Modern Humanities Research Association The Modern Language Review

Natalia Ginzburg's "La Madre": Exposing Patriarchy's Erasure of the Mother
Author(s): Adalgisa Giorgio

Source: The Modern Language Review, Vol. 88, No. 4 (Oct., 1993), pp. 864-880
Published by: Modern Humanities Research Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3734420
Accessed: 27-06-2017 16:30 UTC
REFERENCES
Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3734420?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents
You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted
digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about
JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms
Modern Humanities Research Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend
access to The Modern Language Review
This content downloaded from 209.2.237.140 on Tue, 27 Jun 2017 16:30:14 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
NATALIA GINZBURG'S 'LA MADRE':
EXPOSING PATRIARCHY'S ERASURE OF THE MOTHER
In the course of a writing career spanning almost sixty years, N

(I16-99i) focused exclusively on the representation of the Italia
relationships between its members, and women's alienation within it
ence to the latter theme, it has become customary for critics to
Ginzburg's declared opposition to feminism did not prevent her, esp
early part of her career, from producing powerful representations of
women in our society.' In order not to make her say what she did not
into her novels, it is often remarked how her depiction of the conditi
part of her pessimistic vision of human relationships and life in gener
described her task as a writer as that of writing about the 'sventura
condizione umana', a predicament in which all individuals find
independently of their sex.2 Her belief that the feminist movement f
'le sofferenze e le angosce che fanno parte della condizione umana, da
le angosce di cui e colpevole la societa in cui viviamo', and her convic
nostri momenti migliori, il nostro pensiero non e ne di donna, n
condizione femminile', pp. 188, 190) explain why she makes no claim
feminist point of view.
Natalia candidly admitted her mistake, at the beginning of her wr
strongly wishing, and forcing herself, to 'scrivere come un uomo', i
'freddezza' and 'distacco', while avoiding topics and techniques usu
with women's writing (autobiography, female characters and fe
'sentimentalismo').3 Her later realization that it is impossible to supp
(female) individuality in writing (since 'se siamo delle donne, i segni
nostro temperamento si stampano sulle nostre azioni e parole' (
femminile', p. I90)) was followed by the discovery that her own
motherhood had given her a different outlook on life, which made i
her to continue to wish to write as a man.4 Thus, her interest in wo
conscious or political choice but the inevitable consequence of her be
On the other hand, the fact that, especially in her later work, she sees
of our society as much as women are, and as beings no less lonely an
1 In 'La condizione femminile' (I973), Ginzburg deplores the antagonism betwee

promoted by the feminist movement. However, while she rejected those aspects o
indiscriminately condemned women's traditional activities within the family as hum
having and nurturing children), she approved entirely of the initiatives of the wom
improve the lives of those women who were exploited and humiliated (Natalia Ginzburg
(Milan: Mondadori, I974), pp. 182-90 (pp. 184-85, I88)). See also Enzo Biagi,
protagoniste italiane: la Ginzburg. Natalia, che cos'e il femminismo?', Corriere della s
p.36.
2 Corriere della sera, 29 April 1977, quoted in Luciana Marchionne Picchione, Natalia Ginzburg (Florence:
La Nuovo Italia, I978), p. 4.
3 Her own Prefazione to Ginzburg, Cinque romanzi brevi (Turin: Einaudi, I964), pp. 8, io, and 'I1 mio
mestiere' (I949), in Ginzburg, Le piccole virtu (Turin: Einaudi, 1962), pp. 73-90 (p. 82).
4 In 'II mio mestiere' she says: 'Adesso non desideravo pii tanto di scrivere come un uomo, perche avevo
avuto i bambini, e mi pareva di sapere tante cose riguardo al sugo di pomodoro e anche se non le mettevo
nel racconto pure serviva al mio mestiere che io le sapessi: in un modo misterioso e remoto anche questo
serviva al mio mestiere. Mi pareva che le donne sapessero sui loro figli delle cose che un uomo non puo
mai sapere' (pp. 84-85).
ADALGISA GIORGIO 865
women, does not make her analyses of women's alienation less powerful. The fact
that she sees her writing about women only contingent upon her being a woman
does not make the criticism implicit in her representations of women less valid. In
the light of these considerations, I do not regard it as an invalid critical operation
to apply feminist scholarship to texts which their author would not define as
feminist, with the aim of bringing to the fore their feminist thrust and assessing
Ginzburg's contribution to the elucidation of women's condition. I intend to
evaluate Ginzburg's literary contribution to a topic, motherhood, which has been
central for some time to feminist research and women's writing.
With a writer who concentrates on the family, representation of mothers and
motherhood is inevitable. Yet, criticism has paid little attention to the mothers
portrayed in Ginzburg's works. Alan Bullock's article 'Maternita e infanzia
nell'opera di Natalia Ginzburg' is mainly concerned with linking the writer's
literary creations with her life experiences and her ideas on children and their
upbringing as expressed in a variety of essays.5 Nevertheless, a number of
interesting themes emerge from his discussion: the clash between generations, the
lack of a vocation in Ginzburg's characters which is the cause of their ills, the
exploitation and oppression of daughters in the family, especially by frustrated
mothers, the incompatibility of motherhood with the pursuit of any other interest
in a woman's life, the difficulty of reconciling motherhood with self-discovery.
Some of these themes are issues which concern contemporary women, and which
have been, and are, matters for discussion and research among feminists.
However, Bullock does not attempt to examine them in relation to a cultural or
social context, either of the period in which the texts were written or of the period
in which he was writing.6 I am now writing, thirteen years after Bullock's article,
in a cultural context which benefits from almost twenty years of feminist debate
and scholarship on motherhood. The rhetorical celebration of motherhood com-
mon to most Western cultures, in which maternal 'power' means, in practice,
patriarchal oppression, has been challenged, and, from an initial attitude of
rejection of motherhood, we moved, in the mid-I97os, in the direction of its
re-evaluation as a source of pleasure and real female power and authority. It seems
appropriate, therefore, to focus on Ginzburg's text 'La madre' (I948), a short story
which, in a mere eleven pages, encapsulates, as I shall attempt to demonstrate in
this article, contemporary society's discourse on motherhood. I intend to examine
this story in detail, and to show, through an analysis of the interaction between two
different points of view present in the text, how Ginzburg succeeds in putting
forward a powerful criticism of society's oppression of a mother, without directly
expressing any such criticism.
'La madre' is simultaneously a confirmation and a refutation of the critics' claim
that 'alla scrittrice appartiene una poetica dell'innocenza e dello sguardo del
5 Critica letteraria, 7, no. 24 (I979), 502-33. Alan Bullock's article 'Natalia Ginzburg and Ivy Compton-
Burnett: Creative Composition and Domestic Repression in Le voci della sera', Rivista di letterature moderne e
comparate, 30 (1977), 203-27, touches on Ginzburg's treatment of mothers and the mother-daughter
relationship within the topic of the 'domestic repression' of children by insensitive parents.
6 Alan Bullock does not share the concerns of a feminist attitude, as is illustrated also by his recent book
(Natalia Ginzburg: Human Relationships in a Changing World (Oxford and New York: Berg, I99I)), and it
would perhaps be unfair to look, in his work, for what he has not dealt with (see Sharon Wood's review of
Bullock's book in Italian Studies, 47 (I992), I 9-21).
866 Natalia Ginzburg's 'La madre'
narratore non velato da alcun sapere preesistente'.7 Ginzburg's literary prefe

