Vulnerability, Resistance, and the Street in the Work of Machado de Assis

Scenes from Brazil of individuals filling the streets are hardly uncommon. The well-trafficked images of Brazil’s exuberant carnival are invariably set in the street. Similarly, the arresting photographs of marches, rallies, demonstrations, and protests communicate the importance of the street to Brazilian political and social life. Consider, for example, the activities of organized political movements such as the MST (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra) or the more recent Movimento Passe Livre, or a host of other feminist, racial, student, urban, environmental, labor, and political movements that center their activities in the street. As numerous social scientists have theorized, the street in Brazilian culture is far more than mere setting or accidental backdrop. In its various forms as avenue, boulevard, road, alley, pavement, and asphalt, the street provides a structure—we often call it an infrastructure: literally a structure from beneath—that supports, allows, and creates particular forms of public social behavior. Without the street, there would be no Marcha Zumbi dos Palmares, Grito dos Excluídos, Marcha das Vadias, or Marcha Mundial das Mulheres. How could Diretas Já in the 1980s or Caras Pintadas in the 1990s have gained popularity and achieved important political change without the street? And in recent years, the influential hashtags #saimosdofacebook, #acordabrasil, #ogiganteacordou, #vemprarua, and #soquenão have emerged from both the left and the right of the political spectrum as virtual signs of resistance and calls for citizenship rights that are simultaneously and uniquely tied to the street and street protests.¹ As one critic has noted, these demonstrations are “collective expressions in public spaces to affirm the rights of excluded segments of the population” (Scherer-Warren 15). In these terms, individuals and communities project confidence and optimism upon the street as a space where citizenship and equal rights may be demanded and affirmed.

Nevertheless, despite the democratic principles, ideals, and ambitions that animate positive attitudes towards the street, citizenship rights are by no means guaranteed there. Indeed, as a public space, the street is more often a site of contestation and struggle. Though we commonly identify the street as part of the infrastructure of the state, the street is a site where citizenship must be asserted and fought for. The anthropologist James Holston utilizes the term “insurgent citizenship” to describe the practices by which individuals seek to challenge state projects that would otherwise curtail civic, social and political rights in an effort to transform and reconstitute them. Insurgent citizenship manifests itself in the street. Leila Lehnen has similarly argued in favor of the term “differentiated citizenship,” a concept that “serves as a platform around which disenfranchised groups rally in an effort to obtain [. . .] political rights through the dispute of legalized discrimination or insurgent citizenship” (3). Thus, while the street may have once been “viewed as a place of equitable access, deep meaning, and diverse functions, the street has changed into a space of exclusion” (Miller i). One critic has referred to this as the tension between the “praça” and the “palácio” (Napolitano 163). Others have likewise noted the dangers inherent to walking the streets. For example, in the United States, activists speak of “taking to the streets” or “taking back” the streets—one event regularly sponsored by university student groups to protest violence against women is sometimes called “taking back the night” and sometimes as “taking back the street.” This language exists in Brazil as well. The phrase tomar a rua implies that the street is contested terrain, a space that is not uniformly public and equally accessed by all but rather a space that must be seized and occupied. As much as the ideals of democracy, equality, and citizenship find expression in the street, they are not guaranteed there, for as another critic has noted: “all public assembly is haunted by the police and the prison” (Butler 20). Jaime Amparo Alves argues that the violence of Brazil’s urban streets, and in particular racial violence committed against black men and women, is best captured through the concept “necropolis,” Alves’s term for Brazilian cities and streets that systematically marginalize and terrorize the urban poor (The Anti-Black City). Consequently, to step into the street symbolically and literally signifies risk, whether that means to risk exposure to violence or to risk suffering any other liability or hazard that stems from differentiated citizenship.

