Menino de engenho: romance

Abstract

The Mill Boy tells the story of Carlos, an orphan boy who, at the age of four, loses his mother, who is murdered by his father due to an uncontrollable madness. Given this situation, Carlinhos is taken by his uncle Juca to the sugar mill of his maternal grandfather José Paulino - Santa Rosa. At the mill, Carlos meets Aunt Maria, a kind-hearted, generous and caring woman who tries to make up for Carlos' mother's absence with love. In addition to Aunt Maria, he also meets Aunt Sinhazinha, an old woman, approximately sixty years old, who was a nuisance in everything. All the employees in the house had to follow her orders and respect her cruelty. Far from Aunt Maria's eyes and in the company of his cousins, Carlinhos gets to know a world full of adventures, social inequalities experienced by the mill's employees, promiscuity and sexual disrespect. And it was in this environment, devoid of care and attention, that Carlinhos began his love life very early, falling in love with his first teacher, who was soon replaced by her cousins. Fascinated by the freedom of life he enjoyed on the plantation, Carlos fell in love with the mulatto women, the daughters of his grandfather's employees. With them, he began a precocious sexual life and, at the age of twelve, he contracted the gallic disease from one of them, becoming the talk of the town. Completely without limits and without education, Carlos worried his grandfather, who could find no other way than to send him to school - the place that would make him a real man.