ABSTRACT
This paper intends to study and explain a literary trope - a domestic slave as the bearer of a love letter - and its modifications in three nineteenth-century Brazilian works, namely: Rosa (1849), by Joaquim Manuel de Macedo; O demônio familiar (1857), by José de Alencar; and, last, Iaiá Garcia (1878), by Machado de Assis. By using a slave as the bearer of a love letter, these writers discuss, in different ways, all historically determined, the same social problem, which concerns patriarchal authority and its dissolution throughout nineteenth-century.
KEYWORDS
Brazilian ficcion; trope; Joaquim Manuel de Macedo; José de Alencar; Machado de Assis