can be briefly described as a propensity to represent reality through linear n
structures and a focalization through naive, uncomplicated characters,
children.8 The narrative strategy adopted in 'La madre', where the story of
widow is conveyed through the eyes/consciousnesses of her two young
entirely consistent with Natalia's poetic programme. Yet, the children's 'inn
viewpoint is made to reflect a chorus of other voices which shape and defin
mother in the story. This is a fine example of Italo Calvino's claim that liter
about 'far passare il mare in un imbuto': 'fissarsi uno strettissimo numero d
espressivi e cercare di esprimere con quello qualcosa di estremamente comple
In Calvino's opinion, this skill is eminently embodied by Natalia Ginzbur
madre', patriarchy's whole discourse on motherhood flows through the funne
children's perceptions.
The adoption of a third-person narration in this story, after Ginzburg had
to use not only the first person but female first-person narrators, seems to
necessary strategy.10 Once she decided to focalize the story through the chi
first-person narration by the latter would have been implausible if realism w
attained, unless she embarked upon a stream-of-consciousness narrative of t
Faulkner created in The Sound and the Fury: but inarticulate (subnorma
Compson's monologue needed to be integrated and completed with the stream
consciousness of the more articulate members of the family, in order to be
intelligible to the reader. Faulkner's strategy would have become cumbersom
story so short and, more importantly, would have run counter to Ginzburg's
clarity of communication and her dislike for obscure and difficult novels wh
of facts are deliberately confused."1 'La madre' shows the versatility of the
person mode of narration, which allows different voices and points of view
represented, including a narratorial one, which is employed to give the
particular colouring and to produce an alternative message. The moral judgem
and prejudices of the community (grandparents, servants, and neighbou
cerning the mother have been internalized by the children and thus emerge
7 Mirella Serri, 'Natalia Ginzburg. II silenzio della vita', in Sandra Petrignani, Firmato donna: Un
un secolo (Rome: I1 Ventaglio, 1986), pp. 81-86 (p. 85). See also Cesare Garboli, who, in 'I1 picc
famigliare di N. Ginzburg' (I971), claims that Ginzburg has added a female variant to the 'p
fanciullino' (in Letteratura italiana goo, ed. by Gianni Grana and others, o vols (Milan: Marzo
viii, 7627-32 (p. 763I)).
8 Marchionne Picchione, p. 39.
9 'Natalia Ginzburg o le possibilita del romanzo borghese', in Almanacco della terzapagina (Rom
1963), pp. I78-84 (p. I80), originally published in L'Europa letteraria, June-August I96I.
10 From a third-person internal male perspective in 'Un'assenza' (1933), Ginzburg had m
first-person male narrator in 'Casa al mare' (I937), and to first-person female narrators in 'M
(I941), La strada che va in cittd (written in I94I, published in 1942), E stato cosi (I947), Valent
Sagittario ( 957), and Le voci della sera ( 196 ) (see Clotilde Soave Bowe, 'The Narrative Strategy
Ginzburg', MLR, 68 (I973), 788-95). In Caro Michele (1973), a novel written mostly in the
mode, the majority of letters are by women.
11 In 'L'unico libro di Elizabeth Smart' (I97I), Ginzburg states: 'Io non amo i romanzi diffici
una mia limitazione. Ho sempre una gran paura che siano fintamente difficili, che l'oscurita s
proposito per nascondere la poverta dell'ispirazione. Non mi piace quando chi scrive arruffa e
di proposito il tempo e i fatti. Desidero che in un romanzo tutto sia disteso, aperto e limpido
sapere dove mi trovo, come sono e chi sono le persone, desidero sapere subito cosa sta succedendo
immaginaria, pp. 35-40 (pp. 35-36) ). It is to be noted that Ginzburg makes this statement in the
her discussion of an obscure and difficult novel which she, however, regards highly, and wh
opinion, obscurity does not hide the void, but communicates the depths of the reality into which
delves.
observations, feelings, and perceptions. Anne-Marie O'Healy's statement that 'the

