Political considerations as well as artistic license may have encouraged Machado to place his stories at a discreet distance in time. During most of Machado’s lifetime, Brazil was ruled by a constitutional, although often authoritarian, monarchy that was prone to factionalism and abrupt shifts in political favor. The last of these shifts led to the overthrow of the monarchy itself in 1889, precipitated by the abolition of slavery the previous year. The importation of slaves had been banned, at least in theory, in 1850, and, in 1871, a year after the publication of the first collection of these stories, the “Law of the Free Womb” (or “Law of September 28,” as Machado more discreetly refers to it) granted freedom to all children born to slaves after that date, thus making the eventual abolition of slavery inevitable, even if it took another seventeen years to come about. Machado rarely confronts the issue head-on. (“The Cane” and “Father Against Mother,” both written after abolition, are notable exceptions.) Casual references to slaves abound; sometimes these are fond, sometimes cruel, but most often (and shockingly, to a modern reader) they simply pass without comment as a feature of everyday life. Machado was criticized by some of his contemporaries for not writing more openly about the evils of slavery. And yet, for the grandson of freed slaves writing for a predominantly slave-owning elite, we are left in little doubt about what a controversial and sensitive subject it was for Machado, or where his sympathies lay.

Other historical events and controversies are also noticeable by their near absence. Machado published his first collection of stories in the immediate aftermath of the War of the Triple Alliance (1864–70), a long and bloody conflict between Paraguay on one side, and Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay on the other. And yet, perhaps precisely because memories of it were so raw, Machado refers to it only in passing in a handful of stories. Much later, however, “Maria Cora,” first published in 1898, deals more explicitly with the then recent, and bloody, civil war of 1893–95 between the new republic and federalist rebels based in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul. Machado, characteristically, dwells on the absurdity of the dispute.