Few authors from Brazil explore the concepts of risk and vulnerability like the writer Machado de Assis. In his work, vulnerability—understood as an exposure to risk—finds expression in a variety of places and by actors from all social classes and categories. For the most part, critics typically give attention to the vulnerabilities expressed in Machado’s work that are centered in domestic spaces, homes, and private property where domestic social hierarchies and orders reign. Nevertheless, in contrast to such interior and private spaces, street scenes in Machado’s work reveal aspects of vulnerability that may not be as readily acknowledged or understood. These scenes appear in works as diverse as the novels Quincas Borba and Esaú e Jacó to stories such as “A cartomante,” “A chinela turca,” “Singular ocorrência,” “Pai contra mãe,” and “O caso da vara.” In particular, Machado’s fictional representations of the street expose inequalities correlating to both race and gender, failures by the state to ensure public security for all, and limits to human agency. A study of the conditions of vulnerability that are uniquely manifest in the streets of Machado’s fiction thus elucidates our understanding of social organization in nineteenth-century Rio de Janeiro.

In the introduction to their edited volume Vulnerability in Resistance, editors Judith Butler, Zeynep Gambetti, and Leticia Sabsay identify a tension between two foundational concepts that lie at the heart of much political and theoretical discourse: namely, vulnerability and resistance. They begin by challenging the “basic assumption that vulnerability and resistance are mutually oppositional” (1), or to state it differently, they question the idea that “vulnerability is the opposite of resistance and cannot be conceived as part of that practice” (1). They also observe a second assumption that posits that “vulnerability requires and implies the need for protection and the strengthening of paternalistic forms of power at the expense of collective of forms of resistance and social transformation” (1). The editors explain that political activists frequently seek to help those who are vulnerable by turning to paternalistic institutions: “Often social movements, human rights advocates, and institutions refer to precarious or vulnerable populations, for whom political strategies are accordingly devised to ameliorate conditions of exposure and precarity” (5). Butler, Gambetti, and Sabsay focus on two assumptions: first, that vulnerability is the opposite of resistance, and second, that vulnerability requires protection through paternalistic forms of power. In doing so, they highlight the relationship between vulnerability and power, and specifically the conditions that produce vulnerability.

However, in her own essay in the volume, Butler questions the logic that presents vulnerability as a passive consequence and product of resistance. She states:

First you resist, and then you are confronted with your vulnerability either in relation to police power or to those who show up to oppose your political stance. Yet vulnerability emerges earlier, prior to any gathering, and this becomes especially true when people demonstrate to oppose the precarious conditions in which they live. (12)

In other words, Butler proposes we invert the syllogism and consider resistance as a product of vulnerability rather than the other way around. Understanding vulnerability as a source of resistance bears important implications for how we consider fictional representations of vulnerability: “What follows when we conceive of resistance as drawing from vulnerability as a resource of vulnerability, or as part of the very meaning or action of resistance itself? What implications does this perspective have for thinking about the subject of political agency?” (1). In what ways might we think of vulnerability as a source of strength and even a basis for political power?

Brazilian culture offers abundant examples for considering the concept of vulnerability. In his well-known study of Brazilian society, A casa e a rua, Roberto DaMatta examines the way in which the social spaces of the house and the street condition how power is structured and exercised. He observes that “a casa e a rua” constitute two categories that are foundational for understanding Brazilian society in a holistic manner. He states:

[E]stas palavras não designam simplesmente espaços geográficos ou coisas físicas comensuráveis, mas acima de tudo entidades morais, esferas de ação social, províncias éticas dotadas de positividade, domínios culturais institucionalizados e, por causa disso, capazes de despertar emoções, reações, leis, orações, músicas e imagens esteticamente emolduradas e inspiradas. (14)

More than ideas that merely reference physical and geographic space, DaMatta insists these terms represent moral systems that stand in opposition to each other. That is, the home can only be understood as a value system in contrast to the street and vice versa. In this sense, he is clearly evoking Gilberto Freyre, who similarly contested that the senzala or rua could only be understood in opposition to the casa grande. DaMatta conceives of the home as a place of order, control, security, and hierarchy. Likewise, as he notes elsewhere, the home provides the foundations for identity: “De fato, na casa ou em casa, somos membros de uma família e de um grupo fechado com fronteiras e limites bem-definidos” (Roberto DaMatta, O que faz o brasil, Brasil? 24). DaMatta highlights the values that characterize the home as thus: loyalty, obedience, authority, and hierarchy.

