Sullen Fires Across the Atlantic

Notes

¹ See Marlyse Meyer, Folhetim: uma história (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1996).
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² Future references to this novel will appear between parentheses in the text. All quotations from Brazilian texts have been translated by me.
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³ Moreninha is a difficult term to translate into English. It is the affectionate diminutive form of the adjective/noun morena, which has two meanings in Portuguese: it may simply refer to a dark-haired girl, or it may refer to a girl who also has dark, or tanned, skin, without being black. In opposition to her pale "romantic" cousin, Filipe's sister is described as having a "rosto moreno" (154)—a tanned, dark skinned face. The morena is a common Brazilian type, and we tend to picture her as the typical Brazilian woman.
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⁴ One must only remember the fascination Filipe's cousins exert over his friends by the simple fact of their being identified with classicism and romanticism. Here is an account of Augusto's reaction to one of the cousins, when he first sees her on the island: "D. Joaninha's black locks and romantic face made a terrible breach in his heart" (73).
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⁵ Jean-Baptiste Louvet de Couvray's novel trilogy, Les Amours du chevalier de Faublas (1787-89), which dwells mainly on the sexual escapades of its hero—a sort of amiable young libertine—and on the corrupted morals of eighteenth-century France, would indeed be a peculiar reading matter for a nineteenth-century Brazilian girl of good standing. Its amoral tone throws a suspicious light on D. Joaninha's readings. Faublas's inclination towards cross-dressing, however, does raise the question of appearances and circulation of forms that is also an issue in A Moreninha. The kind of humor present in the Faublas novels—not to mention the fascination with the youth of their protagonist, whose budding (but intense) sexual experience still carries many elements of child's play—also bear some striking similarities to Macedo's novel, so it is hard to guess where his sympathy actually lies in this seeming condemnation of Faublas.
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⁶ See Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, Visão do paraíso (São Paulo: Companhia Editora Nacional/Editora da Universidade de São Paulo, 1969) xii-xvii. The first accounts on the colonies often stress the fact that the Americas are in an eternal spring.
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⁷ The contrast between culture and nature is a widespread concern of French sentimental novels, and it is also present in British novels. Examples range from Rousseau's own La Nouvelle Héloïse, published in 1761, to Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's Paul et Virginie, first published in 1788 as part of Etudes de la Nature.
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⁸ See Silviano Santiago, "O entre-lugar do discurso latino-americano."
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⁹ Future references to this novel will appear between parentheses in the text.
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