The idea of Capitú's "guilt" or "innocence" dominates Joaquim Machado de Assis’s novel, but this subject is best understood as the concern of Bento Santiago (nicknamed Casmurro). The lonely old man is looking back on his life, trying to convince himself and his reader that he has no regrets even as he reveals his own responsibility for the solitary state he has arrived at late in life. Although he claims to approach the subjects with crisp, legal precision, the issue at stake regarding Capitú's transgressions is not criminal activity but personal betrayal. The numerous aspects aspects of her "guilt" are related to her infidelity to Bento, which he understands as both emotional and sexual. Committing adultery and bearing another man's child are the two primary “crimes,” but he also finds it unforgivable that she would love another man in any way.
At bottom, however, the real "crime" is that Capitú...
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made him love her and so, in his mind, she is responsible for his suffering. She had so totally captivated Bento that he wrapped the rest of his life around the love that he could not resist. Speaking of her physical attributes as driving captivation, he claims that her eyes had a mysterious fluid or force, which “dragged one in, like the undertow of a wave.”
Casmurro is an extremely, and irrationally, jealous man. He is all too willing to believe that his wife did not truly love him. He comes to believe that she was having an affair with his best friend, Ezekiel Escobar. The central "proof," which becomes a huge issue, is the strong resemblance he detects between their son, also named Ezekiel, and Escobar. Obsessed with the idea that Escobar, rather than he himself, is Ezekiel's father, Casmurro destroys his own marriage. Capitú’s genuine affection for Escobar—not only her husband’s friend, but the husband of her best friend—is unfathomable to the selfish Bento. When Escobar dies of natural causes, rather than mourn his dear friend as he sees Capitú is doing, he reads guilt into her behavior. Her mourning is interpreted as evidence of her adultery.