The growing interest in critical study of the presence of plants in literature (McHugh Reference McHugh2021, 1; Pustarfi Reference Pustarfi2018, 4; Lawrence Reference Lawrence2021, 1) focuses not only on investigating recent writings but also on looking back at other times based on theories of the present. In a very similar way, the field of studies for animals in fiction is growing (Cohn Reference Cohn2018, 1), at least since the 1980s (Cohn Reference Cohn2018, 20). The study of nonhuman bodies finds in the term biodiversity in literature (Langer et al. Reference Langer, Burghardt, Borgards, Böhning-Gaese, Seppelt and Wirth2021, 1) a certain awareness (Langer et al. Reference Langer, Burghardt, Borgards, Böhning-Gaese, Seppelt and Wirth2021, 20) regarding the place of belonging of human beings in the ecosystem. It is also, from animals and plants, that literature finds examples for allegories (Bender Reference Bender and Newlin2011, 65) or symbolisms (McHugh Reference McHugh2021, 11), whether evoking physical or sentimental characteristics of fictional characters—as happens in one of the most famous works of Brazilian literature, O Cortiço, written by Aluísio Azevedo and published in 1890.Footnote 1
Omnipresent in world literature, nonhuman bodies are generally placed in the background of the human protagonists; they may or may not directly interfere with the narrative: Brontë’s moors, Lispector’s botanical garden, Guimarães Rosa’s hinterland, and, contemporary to Azevedo, the sertão described in detail by Euclídes da Cunha. Writing about Os Sertões, Silva et al. (Reference Silva, Costa and de Moura2014, 259) consider, “It is possible to look at the relationship between human beings and space/nature from another perspective: that of an affective bond, which can exist in a form of familiarity, or topophilia, or in a form of horror and aversion, or topophobia.”Footnote 2 Thus, in writing, “Plants are not only central to stories of animate life, they also inform the ways in which these stories unfold,” Kathleen Burns (Reference Burns2022, 16) highlights how nonhuman bodies can actively participate in the fictional outcome, helping to establish equivalences, ambivalences, or contradictions (Cohn Reference Cohn2018, 2) in human characters. In Vidas secas, by Graciliano Ramos, the pain of the sacrifice of the dog Baleia also works as a way of accentuating the suffering of the family of Fabiano and Sinhá Vitória, provoking a certain empathy for both dogs and humans.
Despite countless examples of the omnipresence of plants and animals in literature, it is important to note how different literary schools approach these characters in different ways. Whether due to industrialization or the change of focus to more urban narratives and people, currents in post-romanticism (Langer et al. Reference Langer, Burghardt, Borgards, Böhning-Gaese, Seppelt and Wirth2021, 11–12) tended to write in a way that was more focused on humans and their increasingly claustrophobic spaces. Interestingly, it is also at this time of increasing urbanization that Émile Zola began to write about French low-income housing, bringing the center of the narrative into human cohabitation in its modern and industrial space—adding, however, what is around the human to define it: the natural. In the same way, Azevedo explores the poorest housing in Rio de Janeiro based on the influence of the environment on its inhabitants, aiming for a semiscientific, sociohistorical commentary, as expected of a naturalist novel (Masiello Reference Masiello1981, 219).
