Esau and Jacob by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

First published:Esaú e Jacob, 1904 (English translation, 1965)

Type of plot: Magical Realism

Time of work: 1869-1894

Locale: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Principal Characters:

• Ayres, the narrator, a retired diplomat
• Santos, a wealthy businessman
• Natividade, his wife
• Pedro, their conservative son, who becomes a doctor
• Paulo, Pedro’s twin brother, a liberal who becomes a lawyer
• Baptista, an unsuccessful politician
• Dona Claudia, his wife
• Flora, their daughter, an accomplished pianist

The Novel

Esau and Jacob has 121 chapters and a brief preface. Some chapters are less than half a page in length, and none is more than six pages long. The novel is set primarily in the more fashionable neighborhoods of Rio de Janeiro during the twenty-five-year era corresponding to the waning years of the Brazilian Empire and the beginning of the republic (1869-1894).

The preface states that the novel is the last of a seven-part manuscript written by the retired diplomat, Counselor Ayres, who thus serves as the author of the story. He is, however, also one of the principal characters. Ayres also plays yet another role: He is the narrator. In this role, he frequently addresses and questions the reader directly.

The epigraph from Dante Alighieri’s La divina commedia (c. 1320; The Divine Comedy) at the head of the first chapter sets the tone for the entire novel. “Dico, che quando l’anima mal nata . . .” (“I mean, when the spirit born to evil . . .”) suggests that all characters have a flaw in their spirits or souls that will lead them as humans to do evil. As in the medieval literary epic, the reader of Esau and Jacob is led on a journey through hell in order to be instructed and purified.

The outer frame of the novel is concerned with an elaboration of the Santos family. The father is a highly successful businessman and director of his own bank who has acquired his great wealth through ruthless and questionable dealings. Natividade, his wife, consults the cabocla, a native fortuneteller, to learn what the future will be for her sons, the twins Pedro and Paulo. She is told: “Things fated to be!” “They will be great!” “They will fight!” Natividade’s life is consumed by the fate of her sons. She takes intense satisfaction in seeing Pedro and Paulo eventually becoming distinguished members of the Chamber of Deputies in the new republic. At the same time, however, she suffers the anguish of never having her sons live in harmony. They begin fighting while still in the womb and continue as young boys, with Paulo taking on the role of the liberal (his hero is Maximilien Robespierre) and Pedro being the conservative and champion of Louis XVI (both protagonists of the 1789 French Revolution); they hold similar opposing views when they serve in the government as adults. Their father is not concerned with this lack of concord among his sons. He is satisfied that they have attained status and prestige, since he cares only for the superficial approval of society.

A second family, the Baptistas, represents the political world of the times. Baptista, an attorney and party functionary, was formerly a governor of a distant province but because of some obscure political problems is forced to seek a new post. He is a rather reticent personality and must rely on the aggressiveness of his wife, Dona Claudia, to gain appointments for interviews for positions. However, since they are now living in a revolutionary era, there are no opportunities for members of his conservative party. To advance during these inauspicious times, Dona Claudia proposes that they become liberals, but he is equally unsuccessful trying to represent this point of view. Changing their political convictions is inconsequential for the Baptistas.

Their daughter, Flora, is totally unlike her parents. She is the same age as the identical twins Pedro and Paulo, is an accomplished pianist, and is described as a tender “flower of a single morning.” From age fifteen until her untimely death, Flora and Ayres share an unspoken, unrealized, and uncomplicated love for each other. It is, however, her relationship to Pedro and Paulo that is problematical. As a young woman, she is courted by both brothers whom she loves equally. As the twins become more competitive in their attempts to gain Flora’s exclusive love, she grows more incapable of differentiating between them. After an extended courtship, Flora one evening has a hallucinatory dream in which the voices and images of Pedro and Paulo become one, and she concludes that she must end her relationship with both.

There follows a short period of mysterious illness. With great compassion, Ayres and Natividade attempt to nurse her back to health, but without success. Flora withdraws from the world into a state of delirium. She is no longer able to acknowledge the reality of her environment, including the fact that Pedro and Paulo are two separate people. In perfect serenity, Flora dies “like a brief afternoon.”

At Flora’s grave, Pedro and Paulo swear everlasting accord, and Natividade is overjoyed that Flora’s life has brought this state of harmony for her sons. Yet their pact of concord does not last beyond the first month, when once more they resume their hostility at Flora’s gravesite.

