3. The Northern Italian Province in Natalia Ginzburg’s Le voci della sera
Introduction: The Idea of Province
Many works of literature produced in the time period under scrutiny here, such as the ones examined in the previous two chapters of this book, may fall under the rubric of urban fiction, since they are inextricably tied to the city in which they are set. On the one hand, as we have seen, this points to the fact that the process of post-war urbanization captures the imagination of Italian writers and provides them with the material for their books; on the other, it reminds us that historically big cities have attracted writers and artists, providing a fruitful environment for them to establish connections and aspire to recognition and success in their chosen field. Nevertheless, there also exists a longstanding, fecund tradition of works of literature and art which gravitate to the rural, provincial and small-town environment and make the unique kind of atmosphere and experiences evoked by these territories into their stylistic hallmark. In the European literary tradition this strand is arguably best epitomized by nineteenth-century writers such as Gustave Flaubert, Honoré de Balzac, Marcel Proust and Franz Kafka,1 whose works revolve around the province or feature young, ambitious characters who come from small-town and rural realities and project their aspirations onto the big city, pursuing the possibilities of social advancement and redemption that the metropolis seems to afford. It is interesting to note that even these prototypical novels inspired by provincial life tend to reproduce the dichotomy between the provinces, often a point of departure, and the city as a real or imaginative destination which evokes promises of success and salvation. Italy, too, has developed a tradition of literary works that are tinged with the peculiar nuances of provincial life: the mixture of melancholic, sentimental yearning for this intimate and allegedly authentic world and the sense of non-belonging, which is exacerbated by the more conservative, conventional mindset that one may often find in small-town environments. Amongst the Italian authors who have engaged with the provincia in the period examined in this book, one may recall Goffredo Parise, Piero Chiara, Lucio Mastronardi and Natalia Ginzburg. It is precisely on Ginzburg that this chapter will focus.
It is useful, first of all, to ask ourselves what we mean by ‘provinces’. The term itself was born in, and is still associated with, the colonial context: in ancient Rome it indicated the Empire’s possessions outside Italy.2 Provincia therefore indicates a territory that is secondary and peripheral in relation to a more powerful centre, upon which it depends politically and economically and which is also considered culturally dominant, as it claims to define the fashions and values of a given time. Against this broad backdrop it is important also to bear in mind that in its modern specification the notion of ‘province’ takes on specific meanings in different national contexts.3 In Italy, moreover, provincia is technically an administrative division into which regions are organized. Whatever the differences and variations, at the core of the notion of the province there is always a hierarchical way of seeing and conceptualizing the Other. This analysis privileges precisely the socio-cultural implications of the provincia meant in this way. In the Italian context, provincia, and particularly the adjective provinciale denoting villages, small towns and their inhabitants, commonly carry a derogatory nuance, ‘with associations of backwardness and insularity’.4 When someone is described as a provinciale, this generally entails a judgement of that person as simpleminded, perhaps slightly uneducated, naïve and generally not versed in the ways of the world. One reason for these enduring stereotypes may be that, generally speaking, change happens more slowly in the provinces. While one should avoid simplistic oppositions, especially in the era of mass communication, in which places are much more interconnected than in the past, the province still remains somewhat peripheral to the cultural ferment of the big city. According to Carl Amery, the delay in assimilating changes may be explained by the fact that in small-town environments social conventions are more fixed and difficult to modify and people tend to belong to roughly the same social groups for their entire lives, whereas in big metropolitan areas these kinds of affiliation are more fluid and fleeting.5
In order to interrogate the extent to which post-war socio-spatial changes are perceived and conceptualized in the provincia, and therefore to give a more comprehensive picture of the post-war development in Italy, this chapter will switch the focus of the analysis from the urban novels discussed thus far to a work that presents a provincial setting, specifically, Natalia Ginzburg’s Le voci della sera, written in 1961 and set in a small town in Northern Italy. As discussed below, the exact place name of the town is not given and, in a side note at the beginning of the book, Ginzburg actually warns the readers that the places and characters portrayed in the novel are fictional. Nevertheless, the presence of other toponyms and geographical features clearly points to the Piedmontese countryside near Turin, that is, to the places of Ginzburg’s childhood, as the author herself confessed in a later interview.6 The analysis of Le voci della sera will be complemented by some incursions into other novels by Ginzburg, chiefly Lessico famigliare [Family Lexicon] (1963), as well as into Lucio Mastronardi’s Il maestro di Vigevano [The Teacher of Vigevano] (1962), which provides some useful points of comparison to enrich the discussion in this chapter.
Central to Ginzburg’s oeuvre – and Le voci della sera is no exception – is family life. Her books narrate minutely how the lives of the members of a family and their relationships to one another evolve over the course of the story, which in Le voci della sera spans two generations. In Lessico famigliare Ginzburg recounts the story of her own family. Here, peculiar idiomatic words and expressions that make up the titular family lexicon provide a sort of secret code shared by the members of the family, one which bonds them by identifying them as members of that particular affective microcosm and by activating memories relating to the family environment. Much like Le voci della sera, Lessico famigliare spans the decades which go from the author’s childhood to the end of the Second World War and the post-war years until the beginning of the 1960s. While Le voci della sera presents some of the themes and motifs that recur in Ginzburg’s oeuvre as a whole, it may be argued that these are somehow intensified, in particular the ultimate insufficiency of human relationships, the loneliness that arguably contradicts the idea of the small town as a safe, comforting place and the oppressiveness of conventions that seem more difficult to overcome in a provincial environment. It is interesting to reflect on how the provincial setting affects, influences and shapes such themes addressed in the book. In this regard, it is also useful to question the notion of margin and the related preconceived ideas which have been associated with the province as a territory that is peripheral to the real centres of political, economic and cultural power. It is worth noting that in Italy this idea also applies nationwide to the North−South divide. This is discussed in the next chapter, where enduring representations of the Italian South as subaltern are explored.
The Italian provinces therefore encompass territories that have more often than not been deemed marginal in geographical, economic and cultural terms.7 Such definitions are clearly given in relation to and, crucially, from the point of view of a legitimized centre, which in the Italian context may be identified with the wealthy urban society of the North and the capital Rome, that is, the hubs of political and economic institutions, as well as of the media and communication industries that have become increasingly influential since the 1950s. David Forgacs has shown that the rhetoric of the margin as a spatial and cultural category has been central to the construction of the Italian nation and identity since the unification of the country in 1861.8 While this may be true for all modern nations, there are some peculiarities pertaining specifically to the Italian case. The so-called Southern Question, for instance, refers to a complex set of socio-economic circumstances and processes that have unfolded through the centuries. Born within the Italian post-Unification context, this notion revolves around the perception of persistent backwardness and poverty in the South, which are deemed responsible for widespread organized crime and political clientelism in the region. It is clearly a notion that reflects the point of view of the dominant classes in the North. Moreover, while the South may be the most blatant example of cultural and geographical marginalization within the Italian context, other areas of the country have also traditionally been regarded as peripheral in relation to the major industrial centres of the North. This is the case, for example, for the rural areas of the North-East, whose main contribution to the economic growth of the post-war years was to supply large numbers of unskilled, cheap workers to the cities of the Industrial Triangle.9 The focusing of the lens of our investigation on provincial and ‘peripheral’ areas across the Italian Peninsula is therefore crucial in helping us to illuminate and unravel discursive practices that have shaped the divide between modern and traditional, centre and margin, relevant and less relevant in post-war Italian society.
In so doing, it is also important to bear in mind that, quite paradoxically, the provincia is very central to Italian national identity, to the point where some argue that it best epitomizes the Italian character. This is due to the history of the Italian nation, the delayed achievement of its territorial unity and therefore to the patchwork of urban centres which for centuries, all across the Peninsula, have exercised institutional power over their jurisdiction. As Carl Levy points out, ‘[s]ince the Italian nation-state was a relatively recent development, arising from the fortuitous combination of European diplomacy, Piedmontese initiative and nationalist conspiracy, older varieties of vibrant localistic or regional identities were suppressed but never completely eradicated’.10 The creation of the Italian nation-state reflected the rational, deliberate calculation of the Piedmontese elite; it was not the expression of the heartfelt desire of all Italians for a unified nation. Quite the contrary, local interests and identities were safeguarded and continued to provide a greater sense of belonging even after the unification of the country had been achieved. Hence, if we look at the Italian provincia through the lens of repression, which is a central thread in this work, we may find that the preconceived, derogatory notions commonly associated with it simply conceal the very centrality of provincialism in the Italian national character. Present-day Italy is still largely characterized by local and regional affiliations;11 arguably, this situation was all the more noticeable in the post-war years, when the unification of the country was still a relatively recent achievement and Italy had just come out of a civil war.