Although different in themes or settings, we can think of naturalistic novels’ nonnegotiable elements (Baguley Reference Baguley1990, 204) for classical authors: decadence, tragic destinies, influence of the environment, and, of most interest here, animalization—which, in the Brazilian context, also reinforced the difference between those who could live in leisure and of those who needed to work (Galvão Reference Galvão2015, 59). In other words, as much as it focuses on social classes and their urban interactions, naturalism, for the purposes of better representing its Darwinian semiscience, depends immensely on fauna, but also on flora. Thus, if the deterministic environment controls and influences everything, equating humans with any other species, there is no way to think about naturalism without nature around it—after all, “humans are part of the world, governed by the same force as animals and plants” (Bender Reference Bender and Newlin2011, 52). Therefore, this article compiles and analyzes nonhuman beings in the work O Cortiço in order to present a complete panorama of plants and animals and how their mentions work actively to insert the text into naturalist perspectives. Most of the time, Azevedo, as a good naturalist, opts not only for the animalization of his characters but also for delimited relationships between humans, animals, plants, and the environment—as we can see in the following excerpt:
For naturalists like Azevedo, humankind is an object of study and can be artistically represented in a way that is faithful to reality. The individual is a biological product, whose behavior results from the imposition of the social environment and heredity. In this sense, the novelist assumed an objective, impersonal approach to social problems by highlighting themes such as crime, race, disease, addiction, and sexual desires. (Tamano et al. Reference Tamano, dos Santos, Magalhães and Martins2011, 762)Footnote 3
First, this force, the “milieu,” acts as a kind of villainous background and precisely what puts the characters in this circle in which everything repeats itself eternally. It is also important to highlight that, in classic naturalist literature and in the twenty-first-century texts selected here, the environment is active in maintaining this social dynamic by oppressing and confining its characters through the climate, environment, or surroundings. Next to the cortiço itself, the great figure of Azevedo’s work is the sun—capable of physically and psychologically influencing unsuspecting Europeans. This tropical influence can be seen in the following:
Jerônimo now drank a cup of very thick coffee, Ritinha’s style, and drank two fingers of parati “to cut the cold.” A transformation, slow and deep, happened on him, day by day, hour by hour, reviving his body and elevating his senses, in a mysterious and deaf work like a chrysalis. His energy slowly loosened: he was contemplative and loving. (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 86)Footnote 4
Not only because of the adverb now, the excerpt establishes Jerônimo’s continuous change into a good Brazilian by evoking the key moment in which the larva becomes a chrysalis, an adult butterfly. Here, Jerônimo appears to be fully accustomed to Ritinha’s Brazilian customs, from thick coffee to cachaça, from bull strength (força de touro) to keen senses, and, perhaps most importantly, from rational husband to contemplative lover. It is also worth highlighting that to be Brazilian, Jerônimo ceases to be White-European-Portuguese, as, in Azevedo’s work, there is no space for this duality. By becoming Brazilian,Footnote 5 Jerônimo also begins to evoke heat and spicy ideals, unable to make force and rationality coexist with his new tropical tastes. Fully enamored of Rita and her embodiment of the tropical mysteries (Tamano et al. Reference Tamano, dos Santos, Magalhães and Martins2011, 763), Jerônimo succumbs to the idea that one either dominates or is dominated by the milieu, with no in between—as can be seen in the following:
American life and the nature of Brazil now revealed unexpected and seductive aspects that moved him; he forgot his primitive dreams of ambition; to idealize new, spicy and violent happiness; he became liberal, improvident and frank, more fond of spending than saving; acquired desires, enjoyed pleasures, and became lazy resigning himself, defeated, to the impositions of the sun and heat, wall of fire with which the eternally rebellious spirit of the last tamoio entrenched the homeland against the adventurous conquerors. And so, little by little, they began to reform all their simple habits as a Portuguese villager: and Jerônimo became Brazilianized. (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 86)Footnote 6
The passage highlights the struggle of the environment with (or against the) characters not yet adapted to this reality of the tropics. The moment the narrator uses the word defeated, I notice how Jerônimo loses his battle against the milieu, but also that his adjectives go from glorification to aspersion, as in “giving in to mesological impositions” (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 163). The naturalist root is intrinsically scientific and, therefore, reductionist, even when establishing the animalization as a relationship between characters and their physical or psychological transformations.
In Azevedo, it is possible to count at least 216 mentions of nonhuman beings (direct references to fruits, animals, plants, or other elements) that are directly related to attributes of characters from the cortiço owned by João Romão, which establishes certain defined and repeated patterns (Baguley Reference Baguley1990, 154) throughout the narrative. The methodology of this work falls mainly to the task of establishing a clear division between the fauna and flora of Azevedo’s novel, as well as differentiating animalization, mirrored by classical naturalism, from merely casual mentions of nonhuman beings. From this, I aim, first, to analyze and categorize the comparisons made by O Cortiço’s narrator between human characters. I then present animals and their uses as a way of “demoting” human characters to the same level as less cultured and more instinctive beings.
Flora
When I analyze mentions of flora, I mainly find a frequent approximation between people and plants, whether to establish colors, smells, sensations, or sexual desires: “ripping her like a cashew. Rita, feeling excited by the pitman, escaped his claws with a jump” (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 78).Footnote 7 Along with this example, I identified forty-seven allusions to plants (flowers, violets, roses, vanilla, wheat, clover, palm, marjoram, basilFootnote 8 ) or other types of nonliving elements (lead, sugar, coconut, cob, cumaru, or cashewFootnote 9 ) in O Cortiço. Of the fifteen direct mentions of “flower,” ten refer to the character Pombinha, to innocence, or to the act of maturation through menstruation or sexual practices: “Everyone forming around Pombinha a solicitous chain of pleasures, a respectful concern of good wishes, to which she responded by smiling movedly, as if exhaling from the freshness of her virginity a victorious aroma of a flower that is blooming” (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 132).Footnote 10
Throughout the novel, Pombinha’s characteristics are reinforced through constant comparisons to flowers, invoking in the interlocutor this shared knowledge between the purity of flowers and, most importantly, their short lives.
One would say that he had no strength for the smallest thing; She all exuded the contemplative melancholy of a convalescent; there was a sweet, painful expression in the crystal clearness of her sick girl’s eyes; a poor pale smile half-opening his eyes mouth petals, without brightening her lips, which seemed dry from the lack of kisses of love; so delicate withered plant, languishes and dies. (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 124)Footnote 11
The scene takes place right after the visit to Léonie’s house, where Azevedo does not need to explicitly tell the meaning of this visit for Pombinha’s future, it is not necessary to write about the end of her innocence due to Léonie’s forced kisses and sex act. Using repetition (Baguley Reference Baguley1990, 154), the narrator incessantly reinforces Pombinha’s virginity, which, at this point, is more than usual for the reader to associate the character with delicate flowers. What changes, then, is the way of presenting it: This time it withers, with closed petals; it collapses and diminishes. Léonie’s abuse is the stumbling block on the path so carefully traced by Dona Isabel; it is the point at which Pombinha, sooner than expected, stops being a virginal flower. Azevedo chooses not to say all this; he just writes that, like a flower, Pombinha fell apart. Once again, the use of flowers appears:
And in her sick and crippled soul, in her rebellious spirit of a tender and pilgrim flower raised on a dunghill, an unhappy violet, which manure too strong for her had atrophied, the girl sensed very clearly that she would never give herself to her husband who was going to have a friendly, loyal and dedicated companion; he sensed that I would never sincerely respect him as a superior being for whom we give our lives. (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 137–138)Footnote 12
Sensuality is also present in sweet foods and smells, such as the aroma of vanilla (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 71), sugar (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 71), the vanilla flower itself (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 72 and 166), cooking oil (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 70), clover (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 54), and marjoram (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 76).Footnote 13 In almost its entirety, the novel brings sweetness to describe Rita Baiana and her stunning ability to win over Jerônimo, producing such beautiful passages as “when she felt her face and shoulders flood, in an outpour of vanilla and tonka beans” (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 166) and “in a pleasure as thick as cooking oil” (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 70).Footnote 14 A longer description of Rita Baiana can be seen in the following:
In her thick, frizzy, shiny hair, pulled over the back of her neck, there was a bunch of basil and a piece of vanilla stuck on a hairpin. And all of it breathed the cleanliness of Brazilian women and a sensual scent of clovers and aromatic plants. (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 54) In that mulatto woman was the great mystery, the synthesis of the impressions he received when he arrived here: she was the burning light of midday; she was the red heat of farm siestas; it was the warm aroma of clovers and vanilla, which had stunned him in the Brazilian forests; it was the virginal and elusive palm tree that does not bend to any other plant; it was poison and it was delicious sugar; it was the sapodilla sweeter than honey and it was the cashew nut, which opens wounds with its fiery oil. (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 71)Footnote 15
It is curious how Azevedo reduces the experience of the Portuguese Jerônimo exclusively to the figure of Rita Baiana, personifying Brazil, at the same time that Azevedo expands the character to comparisons with tropical nature. Brazil, for the White European men, is Rita Baiana, but Rita Baiana is also light, aroma, palm trees, poison, sugar, sapodilla, and cashew nuts. It is worth thinking about the adjectives used by Azevedo after any mention of Brazilian flora, such as red, hot, virginal, elusive, delicious, sweet, and incandescent.Footnote 16 For Jerônimo, Rita and Brazil are effervescent and inviting of sloppiness, but at the same time aloof, not submissive and, therefore, irresistible:
This was what Jerônimo felt, but what the fool could not conceive. Of all the impressions of that rest of Sunday, only the numbness of an unknown intoxication remained in his mind, not from wine, but from slurpy honey in the cup of American flowers, those very white, fragrant and humid ones, which he saw on the farm confidentially leaning over the slimy, shadowy swamps, where the oiticica trees permeate an aroma that saddens with longing. (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 71–72)Footnote 17