In stark contrast to this constellation of values, DaMatta identifies an opposite yet parallel grouping of values that characterize the street. He describes the street as a place of anonymity, a place of individuality, a place of disorder, and as a place of disobedience; he states: “na rua podem-se admitir contradições próprias deste espaço. Mas na casa as contradições devem ser banidas, sob pena de causarem um intolerável mal-estar. Afinal de contas, a casa não admite contradições, se essas contradições não podem ser imediatamente postas em ordem: em hierarquia ou gradação” (51). The street, on the other hand, is the place of “os malandros, os meliantes, os pilantras e os marginais em geral—ainda que esses mesmos personagens em casa possam ser seres humanos decentes e até mesmo bons pais de família. Do mesmo modo, a rua é local de individualização, de luta e de malandragem” (51). DaMatta then summarizes: “se a casa distingue esse espaço de calma, repouso, recuperação e hospitalidade, enfim, de tudo aquilo que define a nossa ideia de ‘amor,’ ‘carinho’ e ‘calor humano,’ a rua é um espaço definido precisamente ao inverso. Terra que pertence ao ‘governo’ ou ao ‘povo’ e que está sempre repleta de fluidez e movimento. A rua é um local periogoso” (52–53). Hence, DaMatta contrasts the stability of the home with the instability of the street.

Similarly, in her study of nineteenth-century social life in Rio de Janeiro, Sandra Graham echoes DaMatta’s dichotomy between casa and rua. She states, “House signified a secure and stable domain. To house belonged the enduring relationships of family or blood kin. To street belonged uncertain or temporary alliances in which identity could not be assumed but had to be established. Street was suspect, unpredictable, a dirty or dangerous place” (4). Graham elsewhere describes the distinction between house and street further: “The known and trusted ties of blood kinship belonged to the house, while less lasting or temporary relations, ones that involved choice and hence risk were associated with street” (15). Graham’s analysis underscores the street as a place of menace, in contrast to the safety of the home, a place of uncertainty, suspicion, and exposure to risk.

Graham and DaMatta’s formulation suggests an immediate application for our understanding of the concept of vulnerability, namely, that the home is a place of safety and invulnerability while the street is a place of danger and vulnerability. However, Machado’s writings reveal that this binary is false. Indeed, Machado’s work in great measure exposes the vulnerabilities inherent to the structure of the home. Perhaps the clearest example of this is the notion of the agregado, especially as described by Roberto Schwarz in “As ideias fora de lugar.” In this well-known essay, Schwarz asserts that the dependent class occupies a fundamental position of insecurity in relation to those who hold power in society: “o pequeno proprietário depende dele para a segurança de sua propriedade, e o funcionário para o seu posto” (16). In other words, vulnerability defines the condition of dependency, especially within domestic spaces. As DaMatta himself states: “por ser um espaço assim inclusivo e, simultaneamente, exclusivo, a casa pode ter seus agregados” (26). Because of the home’s structure as a place of inclusion and exclusion, that is, as a place where some have access to power and privilege and others within the home do not, we can easily consider the agregado as a vulnerable figure, someone who occupies a precarious position and who is regularly subjected to unequal expressions of power and authority within a strongly hierarchical social structure. In fact, Sidney Chalhoub has published on this phenomenon in terms of Machado’s infrequently read story “Virginius,” where he notes the way Machado presents the home as a place of “structural vulnerability [for] dependents in that society” (Chalhoub 56).² Thus, rather than view the home and the street through a dialectic of invulnerability and vulnerability, we might consider the differentiated conditions of vulnerability present in each space. The way Machado presents vulnerability in the street reveals some important insights to the concepts of dependency, agency, and resistance in nineteenth-century Rio de Janeiro. Stated in other terms, if it is possible to view the condition of dependency as itself a form of vulnerability, then is there a way that we can invert the power dynamic and think of vulnerability (perhaps read here as dependency) as a form of strength?

Butler makes two points in this regard that I believe are relevant to considering the manifestations of vulnerability in Machado. First, we invariably read dependence in Machado in terms of vulnerability in the negative, as a product of paternalistic cordiality. Must dependence always be read in the negative? And is the apparent opposite of dependence, namely, independence, the solution to the conditions of dependence? Butler raises this point when she proposes we reconsider vulnerability and dependency as a source of power. She states:

By theorizing the human body as a certain kind of dependency on infrastructure, understood complexly as environment, social relations, and networks of support and sustenance by which the human itself proves not to be divided from the animal or from the technical world, we foreground the ways in which we are vulnerable to decimated or disappearing infrastructures, economic supports, and predictable and well-compensated labor. Not only are we then vulnerable to one another—an invariable feature of social relations—but, in addition, this vulnerability indicates a broader condition of dependency and interdependency that challenges the dominant ontological understanding of the embodied subject. (21)

Here Butler signals a way in which we might think of vulnerability, the “deliberate exposure to power” (22), as a condition that exists at the core of political resistance. Foregrounding vulnerability, as opposed to hiding (masking, suppressing, minimizing, and otherwise dismissing) vulnerability, thus constitutes a strategic act of resistance.

This theoretical framework bears some interesting implications for reading vulnerability in the work of Machado and considering Machado’s own narrative strategies of resistance. While an analysis of vulnerability manifested in domestic private spaces would be fruitful (and perhaps the subject of another article), analyzing the expression of vulnerability in Machado’s representations of public spaces, especially streets, is particularly revealing. The dialectic between the home and the street, the casa and the rua, as described by DaMatta might lead us to view the street—in contrast to the hierarchical order of the home—as a space that is ostensibly less hierarchical and more democratic, or where principles of equality have greater influence; yet Machado’s streets are places of precarity and vulnerability. The political scientist Leonardo Avritzer has observed that contrary to the principles of democracy the public sphere in Brazil is primarily a “homogenous space and restricts social actors to defensive action” (39), and he goes on to suggest strategies for countering and restructuring public space according to more inclusive and participatory democratic values. Nonetheless, the anxiety Avritzer identifies and his call for the “defensive action” resonate strongly with Machado’s representations of “social actors,” whom we might call vulnerable subjects moving defensively through the streets of Rio de Janeiro.

A variety of scenes from Machado’s short stories and novels that take place in the street give insight into the presence of vulnerability and defensive subjects. These are scenes characterized by individuals rushing through the streets (though these are not scenes of individuals participating in political protests). Rather, they are scenes of people in the street who are stricken with fear, racked with anxiety, tormented and even traumatized by feelings of helplessness and desperation. In these scenes, men, women, and sometimes children hastily move around, panicked, almost oblivious to the world around them. In many cases, these characters are presented scurrying from one home to another, in other words, moving between domestic spaces, but we can find significance in the unprotected moment of their appearance in the street and the ways that the street conditions their behavior and reveals their vulnerability. In these moments, Machado not only exposes their vulnerability but also explores aspects of it that might simultaneously offer the strength and power to resist the conditions that have created that vulnerability. That is, these moments indicate the ways that Machado utilizes the conditions of vulnerability in narrative to demonstrate resistance.

Two texts come immediately to mind: “Pai contra mãe” (1906) and “O caso da vara” (1891) Both stories involve dramatic scenes of desperation and panic in the street. First, in the well-known and shocking opening of “Pai contra mãe,” the narrator includes the following details while describing the institution of slavery. Concerning enslaved people who had been punished with the “ferro ao pescoço,” the narrator states: “onde quer que andasse mostrava um reincidente, e com pouco era pegado” (466). Many scholars have examined this detail, including Sidney Chalhoub (1990), Antonio Torres Montenegro (1988), Luís Carlos Soares (2007), and more recently Ariosvalber de Souza Oliveira (2013). These critics offer in depth examinations of public forms of punishment and torture committed against those enslaved in Rio de Janeiro in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Their studies confirm that the neck iron described in “Pai contra mãe” served to visibly and publicly mark them so that wherever they went, he or she was visibly noticeable, ostensibly to draw attention to their status as a repeat offender. In other words, implicit in this comment the narrator describes a practice of the institution of slavery that would ensure that the street was a place of exposure, a place where one could not hide. The narrator gives us a second detail in this opening section: “Casos houve, ainda que raros, em que o escravo de contrabando, apenas comprado no Valongo, deitava a correr, sem conhecer as ruas da cidade” (467). Here, too, the narrator emphasizes the attempts made by some enslaved people, having just arrived at the docks of the infamous slave market in Rio de Janeiro, to escape, and we can imagine their panicked, directionless flight through the streets. From the beginning of the story, the street is presented neither as a place of safety nor hiding.

Notably, the story’s protagonist Cândido Neves is initially described as someone whose temperament prevents him from occupying a position in a house, whether that house was a residential house or a house of commerce: “A obrigação, porém de atender e servir a todos feria-o na corda do orgulho, e ao cabo de cinco ou seis semanas estava na rua por sua vontade” (467). In other words, he is not fit for a home, for a casa, and because of this, when he and Clara begin their relationship, Clara’s amigas hesitate to praise him or congratulate Clara on the match. Clara’s friends view Cândido as a marginal figure of questionable character. Clara defends him with the deliciously ambiguous line: “Não, defunto não, mas é que . . .” (468). The narrative pause refuses to specify what Cândido is but implies he is only slightly better than a corpse. Thus, given his marginalized status, it seems appropriate that Cândido is consigned to the street, and it is little wonder that his professional activities are based outside of any house and instead outside, where he waits on street corners, chatting away the day, to catch runaway slaves: “Mais de uma vez, a uma esquina,” he interrupts conversations, “e ia atrás do vicioso” (470).

The threat of the street pervades the story. For example, when Cândido and Clara find themselves unable to pay their rent, they consequently face the possibility of homelessness as their landlord warns: “Cinco dias ou rua!” (472). The street here represents the ultimate form of disgrace and tragedy. Similarly, after Cândido and Clara’s baby is born, because of their precarity and poverty, the aunt insists on sending the newborn child to the street, that is, to a specific street: “a Rua dos Barbonos” with its “Roda dos enjeitados” (472). The Rua dos Barbonos was the location of a religious hospital where parents could leave unwanted babies. The street thus symbolizes the separation of parents from children. This is not only the case for Cândido and Clara, but also for Arminda, the pregnant runaway. In the crucial moment when Cândido captures the escaped enslaved woman, just prior to the horrific event of Arminda’s abortion, their violent encounter takes place in the street: “Foi arrastada a escrava pela rua dos Ourives, em direção à da Alfândega, onde residia o senhor. Na esquina desta a luta cresceu; a escrava pôs os pés à parede, recuou com grande esforço, inutilmente” (474). In this moment, the struggle is over. Arminda’s subsequent abortion is in some respects more of a coda than a climax. She risked all by stepping into the street and the story exposes her vulnerability. At the same time, the story exposes Cândido’s vulnerability as well.

If we understand vulnerability as a precondition to resistance, then revealing vulnerability constitutes an initial and crucial step in contesting the forces that have created vulnerability. Within the story, Arminda steps out into the street in the hope of escaping the brutal conditions of slavery and achieving freedom for herself and her unborn child, and while this act literally exposes herself to violence, it also symbolically affirms her subjectivity and independence. Furthermore, though Arminda’s struggle against Cândido ultimately fails, the story does not fail to impress the reader. Reading the story as a study of vulnerability also explains the narrative’s unusual structure with its opening paragraphs detailing the institutional apparatuses of slavery. These paragraphs seemingly exist outside the plot of the story, yet they provide a critical exegesis of the culture of slavery in the mid-nineteenth century in Brazil, thereby exposing from its opening lines the vulnerabilities inherent in this society.

Similar revelations emerge throughout Machado’s fiction. A brief example comes from the story “O caso da vara,” a story often paired with “Pai contra mãe” that includes a notable scene of vulnerability located in the street.³ In the story’s opening scene, the young protagonist, Damião, makes a panicked escape from the seminary where his father has sent him against his will. “Damião fugiu do seminário às onze horas da manhã de uma sexta-feira de Agosto. Não sei bem o ano; foi antes de 1850. Passados alguns minutos parou vexado; não contava com o efeito que produzia nos olhos da outra gente aquele seminarista que ia espantado, medroso, fugitivo. Desconhecia as ruas, andava e desandava; finalmente parou. Para onde iria? Para casa, não; lá estava o pai” (426). The young Damião races through the streets, seeking to avoid the glances of passers-by. He feels disoriented, unprotected, and exposed. The narrator continues: “Aqui o vemos agora na rua, espantado, incerto, sem atinar com refúgio nem conselho” (426). Although the plot primarily takes place hereafter in a controlled domestic interior, the moments of the opening narration emphasize Damião’s terror and uncertainty as he runs through the streets. In this case, as in “Pai contra mãe,” the street is not a place of refuge, a place that provides support. It is not an infrastructure but a mechanism that reveals and exposes vulnerability. While the characters in both stories (Cândido Neves, Arminda, Damião, and Lucrécia) each suffer (albeit to varying degrees) because of the vulnerable conditions in which they have been cast, the narrative effect of exposing their vulnerability is one of resistance. Foregrounding their vulnerability, as opposed to hiding, masking, suppressing, or otherwise dismissing it, thus constitutes a strategic literary act of resistance.

