements of a cursed snake; those swayings that could not be without the scent the mulatta gave off and without that sweet, broken, harmonious, arrogant, tender and pleading voice
She nurses Jerônimo when he is ill, with strong coffee and parati, and escapes him with a leap, threatening to tell his wife; when Piedade comes in, she covers up (chapter VIII). After the fight between Bruno and Leocádia, it is she who takes in the washerwoman (chapter VIII). She teases Jerônimo and provokes him, and admires Léonie's luxury as she describes her to her companions (chapter IX). She dances and sings at the samba where he whispers a proposal to her, and, when Firmo wounds him, she helps Piedade tend to him (chapter X). She keeps vigil over the wounded man and becomes attached to him, now without scruple before the wife (chapter XI).
Seu coração de mulher rendia-se cativo a semelhante dedicação ensanguentada e dolorosa., Her woman's heart surrendered captive to such bloody and painful devotion.
She is bored while Jerônimo is at the Order (chapter XII), cools off the romance with Firmo when he moves to Cabeça-de-Gato, where she does not set foot (chapter XIII), and when the quarryman returns she tells him she has gotten rid of Firmo and wants no man at all, but she postpones the meeting he asks for (chapter XIV).
On the night Firmo is killed, she waits anxiously, afraid that, unable to find her, he will go provoke the Portuguese (chapter XV).
A mulata bem que o compreendeu, mas não teve ânimo de confessar-lhe que também morria de amores por ele; receou prejudicá-lo., The mulatta understood him well enough, but did not have the courage to confess that she too was dying of love for him; she feared to harm him.
In the morning, when Jerônimo shows the razor and says he has killed the rival, she agrees to leave with him (chapter XV). She goes out for news, comes back pleased with the planned move, and in the clog-and-nail fight with Piedade she wins (chapter XVI). She disappears in the confusion of the fire (chapter XVIII). She lives with Jerônimo in a tenement in Cidade Nova, and on Piedade's second visit, when a drunken Jerônimo fights with his wife, Rita stays out of it (chapter XIX).
O homem, se quisesse voltar para junto da mulher, que voltasse! Ela não o prenderia, porque amor não era obrigado!, If the man wanted to go back to his wife, let him go back! She would not hold him, because love is not obligatory!
Since her departure, the São Romão tenement no longer holds sambas out in the open (chapter XX). What remains of Rita is the imitator, Florinda, who copies her ways (chapter XXII).
a rapariga puxava os feitios da Rita Baiana, as suas noitadas acabavam sempre em pagode de dança e cantarola, mas tudo de portas adentro, que ali já se não admitiam sambas e chinfrinadas ao relento, the girl imitated the ways of Rita Baiana, her nights always ended in dancing and singing pagode, but all behind closed doors, since there were no longer any sambas or racket allowed out in the open air there
Themes Embodied
The standard themes that run through her are Sexuality and Nature and Civilization. The symbol that accompanies her on stage is the fado and the chorado: the chorado is hers, and it is the music that silences Jerônimo's fado at the pagode (chapter VII).
Rita defines herself by what she refuses: to marry, to owe obedience, to save money, to tie anyone down (chapter VI, chapter VII, chapter XIX). The neighbors celebrate her, even though the washerwomen criticize her in her absence. What the narration gives her from within is little and comes late: the thought that the fight was over her (chapter XI) and her fear of Firmo on the night of the ambush (chapter XV).
In the mouths of others, Rita is the cause: Piedade blames the land and then her (chapter XVI), and Jerônimo takes her as the synthesis of everything he feels (chapter VII). The scenes show men's decisions, the whispered proposal, Firmo's challenge, the ambush, and a woman who hears her former lover's death as Jerônimo's devotion to her (chapter XV). The question the text leaves is whether she is free, as she says, and what her choice not to marry gives her and costs her.
Relationships
- Jerônimo: the Portuguese she nurses when he is ill and who, for her sake, leaves his wife.
- Firmo: the jealous lover she moves away from and of whom she comes to be afraid.
- Piedade: the rival who faces her in the clog-and-nail fight.
- Léonie: the visitor whose luxury she admires and describes to her companions.