Discusses the 1839 “Cecilia Valdés” short story as the foundational text of an adaptative sequence. Notes the story’s EnlightenmentEnlightenment themes: didactic universalism; notions of scientific modernity; paternalistic social progressivism. Points out the story’s affinity to early costumbrismo’s focus on local folkways, Theophrastian typologies, and moral exempla. In the story, Villaverde’s perspective on race, gender, education, and society is problematized by his disregard of the slavery question. This aspect, it is argued, contradicts Villaverde’s concept of Cuban national identity as an assimilation of Cuban racial groups, castes, and social classes. This chapter shows the beginning of Cecilia’s trajectory from cautionary personage to complex novelistic protagonist.