Gender

In the short story "The Rod of Justice" by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (hereafter referred to by his preferred name, Machado), the reader is met with backwards gender norms, stereotypically speaking. As a youth, Machado, the grandson of freed slaves, went formally uneducated, instead teaching himself through hearing bits of his stepmother's teachings at a girls' school. The idea that women hold the power, as it was in his own personal life, is the central theme of "The Rod of Justice," seen both from the perspective of a hopeless man, a powerful woman, and a scared black slave, with which he had personal experience. 

The story starts with a young man name Damiao, a padre-in-training, running away from the seminary and trying to figure out where to go. He did not choose the seminarist life and wanted desperately to escape from it. Knowing his father would send him right back, he went to the most powerful and influential person he knew of to help him in his situation, which so happened to be a woman named Sinha Rita. Sinha Rita, a widow and mistress of many slaves and neighborhood women, convinced Damiao that she would fix his situation. She called upon his godfather, Joao Carneiro, and sent him to speak to Damiao's father to tell him that Damiao would not be returning to seminary.

It is at this point in the story that Sinha Rita's power truly shows. Carneiro was afraid of the task, but even more afraid of disappointing Sinha Rita. Even Damiao's own bull-headed father would not come to retrieve his son from her home and send him back to seminary, because he knew who he would be dealing with. However powerful the men were, Sinha Rita's power towered over theirs.

The reader is also introduced to a black slave named Lucretia, a girl who dared to laugh at Damiao's story when not being invited into the conversation, and not finish the task Sinha Rita gave her in the time allowed. The punishment for this was to be beaten with a rod by Sinha Rita, who asked Damiao to be an accomplice to this, despite his desire to protect the little girl. Because he knew Sinha Rita was his only hope of staying out of seminary, he complied, handing her the rod that would beat the child. 

It's interesting to see that men were bending over backwards to do her bidding, even though they absolutely did not want to. They were willing to eschew their own moral code in order to carry out her desires because they knew that ultimately, it was she who held the power, and not them. She flaunts her power over the men, emasculating them in such a way that they cannot refuse her will. It'd be easy to assume that she is pleasant enough and someone who stands up for others, but in reality, she is just power-hungry in her quest to dominate everyone she comes into contact with. Be they scared young men, lovers (which Carneiro seems to be), her slaves, or the neighborhood women, she knows she is in control. 

De Assis, Joaquim Maria Machado. “The Rod of Justice.” Trans. Helen Caldwell. 1650 To the Present. Ed. Martin Puchner. 3^rd Shorter ed. New York: Norton, 2013. 911-916. Print. Vol. 2 of The Norton Anthology of World Literature. 2 vols.

Puchner, Martin. “Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis.” 1650 To the Present. Ed. Puchner. Shorter 3^rd ed. New York: Norton, 2013. 910-911. Print. Vol. 2 of The Norton Anthology of World Literature. 2 vols.