The Characters

All the characters except Ayres represent specific types of individuals that populate Machado de Assis’ novels. They are what they are fated to be. Although a quarter of a century passes and each main character develops, none changes roles or personae. Counselor Ayres, however, has been assigned a multidimensional role by Machado de Assis. The preface advises that Ayres, now deceased, was the author of an extended manuscript, six parts of which make up the notebooks labeled “Memorial” and a seventh part that is Esau and Jacob. The “Memorial” was a journal in which Ayres recorded almost daily observations, criticisms, and even anecdotes, some of which are actually included verbatim in the novel. Most of this journal was presumably used only to record notes that were then transferred to the plot of the novel.

In addition to being the silent outside observer, Ayres is the most important character in the plot of the novel itself. He is the central participant in all important events, often called on to use his diplomatic skills to mediate between conflicting factions. In his role as elder statesman, Ayres also brings the wisdom and counsel of the Western European literary and philosophical tradition to this sometimes turbulent and unrefined society.

Being both character and author further allows Ayres to function as the omniscient narrator of the novel. Having infinite awareness and complete knowledge, he can record the thoughts, feelings, and motivations of all other participants as he encounters them, including even his own perceptions and sensations.

The most singular feature of Esau and Jacob, however, is the manner in which the reader is often addressed by the author, who presumably is still Ayres. The reader is admonished to “read attentively” and told that “you are about to learn.” Not infrequently, the narrator makes comments such as the following: “I lack precise information,” “I forgot to mention,” “I hasten to correct myself,” or “before I forget.” The narrator also makes references to earlier parts of the novel (“we left him, only two chapters ago”) and announces what will be dealt with in subsequent chapters. Especially harsh is the attitude expressed to “my lady-reader” when the author tells her in a loud, clear voice not to tell him how and what to write.

This complex, multidimensional literary technique, used earlier by the English writer Laurence Sterne and the French novelist Xavier de Maistre, is particularly effective in that it continuously requires the reader to maintain a judicious attitude toward the characters and issues presented in the novel. The illusion of reading a historical romance is constantly challenged by these interruptions, and the reader is thereby provoked to engage in critical thinking.

Critical Context

Machado de Assis is Brazil’s most famous writer. He was virtually unknown outside the Portuguese-speaking world, especially among speakers of English, until his novels gradually appeared in translation in the United States in the 1970’s. Although recognition has been slow, he is regarded as a major literary figure who has contributed significantly to writings on the human condition in Western literature.

Esau and Jacob, the eighth of his nine novels, has not enjoyed the popular reception of Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas (1881; Epitaph of a Small Winner, 1952) and Dom Casmurro (1899; English translation, 1953). Scholars do, however, consider Esau and Jacob to be Machado de Assis’s most profound and elaborate novel. It demonstrates the author’s extraordinary application of native Brazilian myths and symbols to an exposition of his belief in the destiny of a better humanity.

The historical struggle of Brazil at the advent of modernity is posited by the political opposition of the twins. Pedro represents the conservative past of the empire, and Paulo represents a liberal future for the republic.

The characters of Natividade and Flora represent an even more important human aspect of that era of transition. Natividade returns to the Morro do Castello, the hill on which Father Manuel de Nóbrega founded the first Jesuit college in the early sixteenth century and the site of the first Portuguese colony. There she consults the cabocla, the oracle and high priestess of an even earlier indigenous people of Brazil, who proclaims the future greatness, although troubled, of Brazil.

Flora is closely related to Natividade, whom she thinks of as a mother, and to Pedro and Paulo, whom she loves in equal measure. It is not in her life, however, but in her music that she disassociates herself from the disparate forces of society at the moment of revolution and conflict. As she plays a sonata at her piano, she observes that “music had the advantage of not being present, past, or future: it was a thing outside time and space, pure idea.” In this state of perfect innocence, the ethereal Flora perceives a paradisiacal state for her native land and for humankind.

The character of Ayres, the consummate diplomat, represents the views of Machado de Assis, the aging author. The novel ends with Ayres, who is secretly in love with Flora (flor is the Portuguese word for flower), paying her the high compliment as he exits of touching “his lapel where there bloomed the same eternal flower.”

Bibliography

Bettencourt Machado, José. Machado of Brazil: The Life and Times of Machado de Assis. New York: Bramerica, 1953. An interesting-but not always reliable-older biography that includes extensive background information on Brazil.

Caldwell, Helen. Machado de Assis: The Brazilian Master and His Novels. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970. The most important study of Machado de Assis’ life and novels, written by the translator of Esau and Jacob.

Fitz, Earl. Machado de Assis. Boston: Twayne, 1989. An excellent general introduction to all aspects of Machado de Assis’ life and work; includes chronology and bibliography.

Nunes, Maria Luisa. The Craft of an Absolute Winner: Characterization and Narratology in the Novels of Machado de Assis. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1983. A major examination of Machado de Assis’ use of various narrative techniques and his theory of characterization.