#gabriela

[dangermousie]

Old man, the moment you put your pregnant granddaughter into a nunnery instead of allowing her to marry the single, socially/moneywise appropriate man who wants to marry her (and whose child it is!) and who she wants to marry BECAUSE HE'S YOUR POLITICAL RIVAL, you have lost the plot!!!

[dangermousie]

I continue to love them...

(also how period for him to say she can't kill herself because if she does, she will go to hell.)

but also woooo first time she ever enjoyed sex!

Also, Gerusa x Mundinho continue adorable.

And the colonel who killed his wife for adultery, is so interesting because he was a dried out monster who literally drove his wife to it through neglect and viewing her as a thing, but now after the fact he mourns.

[dangermousie]

He's sincerely expressing his condolences for her parents' death. To a hooker in a brothel.

I forgot how much I adored Juvenal x Lindinalva.

Except for her happy ending, Lindinalva's story is perhaps the most realistic one and shows why women used to hold on to their virginity with iron claws and why family was necessary.

Because she's a girl from a good family, engaged to a boy from a good family. She may not love him but she's fine with it and yes her fiance spends his time in a brothel and tries to sleep with her but boys will be boys and they do that and she won't put out and her parents make sure it all goes as planned and eventually she will be a wife of a colonel going to church with other respectable ladies and having children as her husband sleeps with whores. Such is life.

And then her parents die in an accident and so her family protection is stripped and the business falls and her fiance coerces (read rapes) her into sex because there is nobody to protect her but then he dumps her because she has no money/status and no family to stand up for her and his family is totally fine because in that set up, she's lost her virginity and position so she's automatically not marriage bucket and nobody in town will take her and so she has no choice but to go to a brothel and ends up being a whore and it's hell.

And then...former fiance Berto's younger brother Juvenal is there with his father (they all hang out there, all the town men!) and when the father is all "she's a whore blah blah," points out the first sane thing I've heard about it - which is how is this her fault - she lost her family and money, she had nowhere to go! Dad's response? If she was virtuous, she'd have slit her throat instead.

And Juvenal. He's thankfully studied in Salvador and not Inheus for th bulk of his life so he hasn't had to live with his family. His family thinks he's a freak because he wanted to be a priest when he was younger and though he does not any longer, he has insane, unmanly, unfit ideas like if you are engaged, you should not sleep with other women, or in fact sex without feelings is not great. (He's a virgin!!! And dngaf!) His brother and father literally force him to a brothel with words like their family doesn't need unmanly men and he has to prove he's not a freak! And then he just pays a hooker to...read to her or play cards because as he puts it he can't see a woman just as a hole with two legs. (Hooker is amused but the money is good.)

Well, anyway, he falls for Lindinalva and she has so much damage and issues and it's all delicious and they do eventually sleep together, not in a brothel but properly, and it's his first time but it's the first time she's ever enjoyed sex with a man, and they do get their happy ending, running off to Salvador on a train away from all this insanity (and his evil brother is so enraged he tries to shoot them but gets offed, good riddance.)

[dangermousie]

I adore themmmmm.

(It helps that it's one of the only two couples, where feelings come first and not after or at the same time as banging...)

[dangermousie]

This religious lady is having the time of her life!

[dangermousie]

The way they dwell on their first meeting!!!!

[dangermousie]

This very devout woman imagining St Sebastian that she constantly prays to becoming the dentist she's developing a thing for?

AAAA

[dangermousie]

I am selectively rewatching Gabriela, and I forgot how much I adored Sinhazinha x Osmundo, my tragic tragic darlings. She's a religious woman trapped in a loveless, abusive marriage with zero joy or pleasure of any kind (she refuses to even let her husband see her naked because it's a sin and about the nicest thing I can say about him is he complies) who meets the town's new dentist and discovers love and passion but...

I love themmmm