Here I notice a very marked duality in Azevedo’s narrative, especially in Jerônimo’s process of becoming Brazilian. At the same time that the tropical smells are deliciously attractive (“slurpy honey in the cup of American flowers, those very white, fragrant, and humid ones”), there is also a certain fear in surrendering once and for all to the unknown—“the slimy shadowy swamps, where the oiticica trees permeate an aroma that saddens with longing.” It is possible to theorize that the reason for Jerônimo’s hesitation in bending to the naturalist milieu lies precisely in his oft-repeated “bull strength”—a strength in seeking rationality and discipline. Acting as initial resistance to the environment, this armor is ineffective against the sensorial appeal of tropical surroundings: Within Azevedo’s naturalist logic, this resistance is already destined to fail the moment Jerônimo chooses to cross the Atlantic. His hesitation, therefore, is not resistance, but a prelude to surrender. Despite this attempt to reaffirm itself, the rigidity of European identity relaxes in the tropics:
Nothing more than the first chords of Creole music so that the blood of all those people would immediately awaken, as if someone was hitting their body with angry nettles. And other notes followed, and others, more and more ardent and more delirious. And that crazy fire music rang in the air like a warm aroma of Brazilian plants. (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 69)Footnote 18
There is, in Azevedo’s work, repetition regarding the idea of an overwhelming temptation, infectious to the body and antagonistic to the reason. As with the German folktale of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, the response to musical stimulus occurs collectively and imperiously. Also endowed with adjectives and relationships to flora (nettles and Brazilian plants), this excerpt talks precisely about how the impositions of the environment stand out from the individual, directing (or diverting) its characters towards similar ends. This idea of uniform mass also appears here:
There was no more talking, just shouting. It could be felt like blood fermentation, in that lush gluttony of creeping plants who dip their vigorous feet in the black mud and nutrient of life, the animal pleasure of existing, the triumphant satisfaction of breathing on earth. From the door of the store that led to the cortiço they came and went like ants; going shopping. (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 29–30, emphasis added)Footnote 19
By comparing the inhabitants to creeping plants crawling through this mud capable of generating life, Azevedo unites the inhabitants of O Cortiço based on the coming and going of ants that, when viewed from a macro perspective, have no apparent differences. The crowd, then, is the evidence on which Azevedo tends to rely when he explores the inescapable and hereditary (Bender Reference Bender and Newlin2011, 63) authoritarian interference of the environment where individualities cease to exist, giving way to the homogenization of desires and destinies, almost always tragic. In biological terms, the milieu acts as a kind of fungus (Ophiocordyceps unilateralis), establishing in its host the prolificacy necessary for its maintenance. Additionally, the word choice of “blood fermentation,” by Azevedo only contributes more to the scientific tone encouraged by naturalism. The same could have been used for this article where sap fermentation or yeast could be responsible for keeping this organism—the cortiço—alive.
As for the rest of the plants and nonliving elements, I notice the narrator’s prevalence in describing physical characteristics, such as lead for Jerônimo—“lead pulse” (pulso de chumbo) (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 115)—or coconut for Libório—“garnished around it with frayed and sparse hairs like coconut shreds” (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 65).Footnote 20 I also highlight three passages, the first being the relationship between a tulip and the act of Pombinha closing her hands around her face: “Pombinha placed her elbows on the table and tuliped her hands against her face” (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 136).Footnote 21 The second for the relationship between wheat and the blackness of the cortiço residents on three occasions: “and the child can come out with a wheat complexion!” (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 66), “Your cabocla’s dark wheat-skin” (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 179) and “He has his head turned by a triguera [wheat-color-skinned] woman” (90).Footnote 22 The latter appears to be the most fruitful when we think about the relationship between naturalism and scientism: “[The residents] who immerse their vigorous feet in the black and nourishing mud of life, the animal pleasure of existing, the triumphant satisfaction of breathing on the earth” (30).Footnote 23 Here the narrator establishes a direct connection between the sprouting of the earth and the residents of the João Romão’s cortiço, bringing them to such a low level that it is possible to see them as larvae capable of generating spontaneously from putrefaction.
