Abstract
In this study, we seek to pinpoint the tension between class society and colonizers in Brazil. The analysis is guided by showing how Machado de Assis unravels the demand that women marry within Brazilian nobility. The author sets the story on a backdrop of the political changes that took place during the nineteenth century that could influence the lives of the main characters. The view on love is unromanticized; sincere affection is seen as the reason for shame. Therefore, the aim is to show how the establishment of the bourgeois model in a patriarchal and slave society took place. From this association, we saw a solution that results in either the failure of the modern project, or its defect.
Machado de Assis; money; marriage; nineteenth century