boys relate their impressions of their mother with a mixture of bewilderment and
shame, for they have absorbed the stereotypical prejudices of the grandparents with
whom they all live' is not an exact description of the story's narrative strategy.12 The
word relate is incorrect, since the children are not the narrators, although their
consciousness guides the narrative. Furthermore, a lot of what is in the story consists
of feelings and perceptions of which they are barely aware. Gerard Genette's
distinction between 'voice' ('who speaks?', 'who is the narrator?') and 'focalization'
('who sees?', 'who is the character whose point of view orients the narrative
perspective?'), and Mieke Bal's further distinction, within focalization, between the
'focalizer', the vehicle of the focalization, and the 'focalized', the object/person on
which/whom the focalizer focuses, help to clarify better the way the story is
narrated.13 A narrating voice external to the story interprets and reports what the
children (the focalizers) say, think, know, and are aware and unaware of feeling and
perceiving, about their mother (the focalized). This internal focalization through
the children allows other points of view into the story, as their consciousness filters,
echoes, and reflects the family's and the community's feelings and opinions about
the mother. With regard to the mother, the focalization remains external through-
out, since she exists for the reader exclusively as the object of the children's gaze. Her
thoughts and feelings are to be inferred from the few words she utters and from her
actions. A narrator's point of view is seemingly absent, as the narrating voice mostly
reports (in Direct, Indirect, Free Direct, and Free Indirect Style) what the charac-
ters (except the mother) say, think, or feel, in a language which incorporates the
children's spoken and mental language. The image of the 'due pesciolini neri che
guizzavano verso le tempie', with which the mother's eyebrows are described,
belongs to the children's field of perception and not the narrator's, as is confirmed by
the fact that, by the end of the story, the 'pesciolini neri' have become, together with
the yellow face powder, the hallmark of the mother in the children's memory.14 The
mascara the mother puts on is described as by a child who is incapable of naming
objects and actions: 'Adesso anche si dava il nero alle ciglia, sputava dentro una
scatoletta e con uno spazzolino tirava su il nero li dove aveva sputato' (pp. 404-05).
Throughout the story, the children's point of view is rigorously maintained, the
narrative stuff being strictly limited to what they see, hear, think, or feel. Such
statements as 'del resto adesso capivano che non l'avevano amata molto, forse anche
lei non li amava molto, se li avesse amati non avrebbe preso il veleno, cosi avevano
sentito che diceva Diomira e il portinaio e la signora del piano di sotto e tanta altra
gente' (p. 407) are an agile and fresh mixture of Indirect, Free Direct, and Free
Indirect Discourse which succeeds in maintaining the children's point of view, while
also reporting the discourse of other people which they have assimilated. Here the
narrator is merely the organizer of the stuff of the narration. However, narrative
theory has taught that no narrator can absolutely efface herself/himself behind a
12 'Natalia Ginzburg and the Family', CanadianJournal ofItalian Studies, 9, no. 32 (1986), 2 -36 (p. 23; my
emphasis).
13 G6rard Genette, Narrative Discourse (Oxford: Blackwell, i980), p. I86, and Mieke Bal, 'The Narrating
and the Focalizing: A Theory of the Agents in Narrative', Style, 17 (Spring 1983), 234-69.
14 'La madre', in Cinque romanzi brevi, pp. 397-407 (p. 397, p. 403, p. 407); all references to 'La madre' are
to this edition and are given parenthetically in the text after quotations. 'La madre' is also published in
Novelle del novecento: An Anthology, ed. by Brian Moloney (Manchester: Manchester University Press,
1966), pp. 47-58.
character or a centre of focalization. The narrator's presence is felt through

story, as in this sentence: 'La madre era nervosa e allegra, voleva dire ta
insieme: voleva parlare dei ragazzi all'uomo e dell'uomo ai ragazzi' (p. 4
part of the sentence before the colon could well report the children's observ
the mother; the part after the colon, on the other hand, can be attribut
realistically to a consciousness uninvolved in the scene, who is observ
characters from a distance and is able to understand and describe what is go
However, the narrating voice is not an impartial observer and reporter at al
Thejuxtaposition of indirect and free indirect modes of report throughout th
gives the narrator the opportunity to use irony to convey a different point
from the one put forward by the children. Consider this example:
La madre non era importante. Era importante la nonna, il nonno, la zia Clemen
abitava in campagna e arrivava ogni tanto con castagne e farina gialla; era imp
Diomira, la serva, era importante Giovanni, il portinaio tisico che faceva delle sedie
tutte queste persone erano molto importanti per i due ragazzi perche erano gente fort
si poteva fidare, gente forte nel permettere e nel proibire, molto bravi in tutte l
facevano e pieni sempre di saggezza e di forza; gente che poteva difendere dai tempo
ladri. (pp. 397-98)
Here Free Indirect Discourse effectively conveys the children's consci

