Cousin Basilio is a novel by Eça de Queiroz. Published in 1878, it analyzes the urban bourgeois family in the 19th century.[1]
The author, who had already criticized the provinces in The Crime of Father Amaro, now turns to the city to explore and analyze the same ills, this time in the capital. To this end, he focuses on a seemingly happy and perfect bourgeois home, but with false and equally rotten foundations. The creation of these characters reveals and emphasizes Cousin Basilio's commitment to its time: the work must function as a weapon of social struggle. The bourgeoisie—the main consumer of novels at that time—should see themselves in the novel and find their flaws objectively analyzed in it, thus enabling them to change their behavior.
The characters in Cousin Basilio can be considered the prototype of the futility and idleness of that society.