Fauna
I select the love triangle Firmo, Jerônimo, and Rita Baiana to begin the compilation of references to animals in Azevedo’s work. There are, for example, seventeen mentions of Firmo and twenty-five mentions of Jerônimo, with a clear division between the black Brazilian and the white Portuguese—or the Jerônimo before Rita Baiana and the Jerônimo after Rita Baiana. While Jerônimo is praised by the narrator for his bull-like strength on three occasions, Firmo, on the contrary, does not find much praise by Azevedo’s narrator. Called goat or goatling on eight occasions, due to his capoeira agility, Firmo is also called dog, possum, and, in his final scene, rat: “It reminded him of a rat dying with a stick” (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 112).Footnote 24 There is no dignity in naturalistic death (Baguley Reference Baguley1990, 178), but, as a pattern repeated until nowadays (Gay Reference Gay1990, 107), allegiance is granted if it benefits the community or self. When I focus exclusively on the character of Rita Baiana, animalized twenty-nine times, I notice that her approaches fluctuate between the sensuality of vanilla and the dangerousness of a snake or a serpent. While on seven occasions the character is compared to reptiles to reinforce her sensual viscosity—“she was the green and treacherous snake, the viscous caterpillar” (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 71), “the sassy snake” (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 172), “sensual smell of that snake body of hers” (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 190)Footnote 25 —on another nine occasions derogatory relationships are established with other animals: beast (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 166), goat (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 175), female dog (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 137),Footnote 26 midge (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 71), plague (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 55, 174, and 202), pigeon (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 114) and female turkey (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 150), producing passages such as “And she saw Firmo and Jerônimo fighting over each other, like two dogs fighting over a street female dog” (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 137) and “pigeon in rut” (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 114).Footnote 27
The association between women and snakes appears to be well established in everyday life in Western countries, largely due to biblical influence, where the serpent, responsible for influencing Eve to be expelled from paradise, presents itself as an animal that is as treacherous as it is seductive. Likewise, in Greek mythology, Medusa, Echidna, Lamia, the Dracaenae, the feminization of Hydra of Lerna, and Circe’s approach to snakes are based on their poisoning capacity. In Azevedo, it is clear that Rita, Léonie, and Pombinha are animalized in this way because of characteristics commonly associated with women, such as sin, betrayal, seduction, and unpredictability. In other words, from the beginning, in a patriarchal way, women are seen as dangerous beings to the male protagonists who, unable to resist them, end up deviating from their “heroic” destinies. It happens as the expulsion from paradise, as an extra job for Heracles, or as the dissolution of Jerônimo and Piedade’s marriage. Animalization, here, also explains who is to blame for men’s offenses.
Bertoleza and Piedade, for example, are never associated with snakes or any animal that evokes the slightest sensuality in human collective consciousness. On the contrary, while Bertoleza sees herself compared with tapir (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 226), dog (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 188) (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 213), chicken (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 212), fish (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 147), pest (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 184, 204 and 208), Piedade is associated with puffer fish (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 176), ox (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 200), dog (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 75 and 171), chicken (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 176 and 203), turkey (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 175), and cow (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 171). In the four cases in which both are compared to dogs, we can see the direct reference to canine loyalty—an idea present since good old Argos, Ulysses’s dog that waits for him to come home—to their “owners”: João Romão and Jerônimo, both white Portuguese. “Every owner, in moments of good humor, pets his dog” (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 188) and “howls like a dog waiting for its owner” (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 171).Footnote 28 The other cases follow Azevedo’s model of using animalization to describe physical or psychological attributes of characters, providing meaning based on the reader’s understanding.
Zulmira has the temper of a dove (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 143), Pataca has relations like a rooster (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 203), Machona has hips like a wild animal (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 31), Marciana poses like a tree (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 105), Henrique runs away like a dog (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 67) at the speed of a rabbit (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 80), Estela appears pale as a flower (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 63), Florinda has eyes like apes (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 32), Botelho as a bird of prey (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 23) and parasite (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 25), and the Witch has dog’s teeth (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 32) and wild mare’s hair (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 179). Two other examples would be the fish stew (pirão de peixe), a thick and viscous substance, serving as an image for “brains” (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 209), and Leocádia reflecting on her condition of overwork with the phrase “Don’t dogs live?” (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 85), placing herself one step below humanity.
