Brazilian novels and short stories of the second half of the nineteenth century reflected the complex and infinitely larger fictions which served as the basis of Brazilian society as a whole during the period. The most basic of those fictions, that Brazil was a progressive and essentially European nation which happened to find itself on the other side of the Atlantic, was an article of faith among the miniscule Brazilian elite – those who could read and write, those who voted, those who controlled government, economics, and society.

It has been estimated that those actively involved in cultural and political matters at the time of Independence in 1822 numbered about 20,000, out of a population of some 4 million. By 1871, when the total population had reached 10 million, only 147,621 children were enrolled in primary schools, and only 9,389 attended secondary schools. Ten years later, in 1881, only 147,000 Brazilians-out of a total population of around 13 million – were qualified to vote. To talk of progress, of politics, of literature during the nineteenth century, therefore, is inevitably to talk about this small elite; the other Brazilians, perhaps 97 or 98 percent of the population, remained outside what the elite defined as the mainstream of national society, isolated from politics, from culture, and from meaningful progress, by poverty, illiteracy, and racial discrimination. This last factor was of particular importance, for Brazil’s population remained overwhelmingly non-white throughout most of the century.