half-conscious thoughts, but also communicates a note of irony emphasi
sadness of a situation in which a mother is perceived as being of less importa
even servants. The importance of the people mentioned in the passage seems
inversely proportional to their degree of kinship with the children and the
status, which the narrator emphasizes, as if on purpose, with appositions fo
their names indicating their humble professions. Irony is also to be perceiv
association of strength with tuberculosis in the character Giovanni, an
importance which seems to be attributed to Aunt Clementina as a conseq
the gifts of chestnuts and other foods which she brings and which the childre
The ironies thus created along the way have the effect of producing a large
which allows the reader to perceive the bias in the children's and the comm
view of the mother, and to understand what the latter are not able to see and
-the mother's depression and desperation leading to her suicide.
I next examine the differing views of the mother engendered in the text,
the narrator's covert contribution to the text is crucial for an assessment of the
overall stance and message of the story. 'La madre' is the portrait of a young
widowed mother of two boys who is driven to suicide by solitude and lack of
communication with her family. By scrutinizing the mother through the children's
eyes and the opinions of the community, the story slowly reconstructs an abstrac-
tion, the ideal mother. The mother of the story fares very badly against the backdrop
of this implied perfect mother. Her physical, emotional, and behavioural traits are
reported as atypical, a departure from the characteristics common to all other
mothers and women present in the story. The table on page 869 charts these traits.
From the table, it becomes clear that the mother has failed to conform to the
expectations of society, and to comply with this society's concepts of motherhood
and widowhood. To be the perfect mother, she should have forgone her own self for
her children, to whom she should have been nurturer and protector, the provider
and guardian of their physical, emotional, psychological, and social well-being. The
culture in which she lives puts the children before the mother and requires her to
MADRE NONNA/DIOMIRA ALTRE MADRI
molto giovane abbastanza vecchie
piccola e magra molto grassa grassa, grandi corpi

piccole mammellegrande petto tutto molle
crocchia
capelli neri crespi e corti cappelli, velette
scatto libero e felice corpo mansueto grandi corpi mansueti
del corpo
sottana blu, blusa di vestita di nero baveri di pelliccia

lana rossa
modo buffo e timido corpi [... ] imperiosi

fumava molto
si dava il nero alle ciglia

metteva moltissima cipria
teneva i cassetti in non lasciava i cassetti
disordine in disordine
non sa fare la spesa
sbagliava le strade, non sbagliava

si faceva imbrogliare
dimenticava sempre non perdeva le cose

qualcosa
filava via stava in casa, non
poteva mai scappar via
correva all'ufficio dove venivano quasi ogni
era impiegata giorno a parlare con
il maestro
andava al cinema sedeva in cucina
rientrava molto tardi non rientrava tardi la

la notte notte
non aveva voglia di brava a cucinare le

cucinare pizze e altre cose
piangeva, si lamentava saggezza e forza

aveva mal di testa
non permetteva ne forte nel permettere

proibiva mai nulla e nel proibire
non potevano contare ci si poteva fidare

su di lei
non potevano chiederle si poteva chiedere un

nulla mondo di cose
devote herself entirely to the satisfaction of their legitimate needs. Fascist Italy had
promoted precisely this view of mothers and motherhood. As Lesley Caldwell points
out, the regime's concern for women as mothers was only a by-product of its concern
with children as the future of the Nation.15 The other mothers, the grandmother and
Diomira, who represent for the children the norm from which their own mother
departs, conform to the image of the mother promoted in fascist propaganda
through the Luce newsreels: women 'dressed in dark colours, solid and robust in
stature and, to the modern eye at least, old in appearance' (Caldwell, p. 50). On the
contrary, the mother is small, slim, and young, embodying a type which the boys
find hard to associate with the image of motherhood they have internalized:
I ragazzi trovavano strano d'esser nati da lei. Sarebbe stato molto meno strano nascere dalla
nonna o da Diomira, con quei loro grandi corpi caldi che proteggevano dalla paura, che
difendevano dai temporali e dai ladri. Era molto strano pensare che la loro madre era quella,
che lei li aveva contenuti un tempo nel suo piccolo ventre. Da quando avevano saputo che i
bambini stanno nella pancia della madre prima di nascere, si erano sentiti molto stupiti e
anche un po' vergognosi che quel ventre li avesse contenuti un tempo. E anche gli aveva dato il
latte con le sue mammelle: e questo era ancora piu inverosimile. Ma adesso non aveva piu figli
piccoli da allattare e cullare, e ogni giorno la vedevano filare via in bicicletta dopo la spesa,
con uno scatto libero e felice del corpo. (pp. 40I-02)
Their considerations about her unsuitability for mothering seem to have been
formed on and to parallel the regime's disapproval of those 'young women who get
married with the false and vulgar ideal of preserving their slim and youthful figure at
any cost, thereby sacrificing to this foolish vanity the true, unique, proper ideal of
every woman, the ideal of motherhood'.16 But the subordination of women's life to
the needs and desires-turned-needs of their children is not a feature only of Italian
fascist culture. The notion of the authenticity and legitimacy of the children's needs
informs Western culture, and persists even in contemporary accounts of
motherhood by feminists, which, in various ways, still subscribe to the dominant
cultural ideology of 'blame and idealization' of the mother.17 According to
Chodorow and Contratto, this ideology is in part a result of the organization of
contemporary society, which entrusts mothering almost exclusively to one woman,
an arrangement which encourages children, and therefore adults, both to blame
mothers for any failings in their lives and to believe that once the constraints
currently imposed upon mothers were eliminated, perfect motherhood would ensue:
Times of closeness, oneness, and joy are the quintessence of perfect understanding; times of
distress, frustration, discomfort, and too great separation are entirely the mother's fault. For
the infant, the mother is not someone with her own life, wants, needs, history, other social
relationships, work. She is known only in her capacity as mother. Growing up means learning
that she, like other people in one's life, has and wants a life of her own, and that loving her
means recognizing her subjectivity and appreciating her separateness. But people have
trouble doing this and continue, condoned and supported by the ideology about mothers they
subsequently learn, to experience mothers solely as people who did or did not live up to their
child's expectations. This creates the quality of rage we find in 'blame-the-mother' literature
and the unrealistic expectation that perfection would result if only a mother would devote her
15 'Madri d'Italia: Film and Fascist Concern with Motherhood', in Women and Italy: Essays on Gender,
Culture and History, ed. by Zygmunt G. Baraiski and Shirley W. Vinall (London and Basingstoke:
Macmillan, 1991), pp. 43-63 (p. 44).
16 N. Pende, 'Maternita, estetica e salute femminile', Maternitc ed infanzia, 9 (1934), p. 272, quoted in
Caldwell, p. 51.
17 Noney Chodorow and Susan Contratto, 'The Fantasy of the Perfect Mother', in Rethinking the Family,
ed. by Barrie Thorne and Marilyn Yalom (New York: Longman, 1982), pp. 54-75.
life completely to her child and all impediments to doing so were removed. Psyche and culture
merge here and reflexively create one another. (Chodorow and Contratto, pp. 64-65)
Ginzburg's own life serves to illustrate Chodorow's and Contratto's theory. In 'I
baffi bianchi' ( 970), the writer recalls how as a child she blamed her mother for her
own inadequacies:just like the children in the story, she had assumed somebody else's