The most frequently mentioned animals throughout Azevedo’s novel are dogs (eighteen mentions), bovine animals (fourteen mentions), snakes (ten mentions), goats (nine mentions) and, finally, the word animal itself (nineteen mentions) or the terms beast and plague (each with thirteen mentions). Unusually, Azevedo uses different words when referring to dogs, from “puppy” to “hound” and “female dog,” choosing these variations to convey a sense of loyalty (“Every owner, in moments of good humor, pets his dog”; Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 188),Footnote 29 frightening (“They let them run away like stoned dogs”; Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 67),Footnote 30 or submission (“Howling like a dog waiting for its owner”; Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 171).Footnote 31 The same goes for bovine animals (ox, herd, bull, and cow), where the bull exclusively exalts strength, “the neck of a bull and the face of Heracles” (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 38),Footnote 32 “the strength of a bull that made him respected” (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 49),Footnote 33 “the construction of a bull” (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 115)Footnote 34 ; cow for promiscuity, “Who were you rubbing shoulders with, you cow?!” (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 80)Footnote 35 ; and ox or herd for overwork, “working (…) like a team of oxen” (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 10)Footnote 36 ; or submission, “You now walk like a castrated ox!” (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 200).Footnote 37
Interestingly, the owner of the cortiço and the protagonist of the novel, João Romão, finds very few mentions of himself in this context of analysis. As an example of comparison, Firmo, Jerônimo, Pombinha, and Rita Baiana together total ninety-five animalizations, while I found in João Romão only seven—the same small number for the poor supporting character Libório. It is still curious to think like Romão, animal (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 105), beast (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 109 and 208), ox (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 10), dog (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 105), Podengo hunting dogs (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 213), and plague (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 41); and Libório, vulture (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 181), animal (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 66 and 181), dog (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 65), coconut (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 65), tortoise (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 64), and pig (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 65), characters in such different positions throughout the novel, find themselves at the end dueling for a certain amount of money that will prove vital for Romão’s ascension. Strength, perseverance, and stubbornness are evoked in the owner of the cortiço, while for Libório there are plenty of adjectives to describe his bad features and almost necrophagous presence as he feeds on the garbage and trash cans of the cortiço.
For no small reason, the cortiço and its residents are animalized together on at least thirty-eight occasions. Resembling them from forest (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 19), larvae (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 220), worms (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 19), monster (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 15), and snake (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 19), to animals (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 19, 30, 45, 136 and 137), beasts (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 19, 45 and 137), cattle (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 119), slugs (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 46), monkeys (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 29, 44 and 180), lice (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 110), pigs (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 110), pests (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 110), and rats (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 110). It is noticeable that Azevedo, through the speech of his narrator or his characters, sets up this collectivity in order to establish the image of this shapeless mass that parasitizes João Romão’s houses for rent, dehumanizing them (Lorde Reference Lorde1984, 114) through their excess. While Jerônimo begins the novel being exalted through his animalizations, the rest of the cortiço does not experience such praise as “the calm seriousness of a good and strong animal” (163).Footnote 38 Contrary to this, producing in the reader this idea of a living organism with uncontrollable growth, for O Cortiço dwellers I find paragraphs such as the following:
Miranda was scared, uneasy with that brutal exuberance of life, terrified in front of that relentless forest that grew next to the house, under the windows, and whose roots, worse and thicker than serpents, they undermined everywhere, threatening to burst the ground around it, cracking the ground and shaking everything. (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 19, emphasis added)Footnote 39
Although contemporary with Louis Pasteur, a French scientist also responsible for studying the origin of microbial life, Azevedo flirts with the assumptions of abiogenesis, in which living beings originate from raw, lifeless matter, like a relentless forest with thick roots capable of bursting the ground. Contrary to the scientific establishment at the time, where living beings originate solely from other preexisting living beings, Azevedo, on more than one occasion, presents João Romão’s land as grimy, dirty, and fertile land to generate life in itself:
And in that sodden, smoking land, in that hot, muddy damp, began to worm, bubbling, growing, a world, a living thing, a generation, that seemed to sprout spontaneously, right there, from that marsh, and multiply like maggots in manure. (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2012, 19, emphasis added)Footnote 40
In a supposedly controlled environment like João Romão’s cortiço, there is an unbridled proliferation of life, superimposing natural logic on rational organization. Like a nutritious broth capable of generating life in itself, the cortiço unites fauna, flora, and human beings into the same hierarchy in this ecosystem suitable for reproduction. Human residents of the cortiço are similar to larvae that crawl through this fertile land that depends on the surrounding environment: humid, hot, and tropical. Therefore, when the strength of this uncontrolled extension, capable of growing underground and spreading its roots, is animalized, it means it is not being praised at any time. We can notice this in the following exceprt:
The protagonists are not isolated individuals, with a distinct and unique personality, but a composition of traits and characteristics that make them representatives of a certain circumstance and historical moment, as well as a kind of continuity of other characters. (Dalcastagnè Reference Dalcastagnè2001, 492)Footnote 41
This excessive detailing of the environment is presented in an essentially naturalist way (Süssekind Reference Süssekind1984, 72), using biological, deterministic, and fateful vocabularies to establish protagonists and supporting characters as a crowd inside the same naturalist atmosphere. The misery and clutter of houses and characters create a sticky and decaying ecosystem capable of interacting and influencing its protagonists.