Two other relevant episodes of vulnerability in the street appear in the novels Quincas Borba (1891) and Esaú e Jacó (1904). In Quincas Borba, the notable scene comes from chapter 47. Though many critics acknowledge the presence of slavery and scenes of violence in Machado’s novel Quincas Borba, including both John Gledson (2003) and Sidney Chalhoub (2016), scholars rarely discuss this scene. As the protagonist, Rubião, ambles through the city streets, he comes across the public execution of a criminal. The defendant is being led along in a public procession that includes the prosecutors who periodically stop and read aloud the crimes for which the man has been sentenced, along with a coterie of other court officials and a mass of spectators. The narration describes Rubião’s fascination with the scene: “O acaso, em vez de levá-lo pela Rua do Ouvidor abaixo até à da Quitanda, torceu-lhe o caminho pela dos Ourives, atrás do préstito. Não iria ver a execução, pensou ele; era só ver a marcha do réu, a cara do carrasco, as cerimônias . . . Não queria ver a execução” (49). In typical Machadian fashion, we know the precise movements taken by the procession, the exact street names and stopping places along the Rua do Ouvidor, Rua da Quitanda, and Rua dos Ourives until finally reaching the Largo de Moura. It is the spectacle that draws in Rubião: the march, the mass of people, the ceremony of it all—but note that he does not intend to witness the execution and in fact he tells himself that he does not want to see it: “Voltemos, disse ele consigo” (49). Suddenly, however, the narration brings us to it: “Sem reparar, deu consigo no largo da execução [. . .] Foi aqui que o pé direito de Rubião descreveu uma curva na direção exterior, obedecendo a um sentimento de regresso; mas o esquerdo, tomado de sentimento contrário, deixou-se estar; lutaram alguns instantes” (49). Despite his conscious objection to witnessing the scene, Rubião—to quote “Pai contra mãe”—struggles “inutilmente” to resist, and he unconsciously follows the crowd and finds himself present for the terrible scene. “Todos os olhos fixaram-se no mesmo ponto, como os dele.” The spectacle of the street execution is too strong to resist, and as readers we are left to witness the violent act with Rubião: “O instante fatal foi realmente um instante; o réu esperneou, contraiu-se, o algoz cavalgou-o de um modo airoso e destro; passou pela multidão um rumor grande, Rubião deu um grito, e não viu mais nada” (49). In this instance, he apparently blacks out and regains consciousness only once he is far removed from the place. The violence of this moment literally interrupts the flow of Rubião’s stream-of-consciousness narrative, and as readers we are left with a hard return and a chapter break.

Similar moments of public displays of violence occur in Machado’s later novel Esaú e Jacó, and these scenes resonate strongly with Rubião’s experience from Quincas Borba. One takes place in chapter 39 following an encounter between Counselor Aires, a retired diplomat, and Natividade, the mother of the twins Pedro and Paulo. In this scene, after Aires bids farewell from Natividade, he steps into the street and turns onto the Rua da Carioca. There he comes upon a crowd of people shouting as two police officers hold a suspected wallet thief:

No meio desta, Aires encontrou um magote de gente parada, logo depois andando em direção ao largo. Aires quis arrepiar caminho, não de medo, mas de horror. Tinha horror à multidão. Viu que a gente era pouca, cinqüenta ou sessenta pessoas, e ouviu que bradava contra a prisão de um homem. Entrou num corredor, à espera que o magote passasse. Duas praças de polícia traziam o preso pelo braço. De quando em quando, este resistia, e então era preciso arrastá-lo ou forçá-lo por outro método. Tratava-se, ao que parece, do furto de uma carteira. (63)

The detained man proclaims his innocence: “Não furtei nada! [. . .] É falso! Larguem-me! Sou um cidadão livre! Protesto! protesto!” (63). While protesting and asserting his innocence, the prisoner struggles to free himself, but the police violently restrain him. In reaction to this violence, the growing crowd clamors against police. As the mass of people draws close, one of the officers brandishes a sword to make way for himself, his partner, and their prisoner. The crowd immediately dissipates: “A gente voou, não airosamente como a andorinha ou a pomba, em busca do ninho ou do alimento, voou de atropelo, pula aqui, pula ali, pula acolá, para todos os lados” (63). Yet almost immediately, the mass reforms to protest as the police lead away the subject. Aires observes all this action from a distance, dispassionately watching until the throng has passed. He then paternalistically reflects on the “velho instinto de resistência à autoridade” while praising the use of force to restore order: “Mas que abençoe a força e cumpra as leis sempre” (63).

Aires’s private reflections starkly contrast the public expression of outrage at the behavior of the police. As readers we are left without knowledge of whether the accused thief is innocent or guilty, but the scene clearly portrays the vulnerability of both the suspect and the protesting crowd who are both threatened by and ultimately subjected to the power of the state. Aires’s self-contained commentary on the scene praises the use of force by the police and simultaneously derides the actions of both suspect and multitude. He further counsels silently, “Que o homem se acostume às leis” (63), implying that there is no place for remonstrance or resistance.

This moment of a unified public manifestation of justice towards a thief is shortly after followed by news of the Proclamação da República and additional moments of public demonstration. In the novel, Paulo, of course, is thrilled by the proclamation: “viu-se à testa de uma república, em que o antigo e o moderno, o futuro e o passado se mesclassem, uma Roma nova, uma Convenção Nacional, a República Francesa e os Estados Unidos da América” (59). And yet, the celebrations that move into the streets are soon met with resistance, and the narrator makes a veiled reference to the violence committed against those who are demonstrating:

Natividade estava inquieta, sem notícia exata e definitiva dos acontecimentos. Não sabia da república. Não sabia do marido nem dos filhos. Aquele saíra antes dos primeiros rumores, estes iam fazer a mesma coisa, logo que os boatos chegaram. O primeiro gesto da mãe foi para impedir que os filhos saíssem, mas não pôde, era tarde. Não os podendo reter, pegou-se com a Virgem Maria, a fim de que os poupasse. (96)

Natividade fears that no one is safe in the streets given the political turmoil and instability of the revolution and counter-revolution. Though many now celebrate the Proclamation of the Republic as a key moment in Brazil’s development and path towards democracy, Machado’s literary representation tempers such patriotic enthusiasm. On this point, Robert Newcomb notes that in Esaú e Jacó Machado parodies the patriotic discourse of his day (106). Far from serving as the source or even symbol of political revolution, the street in Machado emerges as a place of risk and exposure, where the desire for security, control, and public safety are overshadowed by the potential and real violence of the state.

Two more examples come from the stories “A cartomante” (1896) and “Singular ocorrência” (1884) These stories do not so much explore the vulnerability of marginalized figures (although to an extent they do) as they explore another dimension of vulnerability, that is, vulnerability as a lack of control, vulnerability as impotence in the face of fate.

