Abstract
This study presents a critical literary study about modernity and fashion in Esau and Jacob, by Machado de Assis. I aim at reflecting on how the writer appropriates everyday social realities concerning the modernity of his time and fashion and prints them in the strategies of literary creation by means of real facts intertwined with their characters, thereby creating markedly relevant features for observing these realities in the fictional space. The background of the narrative is nineteenth century Rio de Janeiro, when the Empire’s crisis, the abolition of slavery and the beginning of the Republic occurred. The work reveals the social and professional relationships of men as well as women’s status in society.
modernity; fashion; Machado de Assis; Esau and Jacob