Weather, nature, and final considerations
In his book Naturalist Fiction, David Baguley (Reference Baguley1990, 154) argues mostly about the central concept of the “entropic vision,” encompassing a sense of degeneration, decay, and a leveling of distinctions within the world depicted in naturalist fiction. It is reflected in the physical and moral decline of characters, the dirty urban settings, and the repetitive and ultimately futile nature of human endeavors (Baguley Reference Baguley1990, 108). The “entropic vision” suggests a deterministic universe governed by impersonal forces like heredity and environment, leading to a sense of inevitability and a lack of genuine progress or transcendence (Baguley Reference Baguley1990, 118).
However, the best quote to explain the term entropic vision comes from Michel Serres (Reference Serres1975, 78):
Rien ne dit mieux que les Rougon-Macquart l’écrasement, le gaspillage, la dissémination, la perte, l’irréversible jusant vers la mort—désordre; la déchéance, l’épuisement, la dégénérescence. Ils le disent: ça brûle trop vite. Épopée d’entropie… Le naturalisme, contrairement à ce que disent les ignorants, est exactement à l’heure de sa science et précède la philosophie.Footnote 42
This quote is particularly effective because it directly uses the term epopee d’entropie (epic of entropy), which effectively characterizes Azevedo’s work. Throughout the book, Azevedo decides to highlight disintegration and decay, as in Serres’s excerpt, through words such as écrasement (crush), gaspillage (waste), dissémination (dissemination), perte (loss), mort-désordre (death disorder), déchéance (decay), épuisement (exhaustion), and degeneration, point to a process of collapse and decline. The phrase “irreversible rushing towards death-disorder” suggests a relentless and inevitable movement towards decay, highlighting the deterministic nature of this view.
Furthermore, the quote connects this “entropic view” to the scientific context of naturalism, aligning with the movement’s attempts to ground itself in observable, often deterministic, natural processes, which, usually, takes characters into a fatidic ending often influenced by the milieu. Like other books in the same naturalist scope, O Cortiço is centered on an urban settlement, focusing its lines to describe people, rather than what the word naturalism could connote: “First-time readers of American naturalists such as Stephen Crane, Jack London, Frank Norris, and Theodore Dreiser might justifiably wonder what naturalism has to do with nature. It’s easy to see how London’s famous stories of the north feature landscapes from those latitudes, but what about the other naturalists? Expecting to find scenes from the green, or at least the white world, one finds instead the squalor of Crane’s Bowery, Norris’s San Francisco, or Dreiser’s Chicago. Aren’t these naturalists supposed to be nature writers?” (Bender Reference Bender and Newlin2011, 53).
Although surprisingly adapted to urban context, it’s not arduous to notice how nature also plays a huge part in the genre, like, for example, the interaction between characters and weather being more than a simple mention of the day’s temperature. Sun, rain, heat, cold, wind, and inclement weather directly contribute to shaping the mood and events of these plots. The influence of the milieu—whether climate, wildness, animalization, biology, or the environment—is central to naturalism. Manifesting itself, for example, in the trajectory of Jerônimo, who is dominated by the humid heat of the tropical sun in Rio, transforming his conduct and physical appearance in a way that is different from the concept of pathetic fallacy (coined by John Ruskin in 1856), a literary method that refers directly to romantic and gothic stories, where, for example, in Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë, the weather starts to reflect the tone of the narrative and characters’ moods. Despite the pejorative nature of the term pathetic fallacy, it is especially notable that this device functions as a kind of opposite to animalization, drawing attention to the effectiveness of comparisons between humans and nonhumans in the construction of images and meanings. In other words, the reader accurately understands both when a human is animalized and when an object of nature is humanized: “The idea of studying the human’s place in nature—that is, to study human nature as a branch of Darwinian natural history…. Darwinian evolution transformed the face of “nature,” shattering the idea that nature exists in a state of grand repose and projecting instead a reality of struggle, competition, and violent change—not only among plants and animals, but in human society and even within the individual chaotic mind” (Bender Reference Bender and Newlin2011, 53).