(her father's) low opinion of herself and her mother.18 The adult Ginzburg does not
appear to retract young Natalia's angry feelings towards her mother for first turning
her into 'un impiastro' (her father's word) and then sending her into the real world
unprepared for it. Even at the age of fifty-four, she is not able to express blame for her
father, who is in fact the prime culprit for the young girl's unhappiness and solitude
(because of his obsession with germs, Natalia had not been sent to school until the age
of eleven and had been taught at home by a succession of private teachers). Yet, she
leaves it to us toj udge the damaging effects ofher father's idiosyncrasy on her early life,
and accepts his blame of signora Lidia unquestioningly. She is still prey to the
patriarchal norm of respect for and fear of the father and blame and contempt for the
mother, which she had internalized as a child. Young Natalia's envy of other children
who were taken to and collected from school by their mothers or servants, and her
resentment at her mother's lack of interest in her school life, are voiced in the story
through the children. It is obvious that Ginzburg retained Natalia's inability to see
her mother as anything else but a person who should attend to her child's needs. This
is an example of the mechanism described by Chodorow and Contratto by which
attitudes towards motherhood are the result of children's fantasies which are carried
over into adult life. These attitudes then find their way into cultural constructs which
endorse those attitudes and thus contribute to their perpetuation. Ginzburg's story,
on the other hand, might be said to expose the mechanism through which traditional
attitudes to motherhood are perpetuated, by appearing to advocate them.
The fact that Ginzburg puts the children's view at the centre of a story which
focalizes on their mother, and is really about the latter, as the title indicates, reflects
the extent to which our society is child-centred and based on the assumption that a
mother's life is to be devoted entirely to the satisfaction of her children's needs and
wants. Ginzburg's choice of point of view effectively excludes the mother's voice.
The mother is never allowed to speak (except for a few words in her row with her
father) and we are never admitted into her mind. The exigencies of realism rule out
the possibility of disclosing to the reader her feelings as she expresses them in the
letter she leaves when she commits suicide (the children know about the letter, but
obviously are not told its contents). The children's grievances, on the other hand,
are openly voiced:
Lei non apparteneva certo a loro: non potevano contare su di lei. Non potevano chiederle
nulla: c'erano altre madri, le madri dei loro compagni, a cui era chiaro che si poteva chiedere
un mondo di cose; i compagni correvano dalle madri dopo ch'era finita la scuola e chiedevano
un mondo di cose, si facevano soffiare il naso e abbottonare il cappotto, mostravano i compiti e
i giornaletti: queste madri erano abbastanza vecchie, con dei cappelli o con delle velette o con
baveri di pelliccia e venivano quasi ogni giorno a parlare con il maestro: erano gente come la
nonna o come Diomira, grandi corpi mansueti e imperiosi di gente che non sbagliava: gente
che non perdeva le cose, che non lasciava i cassetti in disordine, che non rientrava tardi la
notte. Ma la loro madre filava via libera dopo la spesa, del resto faceva male la spesa, si faceva
imbrogliare dal macellaio, molte volte anche le davano il resto sbagliato: filava via e non era
possibile raggiungerla li dov'era. (p. 402)
18 In Ginzburg, Mai devi domandarmi (Milan: Garzanti, 1970), pp. 190-207.
The children continually compare their mother with an idealized image of

motherhood which they have formed on the basis of their own desires and demands,
on their observation of the organization of the society which surrounds them, and on
the opinions expressed by the people among whom they live. Although they
fundamentally appreciate their mother ('loro in fondo l'ammiravano molto quando
filava via' (p. 402) ) and enjoy being with her when the pressures from the domestic
and social environment are relieved, as on the occasion of the visit of their mother's
lover while the grandparents and the servant Diomira go away for a few days, they
welcome with relief the return of the latter and the 'normality', order, and comfort
they bring to their lives. There is joy, communication, and collaboration between
mother and children when the grandparents are not around and the mother can
enjoy the presence of both her children and her lover:
La madre prepar6 in fretta la cena, caffelatte e insalata di patate: loro erano contenti,
volevano parlare dell'Africa e della scimmia, erano straordinariamente contenti e non
capivano bene perche: e anche la madre pareva contenta e raccontava delle cose [...].
Dunque rimasero soli con la madre per alcuni giorni: mangiavano delle cose insolite [...].
Poi lavavano i piatti tutti insieme. (p. 404)
On the other hand,

Quando il nonno e la nonna tornarono i ragazzi si sentirono sollevati: c'era di nuovo la
tovaglia sulla tavola a pranzo e i bicchieri e tutto quello che ci voleva: c'era di nuovo la nonna
seduta nella poltrona a dondolo col suo corpo mansueto e col suo odore: la nonna non poteva
scappar via, era troppo vecchia e troppo grassa, era bello avere qualcuno che stava in casa e
non poteva mai scappar via. (p. 404)
The grandmother provides a continuation of their primary union with their

mother: their references to the grandmother's 'corpo mansueto' and 'odore' (p. 404)
and to her 'parole tenere' uttered 'nel suo dialetto' (p. 400), the reassuring knowledge
of her always being there with her big and warm body and big, soft bosom ready to
envelope them, clearly indicate that the children are resisting separation from their
mother (a separation and a growing-up which both classic psychoanalysis and
post-Freudian psychology see as painful for the child) ,19 and blame her for wanting a
life of her own and for simply being a separate person. Although they live in a culture
and environment which give them the protection and nurturing they require through
the grandparents and the servants, who compensate for the absence of the mother who
provides for them in other ways, the two boys demand the undivided attention of their
mother as well. Her needs are entirely disregarded both by them and by the culture in
which they live. The mother's suicide is viewed by the neighbours and the servants,
and consequently by the children, only as a reflection of her lack of love for them, as a
selfish and unmotherly act: 'Una vecchia signora che diceva continuamente: - Senza
cuore, lasciare due creature cosi-' (p. 405); 'Se li avesse amati non avrebbe preso il
veleno, cosi avevano sentito che diceva Diomira e il portinaio e la signora del piano di
sotto e tanta altra gente' (p. 407). Again, the mother's life and death are only a
function of the children's well-being. Nobody, except the grandmother, really grieves
for her death. Finally, her death seems to be accepted as no grave loss to anybody. This
shows up the contradictions of a culture which on the one side celebrates the unique
quality of mother care and the indispensability of the mother in a child's life, while on
the other does very little to preserve her life.
19 See Chodorow and Contratto, pp. 70-71.
The tragedy of the mother stems from the fact that her widowhood and
motherhood require her desexing. Having gone back to live with her parents after
her husband's death, she is subject to the close scrutiny of her old parents, and
especially of the father, a retired teacher and authoritarian man, who still feels
responsible for the moral behaviour of his daughter, even though she has a son of
thirteen. The patriarch has still the power to control his daughter's life. Although he
cannot stop her from going out, he has certainly the power to interfere with her
private life and stop her from building a new life for herself:
Si spaventavano quando c'era una lite fra il nonno e la madre; succedeva certe volte se la
madre rientrava molto tardi la notte, lui allora veniva fuori dalla sua stanza col cappotto
sopra il pigiama e a piedi scalzi, e gridavano lui e la madre: lui diceva: - Lo so dove sei stata,
lo so dove sei stata, lo so chi sei, - e la madre diceva: - Cosa me ne importa, - e diceva: -
Ecco, guarda che m'hai svegliato i bambini, - e lui diceva: - Per quello che te ne importa dei
tuoi bambini. Non parlare perche lo so chi sei. Una cagna sei. Te ne corri in giro la notte da
quella cagna pazza che sei -. (p. 400)
The grandfather's opinion sinks easily into the children's mind: 'I ragazzi pensa-
vano che il nonno certo aveva ragione, pensavano che la madre faceva male a andare
al cinema e dalle sue amiche la notte' (p. 400). As a consequence of this social and
familial environment which stops her from pursuing a life of her own, the mother is
forced to meet her lover Max in secret, to deny his existence to the children, even
though the man seems to be a potential point of contact and communication
between mother and children. The children see her with him in a caf6 and notice that
'aveva un viso felice, disteso e felice, come non aveva mai a casa. Guardava l'uomo e
si tenevano le mani, e lei non vide i ragazzi' (p. 402). The taboo of sex is already
deeply ingrained in the children, who refuse to see their mother as a woman and
deny her sexuality. It is precisely this desexing that makes the other mothers and the
grandmother more qualified, in their eyes, to be mothers than their own mother
(even Diomira, who is not a biological mother, is for them a more probable mother
than the woman who generated them). These women have asexual bodies, and their
femininity is reduced to maternal nurturing. The children are embarrassed even to
talk to each other about seeing their mother with a man, with the elder boy imposing
silence on the episode and thus erasing the woman in their mother from their eyes
and mind. When the younger son tries to tell the mother that they have seen her, she
denies it was she they saw; the elder son sanctions her lie with the words: 'No, non eri
tu. Era una che ti somigliava' (p. 403). The opportunity for the children to share
something of their mother's life is quickly brushed aside: 'E tutti e due i ragazzi
capirono che quel ricordo doveva sparire da loro: e tutti e due respirarono forte per
soffiarlo via' (p. 403). When she invites Max to the house during the grandparents'
and Diomira's absence, the children get on very well with him, an obvious
father-figure for them. She rejoices in having both the children and the man around
her. The visit remains a secret between the mother and the children, as the
grandparents are not to know. The insensitivity of the people around her at a
moment when she is particularly vulnerable and unhappy as a consequence of her
lover's departure (most critics talk about abandonment, but we cannot infer this
from the text with any certainty) undoubtedly aggravates her depression, which
results eventually in her suicide.
Having examined the societal expectations the mother has failed to fulfil, I now
look at the way in which the story promotes a sympathetic view of her predicament.
Although she is blamed, in the children's discourse, for not being the tradit
self-sacrificing mother who puts herself at the total disposal of her family, t
also 'defends' the mother by showing how she is not in a position to be the tr
mother-housewife as embodied by 'le altre madri', her supposedly con
imposing, articulate, and competent counterparts. Besides, do not all childre
to idealize their peers' parents and families, whom/which they imagine nice
happier than their own (a 'plotting' mechanism similar to the one at work in
'Familienroman'), to discover later that the notion of the 'normal happy fam
only a children's fantasy and a myth? In 'I rapporti umani' (1953), Ginzburg
that as a child she had nurtured the same fantasy and how she had later com
realize its fallacy.20
'La madre' presents a situation in which many women found themselves in
period following the Second World War. The mother works, presumably not
choice but forced into it by her husband's death. She has therefore had to tak
role of the father, as the parent who must provide for the family's materia
Ginzburg had found herself in the same predicament when, at the end of the
after the death of her first husband at the hands of the Germans, she had go
to live with her parents. She could have managed without working, if she had
with them, but she was obviously eager for an independent life with her chil
Volevo lavorare perche non avevo soldi; tuttavia, se fossi rimasta con i miei genito
ugualmente potuto vivere. Ma l'idea d'essere mantenuta dai miei genitori mi
moltissimo; inoltre volevo che i miei bambini riavessero una casa con me. Da tempo
avevamo piu casa.21
I am not suggesting here an identification of the story's character with Gin

