Abstract
Machado de Assis was the author of female characters who were acclaimed by audiences. These characters have already sparked a gender debate in literary criticism. In this article, my purpose is to analyse two of Machado's female characters from the poetic collection Americanas (1875): Potira and Sabina, the former indigenous and the latter African, through the lens of the debate on slavery, race, and gender in Imperial Brazil. The theme of the two poems dialogues with the debate on the Free Womb Law (1871), a law that pointed towards the possible end of slavery in Brazil - showing that the poet was aligned with the main nineteenth-century debates on gender, race, and slavery.
Keywords:
Machado de Assis; poetry; slavery; gender; indianism