Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon by Jorge Amado
"Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon" is a novel by Brazilian author Jorge Amado, set in the 1920s in the coastal town of Ilhéus, Bahia. The narrative explores the interplay of power, love, and social reform within a society dominated by the coroneis, local political leaders who uphold a feudal system marked by violence and corruption. The story centers on Mundinho Falcão, a reform-minded young man from a prominent family, who moves to Ilhéus to challenge the entrenched authority of the colonels and enact social change. Against this backdrop, Gabriela, a captivating and free-spirited woman, enters the scene, embodying a more profound, harmonious essence of Brazilian culture that transcends class and racial divides. Her relationship with Nacib Saad, a Syrian immigrant and bar owner, illustrates a struggle between traditional societal norms and the burgeoning desire for personal freedom and love. As love blossoms amidst political upheaval, the narrative examines the complexities of relationships and the quest for identity, ultimately portraying a town on the cusp of transformation. The novel interweaves themes of race, class, and democracy, allowing readers to reflect on the societal changes within Brazil during this era.
On this Page
Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon by Jorge Amado
First published:Gabriela, cravo e canela, 1958 (English translation, 1962)
Type of work: Novel
Type of plot: Social realism
Time of plot: 1925-1926
Locale: Ilhéus, Bahia, Brazil
Principal characters
Gabriela , a beautiful young mulattoNacib Saad , the Syrian-born proprietor of the Vesuvius BarMundinho Falcão , a young cacao exporter and rising political reformerColonel Ramiro Bastos , the rugged old political boss of IlhéusColonel Manuel of the Jaguars , a planter from the outlandsColonel Jesuíno Mendonça , a cuckoldColonel Amânçio Leal , a former bandit chiefProfessor Josué , a young teacherTonico Bastos , the most elegant man in Ilhéus and a ladykillerColonel Cariolano Ribeiro , a wealthy plantation ownerGloria , his mistressFather Basílio Cergueira , a worldly priestJoao Fulgêncio , a good-natured skepticQuinquana andFlorzinha dos Reis , the spinster sisters of an old Ilhean familyDona Arminda , Nacib Saad’s neighbor and a widow
The Story:
In the mid-1920’s, the Brazilian provinces are suffering under the political, social, and economic dominance of the coroneis. These “colonels,” who run the local organization of both major political parties unchallenged, who dictate at whim all manners and morals, and who hold, often by violence, the huge estates that supply the money upon which all provincial life depends, are the direct administrators of a feudal society. They rule vast territories through a complicated system of allegiances built upon favors, kinship, and power. In the country around Ilhéus, a seacoast town in the province of Bahia, the grip of the colonels, given sinews by a boom in the international market for cacao, remains anachronistically strong. A challenge comes to that feudal order, as represented by the colonels, in the person of Mundinho Falcão, a rich, energetic, progress-minded young man from Rio de Janeiro.
Unlike most of the colonels, who are self-made men, Falcão is the son of an illustrious family whose influence extends into the highest reaches of the national government. He exiles himself from the high life of Rio de Janeiro for three reasons: to make his own fortune, to forget a woman, and to accomplish needed social reforms. One of the colonels recently murdered his wife and her lover. The fact that she had a lover at all reveals some cracks in the old order. That no effort is made at first to punish the colonel, in observance of the region’s unwritten law, indicates that, for the time being at least, the old order survives as an effective force.
Meanwhile, Nacib Saad, a fat, gentle Brazilian from Syria and the owner of the Vesuvius Bar, loses his cook, whose appetizers and tidbits had largely accounted for his considerable success. Fortunately for him, however, a continuing drought in the backlands brings a steady stream of homeless migrants to Ilhéus looking for work. Nacib is becoming desperate when he discovers among them Gabriela, whose cinnamon-colored skin and scent of clove enhance her equal and prodigious talents for cooking food and making love. Gabriela represents a way of life that is older and more essentially Brazilian than any of the ways represented by either the colonels or Falcão. She embodies the idea of convivência—of varied and mingling races and classes mutually dissolving and living together in harmony and absolute democracy—that was a Brazilian tradition and ideal.
Falcão seeks to operate on the body of society, rechanneling its old systems into new ones, but Gabriela unconsciously operates upon its soul. Every man in town adores her and few of the women are jealous. When election time arrives, the colonels find their influence whittled away to the vanishing point. In a last attempt to save their ascendancy, the more reactionary of them attempts to arrange the assassination of a powerful political chief who defected to Falcão. The attempt fails, and Falcão’s forces of reform are swept into office, not without his privately acknowledging, however, that his promised reforms are only temporary and have to lead to even greater changes.
Nacib’s attempt to transform Gabriela into a married and respectably shod little bourgeoise ends in the discovery that her love is as naturally democratic as her ancestry. She has slept with any man in Ilhéus lucky enough to be handsome. As her husband, poor Nacib is shocked, but not for long. Gabriela still loves him, and he learns, too, in the course of a short estrangement that was disastrous for the business of the Vesuvius Bar, that he likewise still loves her. Wild and free, the mulatto woman is as unregimentable as she is desirable, as indomitable as she is beautiful. She finds herself no longer his unhappy wife but once again established as Nacib’s happy cook and mistress. All other factions—the colonels’ and Falcão’s—are reunited in freedom to celebrate new prosperity and progress for Ilhéus. The colonel who shot his wife is sent, as testimony to a new reign of law, to prison.
Bibliography
Brower, Keith H., Earl E. Fitz, and Enrique Martínez-Vidal, eds. Jorge Amado: New Critical Essays. New York: Routledge, 2001. One of the essays, “Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon: Rewriting the Discourse of the Native” by Joanna Courteau, focuses on the novel. Other essays provide a broader critical overview of Amado’s work, while one recounts a visit by Amado and his wife to Pennsylvania State University in 1971.
Chamberlain, Bobby J. “Escape from the Tower: Women’s Liberation in Amado’s Gabriela, cravo e canela.” In Prismal/Cabral: Revista de Literatura Hispanica/Caderno AfroBrasileiro Asiatico Lustitano 6 (Spring, 1981): 70-86. Discusses feminist issues in the novel. Chamberlain sees Gabriela as a victim of male power and a source of liberation.
Ellison, Fred P. Brazil’s New Novel. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1954. Examines the political impulse of Amado’s early novels. Useful for judging the change in Amado’s writing represented by Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon.
Hall, Linda B. “Jorge Amado: Women, Love, and Possession.” Southwest Review 68 (Winter, 1983): 67-77. Describes male and female relationships in Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon and other Amado novels.
Keating, L. Clark. “The Guys and Dolls of Jorge Amado.” Hispania 66 (September, 1983): 340-344. Discusses Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon in the context of other Amado novels in which the author’s ultimate aim is to reform society. Amado’s most frequent strategy is the use of heavy irony.
Martin, John, and Donna L. Bodegraven. “Mythical Patterns in Jorge Amado’s Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon and Bruno Barreto’s Film Gabriela.” In Film and Literature: A Comparative Approach to Adaptation, edited by Wendell Aycock and Michael Schoenecke. Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 1988. Focuses on the characterization of Gabriela and Nacib and the novel’s sources in classical myth.
Robinett, Jane. This Rough Magic: Technology in Latin American Fiction. New York: Peter Lang, 1994. Amado is one of the writers whom Robinett includes in her examination of the relationship of technology to magical and political realities in Latin American literature. Includes a discussion of the representation of technology and of technology and women’s place in Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon.