Popular collective housing, made up of small houses or rented rooms around a shared courtyard, with shared tanks and latrines. It was the typical home of poor workers, immigrants, and freed people in nineteenth-century Rio de Janeiro. The name comes from the box in which bees build the hive. The largest tenement in the city, the Cabeça de Porco, was demolished in 1893.
Where It Appears
- Chapters I to II: João Romão's Tenement and Miranda's House
- Chapters III to V: The Tenement Wakes and Romão Hires Jerônimo
- Chapters VI to VII: Rita Baiana's Sunday and the Pagode
- Chapters VIII to IX: Jerônimo, Leocádia, and Florinda's Scandal
- Chapters X to XI: The Baron's Title, the Razor Slash, and Pombinha's Visit
- Chapters XII to XIV: Marriage, the Rival Tenement, and the Plan of Revenge
- Chapters XV to XVII: Firmo's Death, Piedade's Fight, and the Fire
- Chapters XVIII to XX: Libório, the Renovations, and Piedade's Fall
- Chapters XXI to XXIII: Bertoleza's End and Romão's Rise
Quotes
O cortiço aristocratizava-se, The tenement was becoming aristocratic
Chapters XXI to XXIII: Bertoleza's End and Romão's Rise, the narrator