This doctoral thesis analyses labor representations in Machado de Assis short stories, and then compares them to current representations of labor in Brazil. Labor is, undoubtedly, one of the most expressive elements of modernity. The equality in which it is grounded informs us that, in principle, we all have to work to survive. That is why it represents one of the most common phenomena in daily life, relating to a large set of habits and playing a fundamental role in social life. Therefore, reassessing the 19th century Brazilian society, with its changes and contradictions, is crucial to comprehend the current meaning of labor in Brazil: a formalist, hierarchical and slave-based society, that experienced the insertion of logical, universal and impersonal market laws from industrial societies, among which free and competitive labor stands in spotlight. On a broadest sense, this thesis develops a comprehensive key to Brazil – taken as a set of values that defines us as a cultural system and, eventually, as a society – through the social meaning that it assigns to labor. The main hypothesis is that the labor ideology that is embedded on the writings of Machado de Assis is still present in Brazilian social manners and mentality, supporting an axiological code that diminishes labor and laborer; there are, thus, two moral codes of labor acting simultaneously in Brazilian cosmology, which allows us to suggest, along with Roberto DaMatta, a Brazilian dilemma.