It may seem obvious to claim that provincial cities did not partake with the same intensity in the post-war process of modernization that we have seen taking hold more immediately and noticeably in the major Italian cities, perhaps more dramatically in Milan. The rest of the country certainly underwent substantial transformations, too: villages and towns were not left untouched by the wave of modernization but they did not undergo an equal renewal, at least architectonically, although in many cases they still expanded at the expense of the surrounding countryside. Nevertheless, with the diffusion of the radio and, even more, of television from the middle of the 1950s onwards, which gradually reached into every corner of Italian society, there was potentially no home, street or neighbourhood across the country which was left unaware of the social and economic revolution that was underway. Television projected glittering images documenting the wealthier, more comfortable standard of living enjoyed by urban dwellers of the North, which proved particularly alluring to the people living in the South and in other, less industrialized areas of the Peninsula.12 Commenting on this new interconnectivity between places, in Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore (1979) Calvino writes:
Non ci sono più città di provincia e forse non ci sono mai state: tutti i luoghi comunicano con tutti i luoghi istantaneamente, il senso d’isolamento lo si prova soltanto durante il tragitto da un luogo all’altro, cioè quando non si è in nessun luogo.13
[It is all very well for me to tell myself there are no provincial cities any more and perhaps there never were any: all places communicate instantly with all other places, a sense of isolation is felt only during the trip between one place and the other, that is, when you are in no place.]14
Prefiguring the hyper-connectivity of today’s world, Calvino argues that there is no such thing as a provincial town, since in our networked age all places are ultimately linked to one another through the continuous flow of information and the physical movement of people for work or leisure. In this context, the sites of transit that guarantee such interconnectedness acquire a particular prominence.
Crucially, the boom was not merely a metropolitan phenomenon. As Paul Ginsborg notes:
The geographical location of Italy’s industrial production expanded beyond the narrow confines of the Industrial Triangle. If Lombardy and Piedmont still remained the epicentres, industrial Italy now spread southwards towards Bologna and eastwards along the whole of the Val Padana, to reach the Adriatic at Porto Marghera and Ravenna.15
This model of ‘diffused industrialization’ meant that several industries developed outside the leading economic centres of Lombardy and Piedmont. These industrial districts usually specialized in a specific trade and linked a city with the surrounding countryside.16 Small but economically dynamic centres helped to propel post-war economic development, thanks especially to the presence of firms operating in traditional fields of production, which in those years became increasingly profitable due to the expansion of the market both at home, with the accrued purchasing power of larger sections of the Italian population, and abroad.17 The relatively small-scale production of high-quality products favoured by many of these firms contributed to creating the ‘Made in Italy’ label as a synonym for luxury fashion, design and exclusivity. An example is the shoe-making industry in Vigevano, portrayed by Lucio Mastronardi in his trilogy of novels Il calzolaio di Vigevano [The Shoemaker of Vigevano] (1959), Il maestro di Vigevano [The Teacher of Vigevano] (1962) and Il meridionale di Vigevano [The Southerner of Vigevano] (1964), although at the time in which he wrote the industry was still largely labour-intensive, poorly equipped and reliant on the entrepreneurial skills and initiative of single individuals.18 A further point to consider is that industrial plants are often located outside metropolitan areas, in their hinterland or in areas which are convenient for the proximity of road and communication links and this was also the case with some of the new factories that sprang up as a result of the economic boom of the late 1950s. Major steelworks and petro-chemical plants were located in the South in an effort to create new jobs in traditionally deprived territories, although these attempts had controversial results or proved to be entirely vain in that they did not foster local development.19
The sense of economic dynamism and increased wellbeing could not be felt in the same way everywhere in provincial Italy, not only in the South, but in the richer North itself. Some rural areas of Lombardy, Piedmont and the Veneto remained economically deprived.20 Post-war Italian cinema has engaged directly with this somewhat forgotten, or deliberately concealed, side of the Northern provinces. The number of regional documentaries that were produced in those years bears witness to the fact that, perhaps for the first time, huge numbers of Italians from all over the Peninsula came into contact and therefore became more familiar with regional differences, as we shall also see in the next chapter, which examines post-war Italian travel writing. Through the analysis of some of these regional documentaries Clarissa Clò argues that the connections and similarities between the North and South of Italy at the time have often been overlooked. More specifically, Clò shows how these documentaries were often censored by the post-war Christian Democrat governments (in a way that was eerily reminiscent of the efforts of the Fascist regime to suppress minorities and marginal voices in order to homogenize the country), for they conveyed an unfavourable and detrimental image of the North, its peripheries and poorer areas, an image that was not consistent with the idea which official propaganda sought to consolidate of this part of Italy, namely of an area rapidly transforming into one of the most advanced regions in Europe.21 More or less hidden pockets of poverty continued to exist in communities throughout the country. New forms of urban poverty and precariousness in the rich Northern cities are well documented in Bianciardi’s La vita agra, as is seen in Chapter 1.
The following analysis focuses on how the issues and controversies connected with the multifaceted notion of provincia discussed in this introduction come into play in Ginzburg’s Le voci della sera. It does so by concentrating on three major themes which emerge from the book: that is, the city−province dichotomy, social norms and conventions (with a special focus on gender) and, finally, human relationships. The ‘spatial relevance’ of the analysis is perhaps more evident with the first of the three topics. The two remaining themes will, however, also be discussed from a spatial perspective to establish how the provincial environment in which the story is set interacts with socially codified attitudes and (gender) stereotypes on the one hand and with the more intimate, emotional dimension of human connections on the other.
City and Province in Le voci della sera: A Contextualization
It is widely known, not least because it is also told in Lessico famigliare, that Ginzburg belonged to the group of intellectuals who founded the Einaudi Publishing House in Turin, a group which included the likes of Cesare Pavese, a friend of Ginzburg’s, and her first husband, Leone Ginzburg. She was, therefore, connected with the most prominent figures on the Turinese literary and cultural scene and one might argue that she was herself a clear example of an ‘urban intellectual’. Ginzburg lived practically all her life in major cultural centres: Turin as a child and then an adult, becoming a protagonist in the thriving intellectual community gravitating towards Einaudi and subsequently Rome and London, where she moved to follow her second husband, the literary critic Gabriele Baldini. Hence the fact that she chose to set Le voci della sera in a provincial, tranquil and rather uneventful setting is all the more notable. Whilst the author’s side note at the beginning of the book warns that ‘in questo racconto, i luoghi e i personaggi sono immaginari. Gli uni non si trovano sulla carta geografica, gli altri non vivono, né sono mai vissuti, in nessuna parte del mondo’ [the places and characters in this story are imaginary. The first are not found on any map, the others are not alive, nor have ever lived, in any part of the world], one may easily detect in these places, as in the characters’ regular excursions to the nearby city, the Piedmontese countryside and Turin itself. An important clue is, of course, the fact that memory and real-life experiences are major sources of inspiration in Ginzburg’s oeuvre, the clearest example arguably being Lessico famigliare, which builds on the themes and on the family ambiance of Le voci della sera.22 The choice of not providing a name for the town at the centre of the latter novel may also suggest that Ginzburg intends to render the experience of the characters in the story universal, relatable to anyone living in the similar provincial centres that are so commonly found in Italy. Ginzburg does, however, mention the names of other nearby places, such as Castello, Cignano and Borgo Martino. These, again, are fairly common, standard toponyms that may potentially be found elsewhere in Italy and have the effect of activating a shared experience which allows Italian readers to empathize with the characters in the novel and shape a sufficiently accurate image of those places in their imagination.
The novel centres on the vicissitudes of the De Francisci family, a well-off, yet modest and reserved family, whose ups and downs intertwine with those of the other characters who live in the same provincial town, including Elsa, the young female narrator of the story. The figure of the female narrator recurs in other novels by Ginzburg and appears in many ways to be an alter ego of the author. Before the war De Francisci father, who is nicknamed Balotta, started from scratch a textile-manufacturing plant that went on to become very profitable, making him rich. Despite profits continuing to grow and Balotta becoming a sort of reference point within the local community, where he is regarded with respect and admiration, the De Francisci remain true to their humble origins and reject a wealthier lifestyle. This sober way of living − family meals are unpretentious, consisting of simple ingredients, and the De Francisci children have a limited wardrobe of clothes that are regularly mended − is consistent with Balotta’s political views. A Socialist who remains coherent with his beliefs throughout the Fascist regime and Second World War, Balotta is reminiscent of Ginzburg’s father, himself a promoter of an austere lifestyle as well as a Socialist who helped some of those, like Filippo Turati, who were persecuted by the Fascist dictatorship by hiding them in his house. The example of Balotta, moreover, reminds us of the trajectory of another prominent Italian industrial family, the Olivetti, family friends of Ginzburg’s (Adriano Olivetti married her sister) and major protagonists in the post-war economic growth, who championed progressive, humane reforms in Italian industry. Balotta and his wife Cecilia have five children – Vincenzino, Mario, Gemmina, Raffaella and Tommasino (if one wanted to draw further analogies with Ginzburg’s biography, one should recall that she had the same number of siblings) – and have also raised a distant orphan relative of theirs, Fausto, who becomes known to everyone as ‘Purillo’ because of the type of hat, a beret, that he invariably wears.23 During the course of the story, which spans the pre- and post-Second World War years, the De Francisci interact with other characters, who in turn take centre stage in this scene of provincial life and whose personality traits take shape gradually through the minute description of their activities, mental processes and nuanced emotions, which are skilfully captured by Ginzburg. Up to a certain point in the novel, the reader is led to believe that the female narrator, Elsa, is external with regard to the narrated facts, embodying a seemingly omniscient narrator who observes and reports back in a neutral, unbiased way. As in a sort of coup de théâtre, however, we soon discover that she is also very much a part of the story and that she is in a relationship (which is initially kept secret) with the youngest of the De Francisci siblings, Tommasino.