In “A cartomante,” the street is the place where Camilo loses all sense of grounding and stability. After receiving note from Vilela imploring him to come over, Camilo begins his auspicious trip to Vilela’s home. At first, he walks. “Camilo ia andando inquieto e nervosa” (355). Anxiously and nervously trying to determine the significance of Vilela’s note, Camilo walks the streets, a metaphor for endeavoring to decipher the world. He decides to get in a tílburi “quase no fim da rua da Guarda Velha, o tílburi teve de parar; a rua estava atravancada com uma carroça, que caíra” (355). Here it is the coincidence of the moment, the appearance of the unexpected, the manifestation of fate that leads him to the fortuneteller’s home and, consequently, the unfolding of the story. We are left to question: was it the fortuneteller’s machinations, her sophistry and manipulation in reading the situation, that lead to the story’s violent conclusion, or was it the role of fate, the alignment of the stars, that creates the perfect coincidence of Camilo being stalled on the street in that very moment and place, standing before the fortuneteller’s house. The narrator states: “Deu por si na calçada, ao pé da porta” (356). The verbal expression is identical to what happens to Rubião in Quincas Borba: deu por si. Notably, this coincidence takes place in the street. Again, to step into the street is to risk vulnerability, to risk exposure to chance and the unknown.

The story “Singular ocorrência” similarly explores the way fate and coincidence become intertwined in the street. The female protagonist, the enigmatic Maria Marocas, meets Andrade in the street. To the readers, the narrator refuses to state her profession explicitly: “Não era costureira, nem proprietária, nem mestra de meninas; vá excluindo as profissões e lá chegará” (204). An upper-class courtesan, her business literally begins in the street: “Marocas vinha andando, parando e olhando como quem procura alguma casa” (205). The story reveals that human behavior differs when one is out of the home and in the street: “A dama vinha atrás dele, e mais depressa; . . . Foi andando; a mulher, parada, fitou-o outra vez, mas com tal instância, que ele chegou a atrever-se um pouco; ela atreveu-se o resto” (207). Risk and vulnerability are here again manifest. Gestures that would not be dared indoors are possible in the street. This story, whose action hinges on the unexpected meeting of people from diverse social classes in the street, again emphasizes the street as the place of chance, as risk. The story concludes with a reflection upon the nature of chance: “O acaso, que é um deus e um diabo ao mesmo tempo . . .Enfim, coisas!” (211).

A final example comes from the story “A chinela turca” (1882). In Duarte’s adventure, he is pulled from his house into the street: “Na rua havia um carro, onde o meteram à força” (177). And then later, he escapes from his captors by jumping out a window and fleeing through the streets:

Duarte [. . .] fechou os punhos, bateu com eles violentamente nos peitos do homem e deitou a correr pelo jardim fora. O homem não caiu [. . .] seguiu no encalço do fugitivo. Começou então uma carreira vertiginosa. Duarte a saltando cercas e muros, calcando canteiros, esbarrando árvores, que uma ou outra vez se lhe erguiam na frente. [. . .] Enfim, cansado, ferido, ofegante, caiu nos degraus de pedra de uma casa, que havia no meio de último jardim que atravessara. (181)

Duarte ergueu-se a custo, subiu os quatro degraus que lhe faltavam, e entrou na casa. (182).

The story’s conclusion is well known. By leaving the street and re-entering his house, he wakes up from his dream and finds himself safely at home. Hence, even unconsciously, in a dreamlike state, the street is a place of danger and desperation. Elena Loizidou argues that dreaming is a crucial part of our political subjectivity. She states, “Dreams [. . .] give us the chance to recompose ourselves, even in the dream that is a nightmare. This very recomposition is an act of freedom” (124). She also relates, “We can think of the dream (its experience and a recounting) as an extension of the overt political acts of demonstrations and protests, tracking the flight to freedom” (125). Similarly, the dream sequence of this story indicates the power of literature to contemplate struggle and imagine freedom and emancipation. Significantly, it is once more in the street that Machado locates this dream.

Machado’s streets are public places of resistance, protest, and demonstration. Places where political agency is often asserted though rarely respected. In stark contrast to our modern expectation of the street as a place of democracy, the passages referenced above emphasize the degree to which subject agency and rights are not as secure or guaranteed in the street as we might think or hope. In this sense, Machado anticipates many of the discussions about how we conceptualize the street in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Machado presents the street not as a site of agency but rather as a structure that more often than not works against agency. The street is not so much the site of precarity—for precarity exists nearly at every level of society in Machado’s world—but rather as the site that reveals vulnerability. However, by doing so, Machado’s narration of vulnerability also serves a strategic role. To narrate vulnerability is not to create vulnerability but to counter it. Machado thus finds in vulnerability a kind of power to resist the paternalistic institutions and relationship patterns that have caused it.