As Visitas do Dr. Valdez

2 ideas

1. Performance that sustains and unsettles an order

   In the novel, Vicente's impersonation of the dead Dr. Valdez keeps the sisters' familiar ritual of visits going after the man behind it is gone. The same performance also unsettles the household's authority and shifts the relationships between servant and mistresses, so it does not simply preserve the old order as theatre.

2. The servant knows the master's script

   Subordinates who have watched authority up close for years can reproduce its gestures, speech and bearing more exactly than the powerful can explain them. Seen this way, authority is partly a learnable costume. The person who serves it holds a hidden competence that becomes a kind of power once the masters are gone.

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