SONHOS D'OURO

JOSÉ DE ALENCAR rededicated himself to his writing after seeing his political star eclipsed — losing a ministerial post and being passed over by the emperor Dom Pedro II for senator despite receiving the most votes in his native Ceará — although he also stayed involved in politics as a member of the lower Chamber of Deputies. In 1871 the so-called Law of the Free Womb was passed on September 28. Although the law meant that henceforth no child would be born a slave in Brazil, ensuring the eventual extinction of the institution, the mothers remained slaves and their children remained wards of their mother's owners for up to twenty-one more years. This gradual emancipation scheme nonetheless drew Alencar's ire. Although no friend of slavery, Alencar was a classic conservative concerned with the protection of private property rights and the maintenance of social order. He did not hold the citizenship capacity of slaves in high esteem and believed that slaves were genuinely better off with their paternalistic masters than cut loose and left to their own devices. Alencar's novel Sonhos d'Ouro does not address the issue of slavery or property rights head on, but it can be read as an attempt to offer a solution to the problem of modernity in a prospectively post-slavery urban metropolis. The rub: Reining in the excess of the new capitalist wealth required joining the new rich to the traditional values (if not the slaveholding) of the interior.

It is against this backdrop, while Alencar was living in the hills of Tijuca, which became one of the central settings of the novel, that Sonhos d'Ouro was written. Perhaps Alencar chose Tijuca, on the mountainous rural fringe of Riode Janeiro, as his refuge after his stinging political defeats because it reminded him of happier days; he had met and courted his wife, Georgiana Cochrane, the daughter of a wealthy Englishman, in that same rural neighborhood. Certainly, life and fiction entwined.

Published in 1872, on the heels of a series of devastating personal and professional setbacks, Sonhos d'Ouro deserves to be considered among the finest novels of Alencar's career. The book recounts the story of Ricardo Nunes, a young lawyer from São Paulo, and Guida Soares, the daughter of a wealthy Rio de Janeiro businessman. Ricardo represents the virtuous but poor man marked by talent but lacking connections; Guida is the capricious and spoiled rich girl with a good heart. Bringing these two characters together, Alencar writes as an alchemist: Virtue and wealth together transmute into a golden dream.

From the start, the theme of virtue in relation to wealth is sounded out. Ricardo's first internal monologue begins:

Gold ... gold ... You reign over the world, absolute monarch, autocratic ruler of all the world's riches! You, yes, you reign and govern, without law, without opinion, without Parliament. ... Law? What law have you save for the caprice with which you toy with men?

Ouro! ... ouro! ... És o rei do mundo, rei absoluto, autocrata de todas as grandezas da terra! Tu, sim, tu reinas e governas, sem lei, sem opinião, sem parlamento. ... Lei. ... Que lei é a tua, senão o capricho com que escarneces dos homens?

These thoughts pour out of Ricardo as he rests on the side of a trail in the bucolic woods of Tijuca, drawing the outline of a golden wildflower in his sketchbook. He has come to Rio de Janeiro seeking his fortune; or perhaps it is better to say that he has come seeking to close the chapter of his youth and, upon earning the 20 contos he needs to establish a household of his own, return to São Paulo to marry and raise a family. His needs are not great. But Ricardo has no money and no connections. Amassing such a sum seems nearly impossible to him as he reclines in the grass and reflects on life. Twenty contos, he thinks, when "millionaires have paid much more than that just to have the right to a five letter name." Barão (baron). Conde (count). Four contos per letter. His needs seem small in comparison. How might one get such a quantity of money quickly? Winning the lottery, in a card game, through an unexpected inheritance. As Ricardo ponders these possibilities, he becomes aware that he is being watched. Looking up, he sees a beautiful young woman astride anArabian horse. She stares down at him. Without thinking, he kisses the golden flower he has been holding while sketching. The girl laughs. Although Ricardo senses that there is some malice in the girl's demeanor, he returns laughter with laughter. Thus Ricardo and Guida meet for the first time: poor virtue meets golden caprice. Later, Ricardo will draw Guida's beautiful figure in his sketchbook alongside the flower and discover that she is the daughter of one of the richest men in Rio de Janeiro. Critically, for Alencar's purposes, her father will be rich but scrupulously honest and humble, the antithesis of those men who paid "four contos per letter" for a flimsy title of nobility.

In Illustration 1, which was commissioned for this volume and etched in drypoint intaglio by Stephen Baird, the critical first meeting between Ricardo and Guida is presented for the reader. Guida has taken advantage of her fast horse to lose her chaperone, the prim Mrs. Trowshy. Ricardo is absorbed in a typical bourgeois pastime: taking the air in the forest and sketching a flower. Thus they meet for the first time, alone, in the poses of youth seeking experience.

In Alencar's version of the Brazilian bildungsroman, the twin paths of Ricardo and Guida represent the ways in which youthful pride and voluble caprice interact and complicate courtship and social integration. Ricardo is too proud at first to admit his love for Guida, fearing that he will appear as nothing more than another treasure hunter chasing the girl's rich dowry; Guida, unthinking, allows herself to take advantage of her situation, her power, in abusive games and pranks. Ricardo explains to his friend Fábio:

In a millionaire's house, in the midst of people accustomed to luxury and status, what kind of figure would we cut? I believe it would best be said to lie at the balance between parasite and servant; we'd be the links in the chain betwixt the two.

Em casa de um milionário, no meio de uma sociedade habituada ao luxo e às grandezas, qual seria nossa posição? Creio que a classifico bem dizendo que faríamos o ponto de transição entre o parasita e o criado; formaríamos o elo desses dois anéis da cadeia.

To which Fábio responds, "Indeed, such modesty slips into pride" ("Com efeito! Modéstia tão requintada degenera em orgulho"). Pride, then, his friend suggests, is the barrier to social progress, not to mention pretty and rich young girls. Ricardo willfully misses Fábio's point,...