Then, contrary to animalization, pathetic fallacy, as also mentioned by John Ruskin, occurs when the external world experiences emotions like humans do, routinely used in literature as a mirror to characters’ feelings or moods (Cook and Wedderburn Reference Cook and Wedderburn1903). In the Romantic and Gothic traditions, this technique amplifies subjectivity and emotional intensity, often privileging the individual’s perception over objective reality. Animalization, in contrast, rather than elevating nature into the human sphere, it reduces humans to the level of animal instinct—conditioned by the biological, environmental, and hereditary forces. Opposed to the ideas of the pathetic fallacy, in O Cortiço, Aluísio Azevedo employs the weather, climate, and external factors to act on the characters, not mirroring their feelings in any way. Instead of conveying with characters emotions, the climate factors (heat, humidity, summer storms) are also responsible for the moral decay, far away from the Romantic aim of harmonizing human and nature. The oppressive weather makes sure that the harmony becomes total when humans act by animalistic instincts—annihilating reason and diminishing humanity. By moving toward the animal, it strips away the idealized individuality of Romanticism and replaces it with a vision of humanity as a product of physical needs, environmental pressures, and instinctual drives. Thus, while pathetic fallacy projects humanity feelings onto the landscape, animalization draws humanity inward toward its animalistic origins.
Therefore, just like animals and their innate or hereditary behaviors (Bender Reference Bender and Newlin2011, 64), naturalist characters appear to possess both memory and predisposition, as the cycle reveals itself to be endless. The milieu is the great architect of this literary (and social) game, capable of influencing choices and subjecting human characters to irrational animalism. In another example, animalization establishes itself to define the limited scope of urban organization, retreating to the center and nobler areas, like an octopus: “Whatever questions involving humankind’s place in nature might arise to shape naturalist fiction in years to come, it seems inevitable that the chief motive in generating such work will endure in our culture’s general resistance to the idea that there is any human nature” (Bender Reference Bender and Newlin2011, 67).
Vicious relationship between the environment and this tragic succession of events. Without exception, all the characters analyzed here find it difficult to cross the environment and, therefore, end up succumbing to violence through animalization. Fate generally finds itself in this way, as Evaristo (Reference Evaristo2016, 99–100) says: “In the dump, bodies are incinerated. Life is grass, weeds, garbage, it is skin and hair. It is and it is not.”Footnote 43 McKay (Reference McKay2024, 113) defines the Anthropocene as an age of trash, or “the reduction of human activity to purely economic terms” or how the narrator refers to some of the characters: “The narrator focuses on emphasizing the legitimate nature of the marginalized and downplays the abuses to which they are subjected. He animalizes the poor by reducing them to the waste of a vacant lot, as if a generation of impoverished men living in miserable hovels had emerged from nothing” (Schiffner Reference Schiffner2018, 97).Footnote 44
This vicious cycle between avoiding, succumbing, and accomplishing is so repetitive that it ceases to be casual, to become a habit, and then, to finally be an instinct, as if it were always destined to come to fruition. Beyond its mimetic function, naturalist description plays a role in documenting social realities, providing a sense of authenticity through detailed observation “remarkable for its descriptive richness” (Baguley Reference Baguley1990, 189), but even more importantly, it is able to place humans where they belong: in nature.
For this text, the difference between the study of plants, animals, and their relationship to/with humans falls into the tensions inside postcolonial Brazil, the country that most forced emigrated enslaved African people. Even though set in the middle of the capital of the country, one of the places where capitalist industrialization has influenced the most at the time, the nature still manages to be a constant reminder to the characters. Azevedo places sex, seduction, body, and fluids in the discussion of the Brazilian identity (Mendes Reference Mendes2021, 22) through native Brazilian plants and animals. So although the main task of this text was to compile the citations of plants and animals to provide resources for future researchers, it is important to highlight that naturalism was biased and pseudoscientific. In the end, this ecosystem of nonhuman presence creates in the text a vibrant and alive background that helps us better understand the social context, the artistic choices, and biased naturalist thought. As said by Perrone-Moisés (Reference Perrone-Moisés1990), literature starts from a reality that it intends to express, but in failing it says something else, revealing a bigger truth than the one intended (102),Footnote 45 or, in this case, the intentions of Azevedo reveal a more real and interlinked world, where plants, animals, and humans coexist in this space filled by consequences of a deeply racist colonialism. Although probably unwillingly, Azevedo creates a world able to describe the horrors of nineteenth-century Brazil through entities that were there long before the arrival of the Portuguese empire, the slave traders, or João Romão: the flora and fauna.
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