Elsa and Tommasino meet secretly in the city, where Tommasino has rented a pied-à-terre. As mentioned, it is not specified which city this is, but from a number of clues we can guess that it is Turin. For instance, in the following description of one of the regular walks Elsa and Tommasino take when they meet up in the city, the park with the castle and the river that flows alongside it undeniably remind us of the Parco del Valentino, with its namesake castello and the River Po, which runs along the park’s eastern side. The quietly flowing river provides a counterpart to Tommasino’s taciturn disposition, as we apprehend that he is prone to gloomy states of mind:
Camminiamo interminabilmente, in silenzio, nel parco, sul fiume. Ci sediamo su una panchina; c’è dietro a noi, nel mezzo del parco, il castello, con le sue torrette rosse, le guglie, e il ponte levatoio: e da un lato la veranda a vetri del ristorante, deserta a quell’ora, ma con due camerieri che aspettano ugualmente fra i tavoli, col tovagliolo sotto il braccio. E c’è il fiume, davanti a noi, silenzioso, con le sue acque verdi, con le barche legate alla riva, col casotto dell’imbarcatoio piantato su palafitte, la scaletta di legno dove batton le onde. (VS, p. 739)
[We walked interminably, in silence, in the park, along the river. We would sit down on a bench; behind us in the middle of the park was the castle with its red turrets and spires and the drawbridge: and on the side there was the glassed-in veranda of the restaurant, deserted at that hour: two waiters would be there expectantly all the same, among the tables, with napkins under their arms. There was the silent river in front of us, with its green waters, and the boats moored to the bank, the shelter of the landing-stage built on piles, the wooden steps against which the waves lapped.] (VE, pp. 113–14)
Since initially Elsa and Tommasino are unwilling to disclose their relationship, Elsa explains her frequent trips to the city with the various errands that she actually runs for her parents and her Aunt Ottavia, an avid reader who finishes at least one book per week and always requires new ones from the ‘Selecta’ public library in the city. Initially, the reader is therefore led to believe that these chores are the only reason Elsa goes to the city twice a week; that she also sees Tommasino when she is there is revealed only later in the book. Since these very first allusions to her city escapes, however, it seems clear that Elsa enjoys these trips also, and perhaps primarily, as a welcome change, a way to leave behind the mundane preoccupations and routine of small-town life, albeit only temporarily. Another clue that she has always been curious to explore the world beyond her hometown is the fact that she attended university and graduated in Italian Literature in the city (a further resemblance to the author, since Ginzburg did indeed enrol in the Facoltà di Lettere in Turin, though she never graduated). After completing her studies, Elsa returns to her hometown and seemingly blends in with the rituals of provincial life again, performing what is expected of her. Nevertheless, her aloofness and the general reserve she maintains in her interactions with other characters in the novel suggest uneasiness and dissatisfaction, the fact that she believes there must be more to life. Whether this ‘certain something’ may be found somewhere in her own environment, in the big city or elsewhere completely remains unanswered in a book that generally exposes and debunks the illusions nursed by its characters.
In the city Elsa and Tommasino walk for long hours, sometimes reaching the peripheries where the city blends into the countryside. On such occasions it looks as if the appeal of home, albeit controversially, remains strong for them, like a sort of umbilical cord that has not been entirely severed or a mysterious force that pulls them back: ‘Camminiamo, interminabilmente, sul fiume. Lui si guarda intorno, dice: − Ma qui è proprio campagna. Veniamo in città, ma poi andiamo sempre in cerca della campagna, non è così?’ [We walked interminably by the river. He looked about him and said, ‘But this is quite country. We come to the town, and then we always go to look for the country, is it not so?’] (VS, p. 739; VE, p. 114). After Elsa and Tommasino officialize their relationship and he becomes a regular guest at her parents’ house, the two continue to go for their walks. Now that they are an officially engaged couple and can, therefore, be seen together (a sign of the fairly rigid conventions that prevail in this provincial milieu, which are examined more closely later in the chapter), they do not need to hide in the city anymore but can opt for walks in the nearby countryside. Tommasino compares these walks to the urban ones they used to enjoy and praises the beauty of this rural scenery against the constrained green that nevertheless provides a valuable respite in urban environments: ‘Andavamo, io e il Tommasino, a passeggio per la campagna. […] È più bello qui che al parco. Abbiamo fatto tante camminate, per quel parco, per la città. E invece era più bello qui, no?’ [Tommasino and I used to go for walks in the country. […] It is nicer here than in the park. We have had so many walks in the park and through the town. In contrast it is nicer here. Yes? No?] (VS, p. 764; VE, p. 150). Here, the common notion of the provincia as something that exists only in relation to the city and is almost an extension or satellite of it, a notion of which the book is, nonetheless, not entirely devoid, is rejected as Tommasino claims the superiority and self-sufficiency of the countryside as a place of unspoiled natural beauty that affords a real sense of peace and contentment. It is also interesting to note that the extract hints additionally at Elsa’s discontent: a feeling which tinges the pages of the entire book and which, to different extents, all the characters seem to experience at one point or another. It is all the more striking that Elsa feels this way, since she has finally convinced Tommasino to formalize their engagement, seemingly fulfilling her most intimate aspirations. Why she is not happier, she cannot herself explain. The surrounding environment therefore evokes different feelings in the two characters, in an interplay between emotions and space that speaks of the unique kind of experience elicited by places ‘on the margins’, which are symbolically and geographically distant from the big city.24
Le voci della sera also contributes to a composite picture of the Italian provinces by hinting at the fact that, in the years under scrutiny, the latter often gave impetus to the economic development of the whole country. Specifically, we can see that people with entrepreneurial skills and resourcefulness like Balotta start new economic activities, creating new jobs and benefiting their territory. The prominent place that Balotta’s enterprise has gained within the local community is reflected, for instance, in the following passage: ‘Tutto il paese vive in funzione della fabbrica. La fabbrica produce stoffe. Manda un odore che riempie le strade del paese, e quando c’è scirocco arriva quasi fino alla nostra casa, che pure è in aperta campagna’ [The whole neighbourhood lives by the factory. The factory produces cloth. It emits a smell which permeates the streets of the town and when the scirocco blows it comes pretty well up to our house, which is, however, in the country] (VS, p. 674; VE, p. 20). In a way that is reminiscent of Volponi’s description of the fabbrica in Memoriale, discussed in Chapter 1, here the factory becomes a focal point, the centre from which all human activities seem to radiate, therefore somehow dictating the rhythms of life in town. Within the context of the post-war model of diffused industrialization, specialized trades or single, leading companies became in many cases the trademark of a city or territory. Specific Italian cities and towns therefore became inextricably associated with the name of the company that was located there. Ginsborg, for instance, mentions the example of Pordenone, which ‘became the company town of Zanussi’, a major manufacturer of home appliances, to the extent that its ‘inhabitants identified the transformation of their own fortunes with those of the firm’.25 The centrality of Balotta’s factory in Ginzburg’s provincial microcosm is exemplified by the smell of industrial processing which, on those days on which the Scirocco blows, engulfs the whole town and reaches as far as the countryside where Elsa’s family live. It is not, however, simply a matter of the physical, imposing presence of this building. More subtly, and more importantly, the power relations within the factory are mirrored in the social and economic structures of this provincial microcosm and the ways in which people within it relate to one another. In the face of the increased social mobility in post-war Italian society, new divisions and inequalities crystallized quickly, generated by contradictory processes of modernization.26 Whilst social discrepancies are often more striking in a big city, it is more difficult for individuals in smaller provincial cities to change their status, for here social structures are generally more rigid and people’s roles and positions within their social group and the wider community more fixed. Hence, once new class divisions have been established in a small-town environment, they are more likely to be perceived as unchanging. While it is true that the De Franciscis do not take advantage of their position of wealth and privilege, remaining committed to a humble, unsophisticated lifestyle, it is clear from the way in which the other characters in the novel relate to and talk about them that they are considered to be the town’s most respected family. In Italy, as in other Western societies, success is often measured in terms of individual power and prestige. One may argue that, in many ways, the post-war years simply increased this individualistic orientation, privileging profit over much-needed social reforms.
Mastronardi’s Vigevano novels also bear witness to a social landscape which has been profoundly transformed by economic growth, once again showing how the boom was not an exclusively metropolitan phenomenon. Mastronardi narrates how Vigevano has been home to a thriving footwear industry since the pre-war years and how, in the wake of the boom of the 1950s and 1960s, the sector flourished further, employing a substantial portion of the local population. Despite increased economic wellbeing, old inequalities have deepened and new ones have emerged. Mastronardi provides a clear example of a writer who has turned to marginal existences and neglected areas within the richer Northern provinces. As already noted in the Introduction, these images of enduring poverty and underdevelopment have the effect of demystifying official representations of the Italian North as a whole as one of the most prosperous regions in Europe and of the South as the only part of the country that, in the boom years, still lagged behind due to issues dating back to Unification and beyond. The figure of Antonio Mombelli, the titular maestro of Mastronardi’s book, who lives on the verge of poverty, well exemplifies how the public sector was underfunded and, in many ways, still backward in the post-war years. He struggles to make ends meet, despite giving private classes outside his working hours to supplement his income. The occasions for socialization in a popular central café illustrate the class divide in the city. The habitual clientele fall into categories that are socially and economically determined and interactions reproduce these divisions. Antonio’s entourage include other teachers and people from the lower middle class, like the journalist Pallavicino from the minor local paper L’informatore, who writes about the town’s football team. At a different table one may find an important industrialist with one of his employees reduced to a sycophant.27 Every evening at the same time another industrialist and his wife show up in their fancy car.28 The opulence these people exhibit contrasts starkly with the frugality of Antonio and his friends.
From the analysis so far, it appears that Le voci della sera rejects a clear-cut distinction between the urban and provincial, insomuch as neither of them is ultimately judged as more desirable or prevails over the other. The novel does not reproduce traditional ways of portraying these two environments as antithetical and complementary, for example by presenting the excitement of vibrant city life as an antidote to tedious and predictable village life, or instead the tranquillity and safety provided by the latter as a soothing balm for the chronic overstimulation to which urban dwellers are subjected. While these connotations are not entirely absent in the novel (for example, the city is a discreet space where the two lovers can go unnoticed; it is more heterogeneous and adventurous), we are not left with the impression that the characters’ predicament depends entirely on the environment in which they live. On the contrary, moving to the city would hardly make them feel more fulfilled. Moreover, the nodal themes of the book, such as affectivity and familial relationships, are addressed with a similar sensibility in other novels by Ginzburg that present an urban setting. At the same time, Ginzburg hints at the economic dynamism of the Italian province, in spite of the rigidity of class structures and the limited social mobility that are often a feature of these territories. If we look more closely at issues such as social conventions and gender roles, and how they play out in a provincial environment as opposed to an urban and allegedly more progressive one, we realize that the picture is more complex still. The environment in which the novel takes place is more than a mere setting: it appears to give an impulse to the events in specific ways and to shape the social and emotional worlds of the characters, as discussed in the next two sections.
Social Conventions and Gender Roles: Are the Provinces More Traditional?
It is a fairly established belief that attitudes which are more rigidly conservative are more commonly found in provincial settings than in metropolitan ones, since the latter are, at the very least, repositories of a wider array of world views, often diverse and conflicting, due to the greater number of people who live there. The following analysis of how this idea plays out in Le voci della sera is particularly interested in taking into account the gendered point of view offered by the female author as well as by the main character and narrator, Elsa. The female perspective is, indeed, essential if one is really to show how dominant values are inscribed in space at the expense of subjects who are considered subordinate. The discussion on gender in this section will also address some of the peculiarities of Ginzburg’s oeuvre, showing how her views on women’s issues and feminist ideals are controversial and not wholly sympathetic. A particular interest lies in examining the interplay between social conventions, gender and space by analysing how the more or less explicit norms that regulate the characters’ social behaviour are a reflection of the specific type of built environment described in the novel and vice versa. In so doing, this chapter asks questions such as the following: does Le voci della sera confirm the belief that the city affords a more liberated, progressive lifestyle, whereas the role of traditions that are defended and advocated by the established authorities and introjected into one’s own cultural imprinting is greater in small, ‘marginal’ towns? If so, which stance does the novel take? To what extent do social expectations and assumptions translate into conditioning that shapes human relationships and existential trajectories in the novel (whether the characters reject or, conversely, embrace them, willingly or unconsciously, as part of their ‘cultural baggage’)? Do these expectations disproportionately affect male or female characters?
After the end of the Second World War Italian society witnessed increasing polarization around the two main political parties, the Christian Democrats and the Italian Communist Party. While the former either governed directly or were continuously part of coalition governments from 1944 to 1994, a huge consensus also formed around the PCI (a major political force for decades) and, more broadly, around progressive Socialist ideas that sought to minimize the role of religion in public life.29 At the time when Ginzburg was writing, the process of secularization that was to transform Italian society radically and irreversibly had certainly started, yet the social presence of the Catholic Church, which remains a feature of Italian society to the present day, was still very strong. The Christian Democrats embodied ideals and delivered policies that were inspired by Catholic values, seeing women essentially as wives and mothers.30 The traditional patriarchal order and issues around the legitimacy of men legislating on spheres that primarily concerned women’s rights and wellbeing were hardly questioned. To be more precise, feminist ideas were starting to circulate in Italy at the time, but feminism was yet to become the organized mass movement that would achieve many path-breaking victories, most notably the promulgation of the divorce and abortion laws in 1970 and 1978 respectively. Feminism as a well-defined political force with a revolutionary impact developed in Italy in the so-called ‘long 1970s’, which is to say the years from 1968 to 1983.31 In the post-war years, in Italy as in other Western countries, it was still largely accepted that women belonged in the domestic sphere as housewives and mothers. Unlike in other European countries, however, the employment rates of Italian women in the period between the 1950s and 1970s did not increase substantially, while their traditional role within the family was somehow strengthened over the same period of time, also due to the impact of emigration and the influence of Catholicism, with its idealization of motherhood.32 Ginzburg’s stance in connection to issues addressed by the feminist movement, such as the legalization of abortion, arguably reflects her complex religious views. We know that she was religious, but also that she was constantly interrogating her faith and experiencing self-doubt.33 Ginzburg resisted what she perceived as dogmatism, be it of a religious or political kind, but she held traditional values. In terms of abortion, for example, Ginzburg supported women’s right to have a choice on matters concerning their own bodies, but considered this choice highly problematic and traumatic due to what she saw as the inviolability of the life that was forming inside these bodies.34
Interestingly, it has been pointed out that Ginzburg rejected a ‘feminine style’ – a label that ought to be taken as such, for it inevitably encompasses a variety of individual and unique approaches to writing − in favour of a more objective, and therefore more stereotypically male, approach that dissects the inner world of the characters in her books with precision and detachment, using a clear, economical language.35 Arguably, this choice also speaks of Ginzburg’s documented fear of being labelled, and therefore somewhat dismissed, as a woman writer rather than a writer tout court, which may also be related to her centrality in the Einaudi milieu.36 Women writers have only become part of the literary canon relatively recently; indeed, their work has traditionally had ascribed to it, usually by male critics, a set of somewhat derogatory stylistic features and concerns, such as a distinct sentimentalism, and has often been disregarded.37 Ginzburg’s interest in the intimate, everyday sphere of family and affective relationships has meant that she has not escaped the categorization of ‘woman writer’, with the more or less negative connotations that this entails.38 While she indeed chooses an objective narrative style, she is also particularly interested in the inner world of the women who are the protagonists of her books, as is the case in Le voci della sera but also, for instance, in Sagittario [Sagittarius] (1957), a short novel that depicts an exclusively feminine microcosm formed by the female narrator of the story, her mother, sister and an eccentric woman, Scilla, whom the narrator’s mother befriends.
In terms of gender relations in Le voci della sera, and how they relate to space, it is worth pointing out again that Elsa and Tommasino escape to the city for their secret meetings. The city clearly grants them the anonymity and freedom that they cannot have in their hometown, where everyone knows who everyone else is. The necessity to meet elsewhere is also revealing of ingrained social conventions in small-town environments. When Elsa asks Tommasino why they pretend they do not know each other when they meet in their home town, he replies: ‘Per la tua reputazione. Non devo comprometterti, visto che poi non ti sposo’ [It is for your reputation. I must not compromise you, seeing that I am not going to marry you] (VS, p. 739; VE, p. 114). From the moment in which we discover that Elsa and Tommasino are lovers, it is difficult to dismiss a lingering feeling about the direction that things between them will take, namely that they will eventually separate. While this is arguably also due to the pessimism which generally informs Ginzburg’s writings and her view of relationships − anyone who is at least partially familiar with her oeuvre would be aware of this – there is an additional reason why one is inclined to think that the relationship between Elsa and Tommasino is ill-fated. Indeed, from the beginning it is clear that the latter does not adhere to a traditional, acceptable and therefore more secure idea of romantic involvement, which in those years was still expected to follow a clearly established pathway to official engagement and marriage. Elsa and Tommasino instead meet secretly in his city apartment and are unwilling to officialize their involvement until Elsa realizes that she does not want to live in a relationship without expectations anymore. It should be noted that, in Le voci della sera, romantic relationships generally give way to alienation and discontentment over time, even when they follow the more established trajectory of marriage and children, which is the path that all the Balotta siblings, with the exception of Tommasino, have followed. These couples remain together (apart from Vincenzino and Cate, who eventually divorce) even though their marriages are unhappy, or so we are led to believe. This view suggests a broader disillusionment with relationships per se, a topic that will be discussed more closely in the next section of the chapter. Against this backdrop, one may even argue that, paradoxically, in refusing to comply with social requirements and expectations that are imposed from on high, and therefore to be categorized according to one of the labels available, the relationship between Elsa and Tommasino is the only one in the novel which conserves a degree of purity and spontaneity, despite the fact that it will eventually lead to a separation. Symptomatic of a certain provincial narrow-mindedness and penchant for gossip is also the fact that after the breakup between Elsa and Tommasino people in the small town come up with their own stories, usually denigratory, to explain the end of the relationship. Some argue that Tommasino had an affair, others that Elsa did; others still claim that the De Franciscis are in financial trouble and that, as the accountant responsible for looking after their finances, Elsa’s father had found it out. There are even those who claim that Elsa is a drug addict.
Relationships in the book are illustrative of the conservatism in the Piedmontese provincial milieu portrayed by Ginzburg, where marriages often consolidate relations between local families and recognized members of the community. Vincenzino, for instance, marries Cate, a girl from the nearby village of Borgo Martino. Precisely because she is a local, she is automatically assigned virtues by his family which they consider to be very important in a wife: kindness, purity, humbleness and good health. Cate is indeed said to be ‘chiara, semplice, pulita’ [a clean, simple, honest woman] (VS, p. 703; VE, p. 63) and again, a few pages later, ‘sana, semplice, […] una buona ragazza’ [healthy, honest and a good girl] (VS, p. 709; VE, p. 71). The humble simplicity, cited twice, seems to be particularly valued in a future wife. All these attributes and dispositions, seen as valuable and desirable, are ascribed to Cate by Vincenzino and his family simply by virtue of the fact that she comes from their same territory and is therefore one of their own. This tendency to judge people according to their ancestry and place of birth is revealed perhaps even more starkly by the way in which the De Francisci react to the marriage of Mario with Xenia, a Russian who has escaped from Moscow during the Revolution and whom he meets on a business trip to Munich. Balotta and Vincenzino welcome the news and the bride, on their return from Germany, with undisguised mistrust and open hostility:
Il vecchio Balotta era sconsolato. Pensava che il Mario avrebbe sposato una delle figlie del suo vecchio amico, l’avvocato Bottiglia. E invece ora avevano davanti questa sconosciuta, emersa da chissà qual vita oscura, e che parlava in francese, lingua che lui e sua moglie non sapevano affatto. (VS, p. 703)
[Old Balotta was very much put out. He thought that Mario should have married one of his old friend the advocate Bottiglia’s daughters. And instead they now had with them this unknown woman, emerging from who know what obscure life, who spoke French, a language which he and his wife did not know at all.] (VE, p. 63)
By contrast with the simplicity and transparency assigned to Cate as qualities, the foreigner Xenia appears to carry an obscure history and past which cast a shadow over her personality. The allusion to the fact that she speaks no Italian but only French, a language that Balotta and his wife do not understand, reinforces the feelings of diffidence because it makes communication more difficult. Men (since it is the men who normally choose their wives) are expected to marry childhood friends or local women. Balotta himself ‘s’era scelto la Cecilia in un vicino sobborgo, scegliendola perché era bionda, povera e sana’ [had chosen Cecilia from some neighbouring hamlet, choosing her because she was blonde, poor and healthy] (VS, p. 709; VE, p. 71). These three attributes of Cecilia’s are very reminiscent of the above descriptions of Cate and also speak of a tendency on the part of men in the novel to objectify women in relation to their needs, which in this case include finding a woman who is ‘sana’, is therefore likely to bear children and who has all the qualities of a good-natured, mild-mannered wife. The adjective ‘povera’ also merits additional comment, in terms of the secure economic dominance and therefore broader power in the relationship that it seems to secure for the male partner.
Indeed, the female characters in the novel overwhelmingly adhere to the gender stereotype of woman as mother and housewife. They all go on to be married and have children, following what was very much the norm at the time. Elsa represents the exception to the rule, but this does not make her happier, nor does it transform her into a sort of champion of female self-determination and empowerment. On the contrary, the fact that her engagement with Tommasino is terminated is ultimately seen as a failure. At the point at which the story ends, we leave her rather disconsolately still living with her parents and on track to end up like her aunt, the ‘old maid’ Ottavia, on whom more later. Balotta’s wife Cecilia may be seen as the classic example of the woman who stands behind the succesful, self-made entrepreneur who has created a prosperous family business, even though the old-fashioned Socialist Balotta is about as distant as one can be from the stereotype of a conceited, arrogant, successful businessman. While he is clearly very attached to his wife (after her death he is never the same again and basically loses interest in life), he also often scolds her to put her in her place. Cecilia is portrayed as a good woman, if a little fatuous and light-minded, as is often the case with the figure of the mother in Ginzburg’s novels (one needs only to think of the portrait Ginzburg gives of her own mother in Lessico famigliare, which resembles closely that of Elsa’s mother in Le voci della sera). Balotta is the undisputed head of the family, an ill-tempered, authoritative man who reminds us of Ginzburg’s father in Lessico famigliare.
One exception to this predominant characterization of women in the novel is Raffaella, another of Balotta’s children. She is presented, at least initially (for things change during the course of the novel, as illustrated below), as ‘un ragazzaccio sguaiato’ [a boisterous hobbledehoy] (VS, p. 710; VE, p. 73). It is interesting that she is assigned masculine traits in a slightly derogatory way (here through the perspective of Cate, Vincenzino’s wife, who is at the river with Raffaella and a little annoyed with her because, in her view, she plays dangerously with her children), while she is, in fact, a strong, independent young woman who is less concerned with finding a husband and starting a family than with joining the Resistance during the Second World War. Raffaella’s joining up with the partisans in the mountains is perhaps the only moment in the novel at which a woman leaves the domestic sphere to which female characters are normally relegated and claims her active role in the making of history. The Second World War was indeed a turning point, paving the way for the steadily increasing participation of women in the labour force, in Italy as well as in other countries. Raffaella will go on unexpectedly to marry Purillo, taking everyone amongst her family and friends by surprise, and therefore to adapt herself to the lifestyle of a middle-class housewife, looking after the house and her baby son Pepè.
Nevertheless, women in the story are not merely background characters who stay in the shadow of their husbands and are powerless with regard to their own destiny. Within the narrow limits of the horizon shared by everyone else in the novel, men included, albeit to different extents − since everyone’s destiny seems somehow to be predetermined by the very fact of having being born into a certain family and social condition (or at least this is what the people inhabiting this provincial microcosm apparently take for granted) −, women do take small steps to improve their circumstances, in as much as this is possible. Men can still somehow broaden and improve their lives, not only through work (Vincenzino constantly comes up with new ideas and plans for developing the family business) but, potentially, also by moving somewhere else and exploring the world outside their home-town environment (after breaking up with Elsa, Tommasino contemplates the idea of taking up a job opportunity in Montreal, then moves to Liverpool for a few months to look after the company’s interests there, only to come back and presumably stay). In short, men may freely move and exercise their initiative outside the home, in the public sphere, while women are mostly confined to the private and domestic domain, something which makes their room for manoeuvre considerably narrower. Within the undeniable limitations entailed by being women in a conservative, male-dominated society, however, female characters show remarkable resilience and the will to make things better for themselves, whether by meticulously overseeing all aspects of their daily lives and routines, like Xenia, or by eventually separating from their husband and going their own way, like Cate. It is Xenia who decides that Mario and she should move into the Villa Rondine; it is Xenia who decorates the house and personally selects the furniture, upholstery and drapery, as well as the housekeepers whom she instructs in great detail as to how she likes things done. More importantly, she creates her own workroom in the house, where she spends most of her time painting and carving works of art. All things considered, one may argue that Xenia has shaped for herself the kind of life that suits her best, especially since she is essentially an introvert who rarely leaves her studio or garden to go into town. Cate provides another interesting example of a female character who takes her destiny into her own hands. From the melancholy of the early years of her marriage with Vincenzino, whom she marries without love and with an eye to the financial stability that will come from it, she gradually becomes more confident and independent. She adjusts and finds her way to navigate married life. For example, she decides regularly to visit her mother in nearby Borgo Martino, something that she initially avoids because she is afraid it might irritate her husband. Afterwards, she becomes a mother herself and this occupies her completely. She then goes on to have a number of affairs until she separates from Vincenzino (who respects her decision and lets her go) and starts a new life in Rome. She is not happy, though: she appears to cling emotionally to the past since she keeps asking, ‘Ma perché abbiamo sciupato tutto, tutto?’ [Why is everything ruined, everything?] (VS, pp. 723, 725; VE, p. 92).
The private space of the house and family, which has traditionally been considered the female domain, as clearly emerges from the analysis of the lives of female characters in Le voci della sera, was to become one of the main issues at the core of the political agenda of Italian feminism in the 1970s. Some feminist activists and thinkers claimed that, since women had been relegated to the domestic sphere for centuries and even millennia, the political dimension of the private – that is, the ways in which power relations are perpetuated within the family and shape its structure and functions – had to be researched and addressed.39 This issue, however, sparked controversy and divisions within the feminist movement itself, for advocating the need for a politicization of private issues meant accepting that the State regulate, in however supportive and permissive a way, matters such as abortion, which according to some feminists pertained solely to women as the only ones who could legitimately claim control over their own bodies.40 In Le voci della sera female characters show no awareness of feminist issues. Quite the contrary: it is more or less accepted and taken for granted that the women in the novel will establish themselves as housewives and mothers, attending to the needs of their husbands and children. As will be pointed out later, Ginzburg considers the (patriarchal) family an important bulwark of order and security in an otherwise chaotic, unpredictable world. Interestingly, the only unmarried woman in Le voci della sera, Aunt Ottavia, is a featureless character without strong personality traits (except for her passion for books mentioned above) and mainly characterized by her silence, for she hardly speaks at all in the novel unless invited to express her opinion. She can be conveniently placed in the living room with one of her books in her lap in order to make sure that Elsa and Tommasino are not alone during their meetings in the house, but without bothering them: ‘Non ti dà mica noia la zia, basta metterla lì con un libro, non si sente nemmeno’ [The Aunt does not worry you at all; it is enough to provide her with a book, and one hears nothing more from her] (VS, p. 779; VE, p. 171). The main attributes of Aunt Ottavia are her quietness and silence: she is barely noticeable. As already noted, while Elsa presents an exception to the stereotype of devoted fiancée and wife, since she is involved in a non-conventional relationship with Tommasino, she is also dissatisfied with this arrangement and hopes that one day Tommasino will agree to marry her. There is no indication in the novel that the end of her engagement with Tommasino somehow prompts her to reflect on her own situation and possibly to re-imagine her future.
It would be mistaken to argue that the situation of women in Le voci della sera is entirely dependent on the fact that they live in a provincial, inward-looking environment, even though, especially in the years in which Ginzburg was writing, this type of environment was usually slower to absorb social changes. Other novels by Ginzburg which are, for example, set in Turin − a city that, while it has traditionally been somewhat secluded and, some may argue, provinciale, has also been the place where some of the most significant political and economic events in modern Italian history have originated, as well as a vibrant hub for intellectual ideas and activities − also depict traditional social and gender relations. In cities, as well as in the rest of the country, the situation of post-war Italian women changed only gradually through a process that was still fraught with controversy. As Bracke puts it:
As notions of the ‘modern’ woman were at the heart of a modernisation project, women were affected in specific ways: positively, for instance in new education opportunities, and negatively, by the increasingly intense projection of ideal womanhood in public discourse. Such ideal images involved the dedicated housewife, the loving mother and the efficient double-burden carrier.41
Since, in the post-war years, leadership positions were occupied exclusively by men, and considering that modernity was accompanied by the survival of traditional mindsets as regards social relations and gender roles, we can see how the enduring models and stereotypes which belonged to the patriarchal society and religion provided an obstacle to female emancipation. Historically, it is in the big city that innovative ideas take hold more readily and translate into new approaches and ways of thinking, activist practices and consciousness-raising movements. The second wave of Italian feminism, which achieved unprecedented popularity and success in the 1970s, was no exception. The fact that city life presents more opportunities for female emancipation, however, has its downside. Indeed, metropolitan life has traditionally been regarded as a threat to the respectability of women, since controlling their behaviour proves far more difficult in an urban environment.42 On the contrary, rural villages and smaller provincial towns have traditionally provided ‘safety and continued respectability for women’.43
While traditional social and gender relations are, therefore, not merely ascribable to the provincial environment in which Le voci della sera takes place, it may be argued that the provincia acts as a sort of magnifier of the themes and motifs that always accompany Ginzburg’s representation of relationships. Due to the historical fragmentation of the Italian nation and its problematic path to unity, provincialism and the strong sense of attachment to one’s own local community have always been constitutive of the Italian character, to the point that it may be suggested that the provinces are ‘the most revealing locus of (Italian) identity’.44 The sentiment of a sort of hypertrophy and ubiquity of the Italian province reverberates in Le voci della sera, especially in the last conversation that Elsa and Tommasino have before their separation. Here Tommasino introduces the interesting idea of a sort of collective vital energy that has already been drained by all the other people who have lived in their hometown even before Elsa and Tommasino were born:
− Perché ho sempre avuto l’impressione, − disse, − che abbiano già vissuto abbastanza gli altri prima di me. Che abbiamo [sic] già consumato tutte le risorse, tutta la carica vitale che era disponibile. Gli altri, il Nebbia, il Vincenzino, mio padre. A me, è rimasto niente. – Gli altri, − disse, − tutti quelli che hanno abitato in questo paese, prima di me. Mi sembra di non essere io, che la loro ombra. (VS, p. 771)
[It is because I have the feeling, − he said, − that they have already lived enough, those others before me; that they have already consumed all the reserves, all the vitality that there was for us. The others, Nebbia, Vincenzino, my father. Nothing was left over for me. – The others, − he said, − all those who have lived in this village before me. It seems to me that I am only their shadow.] (VE, p. 160)
Tommasino explains his indolence and lack of motivation by the fact that there are no vital resources left, that the ‘carica vitale’ to which he refers is not renewable but fixed and limited in time and has already been consumed. The collective strength and stamina have been exhausted and he has been left with none to sustain himself, to the point where he feels like an empty shell, a shadow of the people who have come before him. Tommasino clearly feels that everything has already been said and done by other people in his community, that his path (working in the family business, ideally settling down and starting a family) has already been established; and he lacks the willpower to envisage his life differently. In Tommasino’s view there is, therefore, a clear connection between a lack of vitality and the provincial milieu in which he lives, which leaves no room for unconventional life choices, no possibility for self-determination outside the habitual, customary line of conduct. In this sense, the province as the Italians’ core identity also seems a destiny that cannot be escaped. Tommasino goes on to blame il paese, so small with its handful of houses and yet so heavy, like a burden of which he seems unable to free himself: ‘− Come può pesare, un paese! – disse. – Ha un peso di piombo, con tutti i suoi morti! Come mi pesa questo nostro paese, così piccolo, un pugno di case! Non posso mai liberarmene, non posso dimenticarlo!’ [How a place can get one down! – he said. – It has a weight of lead, with all its dead. This village of ours, it just gets me down; it is so small, a handful of houses. I can never free myself from it, I cannot forget it] (VS, p. 772; VE, p. 161). ‘Il paese’ has become for Tommasino a state of mind. He hopes that by leaving and taking up the job opportunity in Montreal he will have the chance to recover at least some of the lost energy and enthusiasm. Towards its end, the novel therefore suggests that only by broadening one’s own limiting circumstances and embracing opportunities in the wider world may one live a fulfilling life. It is significant, however, that Tommasino will end up staying in his hometown, going on with his usual life.
The provincial setting of the novel arguably accentuates the pessimistic tinge of Ginzburg’s oeuvre as a whole, presenting an oppressive, confining environment that limits the characters’ possibilities to develop their aspirations and enrich their lives. This section of the chapter has especially focused on gender relations and how they are mirrored through the way in which this environment is structured and organized. Space is a social phenomenon: the reflection and, in Lefebvrian terms, the product of the society that inhabits it and moulds it in specific ways through its system of norms, rules, values and attitudes. Systems of privilege and oppression are, therefore, reflected and in turn shaped by the organization of the built environment. In Le voci della sera women are bound to the private, domestic domain of the household and therefore have limited freedom of movement compared to men, who leave the house to work and enjoy the freedom to travel further afield if they wish to. Accordingly, the built environment largely accommodates and facilitates men’s needs and is instead experienced by women ‘through a set of barriers – physical, social, economic, and symbolic’,45 which are there precisely to maintain and reproduce those traditional gender roles. The chapter so far has, therefore, shed some light on how axes of discrimination which rely on culturally defined binaries such as male−female and centre−margin intersect in space in ways that mirror a society’s dominant values.
Loneliness, Familial Ties, Impossibility of Close Relationships
The last section of this chapter centres on the theme of affectivity in Le voci della sera. As previously, the interest lies in analysing whether the patterns and themes surrounding human relationships in the novel are somehow shaped by the environment in which these unfold and therefore whether the setting is instrumental in bringing to the fore issues that Ginzburg intends to illuminate in relation to human connections and intimacy. In particular, attention is paid to the issue which may be the real key to interpreting Le voci della sera, that is, the inherent degree of misunderstanding that informs human interaction and, therefore, the ultimate impossibility of authentic, mature, fulfilling relationships, not only between men and women but also between family members and generations. Ginzburg’s oeuvre tells us that one may only have ephemeral glimpses into human contacts which are truly genuine and spontaneous, devoid of any conditioning and superstructure. Perhaps the best example is provided by the idioms and expressions which form a sort of secret language shared by the family members in Lessico famigliare and automatically foster a deep sense of group belonging among them. It is important to note that, in Ginzburg’s view, there is also a generational issue, since in her novels it is especially younger people who seem unable to cultivate healthy, stable relationships, whereas the older generation (Ginzburg’s parents in Lessico famigliare arguably providing the clearest example of this) show more resilience and the ability to understand what is really important in life, perhaps because they are more used to hardship. This generational theme is arguably foregrounded more distinctly in Caro Michele [Dear Michael] (1973), to which this discussion will briefly return.
A central point to bear in mind is the fact, which has already been highlighted, that living in big cities usually offers the opportunity to expand one’s kinship network and that this network is also considerably more prone to changing and renewing itself than its counterpart in small-town environments, where contacts and relationships remain fairly stable throughout a person’s life. Symptomatic of such a state of affairs is the fact that people who live in small towns often find their lifelong partners within this existing and longstanding circle of connections and acquaintances. Certainly this is the case for Elsa and Tommasino, who, as Elsa recalls in the following passage, used to play together as children:
Disse: − Però vorrei essere andato lontano, in qualche luogo all’estero, e averti conosciuto per caso, in una strada qualunque, ragazza mai vista prima. Vorrei non sapere niente di te, niente dei tuoi parenti, e non incontrarli mai. − E invece, − io dissi, − siamo cresciuti nello stesso paese, e abbiamo giocato insieme, bambini, alle Pietre. Ma a me, questo, non mi disturba. Non me ne importa niente. Dissi: − Non me ne importa, e anzi m’intenerisce perfino un poco. E da quando tu esisti per me, quel nostro paese là è come se fosse diventato una terra sconosciuta, grandissima, e tutta piena di cose imprevedibili, drammatiche, emozionanti, che possono succedere in qualunque minuto. (VS, pp. 757–58)
[He said: − But I should have liked to have gone far away, somewhere abroad, and to have got to know you by chance, in some street or other, a girl one had never seen before. I should like to know nothing about you, nothing of your relations and not to meet them ever. − Instead, − I said, − we have grown up in the same village, and played together as children, at Le Pietre. But that does not worry me at all. To me it is of no significance. I said: − It is of no significance to me. And since you have come to exist for me, our village there has become an unknown land, very big and all full of unforeseeable dramatic things that stir the emotions and can happen at any moment.] (VE, p. 140)
The extract presents, in the form of a dialogue signalled by the verbs ‘disse’ and ‘dissi’, the different viewpoints of Tommasino and Elsa on their social milieu and how this has shaped their rapport throughout their lives, first as childhood playmates and then as lovers in their adulthood. The novel often makes use of direct speech, a narrative device that very much belongs to Ginzburg’s peculiar style and literary voice and that in many cases translates into a continuous, slightly neurotic chattering which resembles more of a monologue. In short, Elsa defends the comforting aura of safety and familiarity evoked by the lifelong friendships and connections which people are normally able to form in smaller provincial towns, while Tommasino sees in this limited kinship circle a contraction of possibilities.
Different places shape the characters’ experience and their relationships in specific ways. The province, the city and the abstract elsewhere, possibly a foreign country where, according to Tommasino, things may be different: all these places seem to afford varied possibilities and degrees of fulfilment and self-realization, more or less imagined or ephemeral. The studio flat that Tommasino has rented in the city comes to symbolize a space of freedom from the conformity and conventions of the provincial home town, where people are seemingly trapped in unhappy relationships because of external expectations and ways of living that are widely accepted as normal. Initially, while they live their relationship in a rather casual, carefree manner, both Elsa and Tommasino share the view of a greater freedom granted by the city. As the story proceeds, however, Elsa becomes increasingly discontented with this arrangement, longing for something more stable and secure. The studio flat in the Via Gorizia therefore turns out to be only an illusionary escape from the responsibilities of adult life and from the constrictions of society. Tommasino, who continues to pay the rent for the apartment even after he and Elsa stop meeting there, clings to a romanticized idea of it as a space of freedom, authenticity, spontaneity and real human connection – all aspirations which a conservative social milieu like the Italian provinces of the 1960s tended to inhibit:
Vuoi che andiamo là, in via Gorizia, un momento? – disse. – L’ho tenuta sempre, quella stanza, ho pagato sempre l’affitto. Ci andavo, sai, qualche volta, mentre tu eri, con tua madre, dalla sarta, o nei negozi di biancheria. Andavo là, mi riposavo un poco, e qualche volta mi facevo il caffè. Sentivo un gran silenzio, una gran pace. (VS, p. 769)
[Would you like to go up there in the via Gorizia for a little while? – he asked. – I have kept that room on all the time and paid the rent. I went there, you know, sometimes while you were with your mother at the dressmaker’s or the draper’s. I went there and had a little rest and sometimes made some coffee. I felt a great silence there, a great peace.] (VE, p. 156)
Again the text states: ‘− Prima, − lui disse, − quando ci trovavamo là in quella stanza, in via Gorizia, io avevo sempre voglia di raccontarti quello che pensavo. Era bello, era una gran libertà, un senso di pieno respiro’ [Formerly, − he said, − when we were up there in that room in the Via Gorizia, I always had the wish to tell you everything I was thinking about. It was fine; there was a great freedom, a sense of breathing fully] (VS, pp. 767–68; VE, p. 154). The qualities and associations the room evokes for Tommasino are telling: freedom, silence, stillness, peace, a sense of expansion and the possibility of breathing fully and deeply – in short, the possibility of truly being oneself outside social conventions and expectations. This sense of personal freedom translates into a more sincere, heartfelt way of connecting with others. Tommasino recalls that he was always keen to open up and share his thoughts and emotions with Elsa while they were still seeing each other in this carefree way, without expectations.
After the engagement is officialized and the couple begin to spend more time in their home town and with Elsa’s parents, Tommasino gradually withdraws into himself and loses the pleasure of opening up with Elsa. The same apparently happens to other characters in the novel; and one may argue that, by having the courage to reject established attitudes and values and eventually to go their separate ways, once again Tommasino and Elsa are the only ones who face the suffering inherent in the human condition and in human relationships without deceiving themselves. Tommasino believes that most of the people he knows have buried their uneasy, painful thoughts just below the level of awareness, becoming oblivious to their own discontent, and that their relationships therefore harbour a similar sense of dissatisfaction. He confesses to Elsa that he has done the same during the months of their engagement and that this is the reason why he has lost his willingness to communicate openly and honestly with her:
Ho sotterrato tanti miei pensieri. Gli ho scavato una piccola fossa. […] Stiamo quasi sempre zitti, ora, insieme. Ce ne stiamo quasi sempre zitti, perché abbiamo cominciato a sotterrare i nostri pensieri, bene in fondo, bene in fondo dentro di noi. (VS, pp. 766–67)
[I have driven a great many of my thoughts underground. I have dug out a little grave for them. […] We are almost always silent, because we have begun to drive our thoughts underground, right at the bottom, right at the bottom inside ourselves.] (VE, p. 153)
The provincial environment seems to have a repressive effect on people and their relationships. This kind of imprinting is so ingrained that, according to Tommasino, even moving somewhere else would turn out to be in vain, since one carries one’s conditioning and expectations along with one. Thus the only way the relationship might have enjoyed a different fate is if Elsa and Tommasino had met as complete strangers:
− Se tu fossi stata, − disse, − una ragazza di un altro paese! Se ti avessi trovato a Montreal, o non so dove, se ci fossimo incontrati, e sposati! Ci saremmo sentiti così liberi, così leggeri, senza queste case, queste colline, queste montagne! […] Ma se anche ti portassi ora con me, a Montreal, − disse, − sarebbe come qui, non sapremmo inventare niente di nuovo. Là continueremmo forse ancora a parlare del Vincenzino, del Nebbia, del Purillo. Sarebbe uguale, come essere qua. (VS, p. 773)
[If only you had been a girl, − he said, − from another village! If only I had found you in Montreal or somewhere, if only we had met there and married! We should have felt so free, so unburdened, without these houses, these hills, these mountains. […] But even if I took you with me to Montreal now, − he said, − it would be just like it is here; we should not be able to create anything new. We should probably still go on talking about Vincenzino and Nebbia and Purillo. It would be exactly the same as being here.] (VE, pp. 161–62)
As they discuss their situation while walking in the park and along the river in the city, the dialogue between Elsa and Tommasino is punctuated by spatial impressions. What particularly stands out are the crowds of people cheering and enjoying themselves (there is a fair in the park and a boat race on the river) and the music and festive decorations, which provide a jarring background to the two characters’ sombre emotional state:
Camminavamo per il parco, sul fiume. C’era la folla, chiasso e musica, e avevano installato, sui prati dietro al castello, un Luna Park. Accanto a noi la gente passava, passava, si radunava sulla balaustra di pietra che s’affaccia sul fiume, e si gettava giù sulla scarpata erbosa, con grida e fischi, perché c’erano, quel giorno, le regate. Passavano sul fiume barche e barche, con bandierine che sventolavano. Anche il casotto dell’imbarcatoio, piantato su palafitte, era pieno di gente, e sul tetto sventolavano bandierine. (VS, p. 767)
[We were walking in the park by the river. There was a crowd, noise and music, and they had set up a Luna Park on the lawns behind the castle. People kept passing by us, or gathered together by the stone parapet which faces the river, and threw themselves on the grassy bank with cries and whistles, for the regatta was on that day. Many boats were going up and down the river, with little flags fluttering in the wind. The shelter, too, on the landing stage, built on piles, was full of people, and little flags fluttered in the wind on its roof.] (VE, p. 154)
The multitude of people, things (funfair, boats, flags) and audio and visual stimuli (music, loud cheering, colours) in the surrounding environment contrasts with the feelings of emptiness and despair that Elsa and Tommasino are probably experiencing while examining their relationship.
Ginzburg’s oeuvre suggests that suffering is existential and inextricably bound to the human condition. It also points to the fact that this universal truth becomes more clearly manifest in relationships when one’s hopes of alleviating one’s loneliness give way to disillusionment, the inability to communicate and estrangement. The universal, existential nature of suffering implies that, as an experience, it is shared by all human beings, regardless, for example, of where they live, be it in a vibrant cosmopolitan city or a quieter provincial town. Accordingly, in all Ginzburg’s novels the characters face very similar challenges and predicaments to those one may find in Le voci della sera. That being said, the analysis in this chapter also highlights the fact that in small provincial centres conventions and social conditioning tend to affect existential choices and trajectories to a greater extent than in big cities and that, therefore, in this regard urban dwellers enjoy a greater degree of freedom and arguably more opportunities for self-realization. Mastronardi’s Il maestro di Vigevano lends itself to similar reflections.
Antonio Mombelli has a wife and a son. Most of the time he adheres idly to the rituals of its provincial town, while feeling very much as if his life were slipping away. He takes a stroll with his wife in the town centre in the evening and at weekends regularly joins a group of colleagues and acquaintances − always the same faces and conversations − at a café in the main piazza for an espresso and a game of cards. Antonio’s complicated relationship with his wife and son, and especially the blaming and lack of love in his marriage, provide the storyline alongside his sense of estrangement and inability to fit into his social environment (signalled, for instance, by the fact that his school colleagues appear to be pettily concerned with the possibilities of career advancement, however tiny). The difficulties in human interaction and the ultimate impossibility of authentic, fulfilling relationships therefore link Mastronardi’s and Ginzburg’s novels, both of which arguably point to the idea that such feelings are perceived more acutely in environments that are inward-looking and conservative. However, it is important to note that, however controversially, other writers have assigned prominence to the province as a place where apparently banal individual stories ‘on the margins’ enable psychological identification and therefore become representative of the universal human condition. For instance, Rossella Riccobono argues in relation to Pier Vittorio Tondelli, and especially his last novel Camere separate [Separate Rooms] (1989), that ‘by charging it with stories and affection (“affetti, storie, racconti”) the Italian province is given the same significance and centrality as the well-known artistic or fashionable European capitals’.46
Another controversial issue, moreover, is the fact that the sense of limited opportunities and discontentment evoked by the conservative milieu of Le voci della sera is somehow at odds with the centrality of the theme of the traditional family in Ginzburg’s writings: that is, the sort of family typical of the patriarchal social order, in which the man, as husband and father, is the main or sole wage earner and therefore the undisputed head of the household. Ginzburg appears to be nostalgic for this model of family and social structure, as emerges clearly from the portrayal of her own family and father, an authoritative and domineering figure, in Lessico famigliare. As mentioned above, this sentiment also informs Ginzburg’s depiction of different generations and the relationships and conflicts between them. Arguably, generational conflict is also symptomatic of the boom years as a time in which Italian society was caught between modern and traditional pulls: while younger generations enjoyed the benefits of increased possibilities and economic wellbeing, they were also somehow disorientated. Caro Michele was born out of this society. In the novel the crisis of male-dominated social structures is met with concern, as it appears to bring about a lack of values and purpose and a general sense of loneliness among the characters.47 Some have explained this conservative stance by the suffering and hardship Ginzburg experienced during the Second World War and therefore by her anxieties about social unrest and political instability. One should remember that her husband Leone Ginzburg, a militant anti-Fascist, was jailed by the Fascist authorities and killed in 1944. According to Judith Laurence Pastore, these particular anxieties would explain why ‘the fusion of the personal and the political creates in many, if not all, of [Ginzburg’s] mature texts a longing for the remembered order and security associated with a dominant father figure’.48 The contradiction is at least partially resolved if we consider that Ginzburg’s world view is essentially pessimistic: while she longs for traditional values which have been lost, she does not believe that the stable, reassuring social order of male dominance can ease the pain and suffering which are intrinsic to human existence. The same reason also explains why the places where Ginzburg’s characters live only partially affect their fortunes. For instance, we are left with the impression that Tommasino would not find real happiness should he move to a different country. There is an implicit sense of rupture in Ginzburg’s novels between the Italy of the past, where powerful but largely benevolent father figures prevailed, and the Italy scarred by Fascism, war and civil war, in which models of masculinity seem also to have been undermined. This links to Tommasino’s comments above about previous generations having exhausted all available ‘carica vitale’. The younger generation – male and female – thus seem to be irreparably damaged. This feeling perhaps lies behind Tommasino’s displacement of his emotional and moral energy towards elsewheres constructed in the imaginary, whether that is the impermanent space of the room in Via Gorizia or Montreal.
The chapter presents a notion of the provinces which challenges the idea of the big city as the only locus that enables a real or ‘canonical’ urban experience. This way of thinking overlooks the dynamism of smaller centres and the fact that secondary or provincial cities evoke their own unique kind of experience. More specifically, the chapter shows that in the context of post-war Italy smaller urban centres helped to propel economic development, for instance through their peculiar model of diffused industrialization. At the same time, the analysis of Le voci della sera suggests that certain codified types of behaviour are more ingrained and resistant to change in a provincial town like the one described in the novel than in the big city. One reason for this may be the stronger influence of familial ties and kinship networks, which are more stable and less subject to change in a small city than in the big city environment, where networks and interactions are usually more fleeting. Moreover, the weight of local and known histories, as seen, for example, in the vicissitudes of the De Francisci family, generates a sense of their inevitable reproduction into the future. A similar feeling of immobility seems to characterize gender relations in the novel. An important point, however, is that male characters are significantly more passive. They travel, work, develop ideas and theories, but all because that pathway has been laid out for them and it is expected that, as middle-class, wealthy men, they will take these opportunities. On the other hand, the female characters have to take the initiative actively and independently if they are to achieve even apparently minor change, such as new house décor or freedom of movement locally.
It is also argued that derogatory views of the provinces as something that needs to be concealed and derided may disguise the very centrality of the provincia in the Italian national identity due to Italy’s history and its traditional fragmentation or ‘tribalism’. One may argue that, in Le voci della sera, this ‘denied centrality’ is revealed by the fact that some of the themes and stylistic features of Ginzburg’s work are somehow magnified in this tale of the Northern Italian province. While a pessimistic outlook on life and relationships tinges all Ginzburg’s oeuvre, this tendency is arguably all the more central to Le voci della sera. The relationship between Elsa and Tommasino, and more broadly the existential trajectories of the other characters in the novel, are all seen and presented through this despairing lens. In this regard Ginzburg somehow condemns the characters to ‘peripherality’ in terms of their disconnected emotional worlds, the impossibility of establishing meaningful connections, their solitude and inability to communicate clearly. In this sense, in Le voci della sera the provinces remain marginal and peripheral in that they seem to foster atomization and do not enable fulfilling love and affective relationships, but only unfulfilled life trajectories.