RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Vulnerability, Resistance, and the Street in the Work of Machado de Assis
JF Luso-Brazilian Review
JO Luso-Braz Rev
FD University of Wisconsin Press
SP 46
OP 61
DO 10.3368/lbr.58.1.46
VO 58
IS 1
A1 Rex P. Nielson
YR 2021
UL http://lbr.uwpress.org/content/58/1/46.abstract
AB Few authors from Brazil explore the concepts of risk and vulnerability like the writer Machado de Assis. In particular, street scenes in Machado’s work reveal aspects of vulnerability that may not be readily acknowledged or understood. 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 elucidates our understanding of social organization in nineteenth-century Rio de Janeiro.