Capitu, Capitolina: the Matacavalos’ poor girl to the bourgeois of Glória

Abstract

The relationships among Machado de Assis’ literature and the Bible were largely studied by the critic. It doesn’t seem, however, there is any work which compares Capitu’s trajectory with the chapter 16 of Ezequiel’s book. In this book the prophet describes the humble origin of Jerusalem, its acme, when it becomes the capital of the kingdom of Israel, and fall, when it abandons Jhvh and it’s project to make an alliance with other nations. This paper aims to analyze the trajectory of Capitu in D. Casmurro as an allegorical path akin to the city of Jerusalem. Capitu does not follow the purposes of a bourgeois family model frustrating Bentinho’s hopes. In this case, Capitu can be read as a character that frustrates the projects of the “carioca” society then represented by Bentinho who needs to write his own history and comprehend it before writing the “suburbs history”.