herself,22 but the mother in the story is certainly representative of a new
women, who in post-war Italy were caught halfway between emancipat
tradition.23 Motherhood as women's chief vocation is superseded by t
20 'Siamo assolutamente certi che in casa del nostro amico non si litiga mai, non si gridano m
parole; in casa del nostro amico tutti sono educati e sereni, litigare e una particolare vergog
nostra: poi un giorno scopriremo con grande sollievo che si litiga anche in casa del nostro amico a
modo come da noi, si litiga forse in tutte le case della terra' (in Le piccole virtu, pp. 97-120 (p. 98
21 'La pigrizia' (1969), in Mai devi domandarmi, pp. 36-43 (pp. 36-37).
22 Ginzburg seems to have made the mother totally different from herself, giving her skills (suc
and foreign languages) that she herself did not have. In 'La pigrizia', she recalls the period im
after her first husband's death when she was looking for a job, and tells us that ''ostacolo pr
miei propositi di lavoro, consisteva nel fatto che non sapevo far niente. Non avevo mai pres
[...]. Non sapevo lingue straniere, a parte un po' di francese, e non sapevo scrivere a macchi
This is perhaps an indication of how much the story reflected her own situation. In 'Ritratto di
(1970), a third-person portrait of herself (in the masculine), she says: 'In passato, prendeva
tratto della sua vita reale, ma vi mescolava e vi costruiva attorno invenzione, cosi che quei po
diventavano irriconoscibili, non solo agli altri ma anche a lui stesso. La sua operazione di me
impastare era cosi rapida, che quasi subito era immemore di averla compiuta' (in Mai devi dom
pp. 246-55 (p. 253) ). Some attitudes of Ginzburg's own mother seem to have contributed to the c
of the mother. I showed earlier how, in 'La madre', Ginzburg's experiences as a child m
her experiences as a mother.
23 The protagonist ofE stato cosi (1947) is also a woman who, in pursuing a career, finds that he
incompatible with her roles as mother and housewife. Luisa Quartermaine and Alan Bullock ob
the protagonist's troubles and mistakes leading to her destruction are a consequence precise
being trapped in a traditional country upbringing which has not equipped her for the urban life
has to lead in order to carry out her work as a teacher (L. Quartermaine, 'Women's Vi
Expectations and Experience in Twentieth-Century Italy', in Textual Liberation: European Femini
in the Twentieth Century, ed. by Helena Forsas-Scott (London and New York: Routledge, 99I),
(p. 240); Alan Bullock, Introduction to Ginzburg, Le voci della sera (Manchester: Manchester
Press, I982), pp. vii-xxix (p. xvi).
practical need of feeding the family when the husband is unable to fulfil his
bread-winning responsibilities.
'La madre' is set in a time corresponding to the time of writing. Although the
father's death appears to have occurred before the war, there are references to the
war in the 'rovine dei bagni pubblici, saltati in aria in un bombardamento', and in
the 'medaglione col ritratto dello zio Oreste che era morto in guerra' which adorns
the grandmother's chest (p. 399). Whereas the First World War had had revolution-
ary consequences for the position of women in Italian society, with their entry into
the world of labour and their assuming roles and responsibilities unconceived of
before, the second post-war period was rather marked by a general rediscovery of the
family, not only in Italy but world-wide.24 In Italy, despite women's massive
involvement in the Resistance, and despite such advances as women's suffrage in
1945 and the sanctioning of women's equality with men in the republican constitu-
tion in I948, Italian post-war society continued to endorse and reinforce women's
traditional roles within the family and society. Fascism had wiped out from people's
minds the memory of Italian feminism at the turn of the century, and it took Italian
women more than ten years to recuperate this memory.25 Women's involvement in
the Resistance as protagonists had meant a widening of family solidarity to the
neighbourhood, the village, and the country, when women put themselves to the
service of the liberation in their traditional roles of nurturing mothers and wives.26
Even the Unione Donne Italiane, founded in I944 as the women's section of the
Communist Party, engaged, after the war, in social activities traditionally per-
formed by women - providing for the poor, the children, the homeless, and the
elderly - as well as fighting for specific women's issues.27 Gaiotti de Biase also
stresses how, in a country totally destroyed by war, the family came to be seen as the
institution from which the material and moral reconstruction of Italian life should
start.28 Therefore, even though women entered the Italian parliament for the first
time, embarked on political careers, joined women's organizations, and were
allowed (theoretically) to enter all spheres of public life, all the social and political
groups of post-war Italy, including the Communist Party, continued to regard them
primarily as the guardians of the family. Gender roles and women's subordination
within the family were reinforced. Cinciari Rodano writes that it was not until the
I950S that women's work in Italy assumed a positive value, and began to be
regarded, by the more advanced sections of society and by some women, as a
woman's right rather than as a necessity.29
Thus, in the post-war period, women's work was still the response to a hard
necessity; if it was not a real necessity, as in the case of Ginzburg and perhaps of her
character in 'La madre', it was prompted nevertheless by an 'abnormal' family
situation. The psychology and feelings of the post-war period concerning women,
24 P. Gaiotti de Biase, 'II voto alle donne' (1980), extract quoted in Paola Gaiotti de Biase and Cecilia
Dau Novelli, La questionefemminile (Florence: Le Monnier, I982), p. 84. See also Paola Gaiotti de Biase,
Questionefemminile efemminismo nella storia della repubblica (Brescia: Moreelliana, i979), pp. 24-25.
25 Gaiotti de Biase, 'I1 voto alle donne', pp. 84-85.
26 Gaiotti de Biase, 'II voto alle donne', p. 85, and Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum, Liberazione della donna:
Feminism in Italy (Middleton, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1986), p. 47.
27 See Chiavola Birnbaum, pp. 5I-56.
28 'I1 voto alle donne', p. 85.
29 'L'occupazione dal 1900 a oggi' (1961), extract quoted in Gaiotti de Biase and Dau Novelli, p. 91.
work, and the family form the basis of 'La madre'. At no point in the story
mother blamed for going to work. Yet, nobody is aware that it is precisely
that she goes to work that makes her different from the other mothers; neit
suggested that work makes it impossible for her to fulfil the traditional ro
mother and housewife. The grandmother's belief that the loss of the hu
responsible for her daughter's unusual behaviour is aimed at winning the pity
community for the young woman and at defending her. On the other h
grandmother's line of defence of her daughter is founded less on the suggesti
had the husband been alive, the mother would have not been forced to go to
(which would have meant an automatic improvement in her skills as a moth
housewife) than on the awareness of the full import of her daughter's misfor
losing her husband and of the profound and lasting effects of bereavem
understanding that nobody else in the story shares). It appears that the soci
portrayed in the story, the petite bourgeoisie, does not question women's w
is not prepared to make allowances for women who do work. Despite the pra
difficulties in which the mother has to function, she is still expected to be a
mother, housewife, and housekeeper. She is deprived of independent livi
(she has to share a room and a bed with her children), and has only li
opportunity for her own leisure and the nurturing of her own emotions. She
to repress and hide her sexuality. Her physical inadequacy as a mother is ma
by her deficient domestic and housekeeping skills. Her inability to shop wel
time when good food must have been scarce and shopkeepers would normall
palm off the bad goods to the more naive and shy buyers (in Italy obtaining
cuts of meat from the butcher still requires social and technical skills whic
acquires over a period of time!) automatically makes her skills as a wor
suspect. Although her work outside the family is not devalued openly,
obvious reason that the lack of a husband makes it necessary for her to go
work, the children, and presumably the people around them, still doubt her
to carry it out properly:
Ma la loro madre filava via libera dopo la spesa, del resto faceva male la spesa,
imbrogliare dal macellaio, molte volte anche le davano il resto sbagliato: filava via
possibile raggiungerla li dov'era, loro in fondo l'ammiravano molto quando filava v
com'era quel suo ufficio, non ne parlava spesso: doveva battere a macchina e scriver
francese e in inglese: chi sa, forse in questo era abbastanza brava. (p. 402)
The final statement tries to rectify the suggestion implicit in the whole pass
her work might bejust as bad as her shopping.
The theme of the exploitation and repression of daughters within the
which Bullock has identified in Ginzburg's works, surfaces in this story
where the only working member of the family is expected also to look after
affairs. The situation could be easily remedied if the grandfather, grandmo
servant took on the task of getting the good quality food the mother is un
procure. The fact that they cannot see such a simple remedy to a situation of
occurring every day attests to the lack of flexibility in the organization of lif
the family, which appears to be a static structure resisting change.
Irony is the weapon that Ginzburg adopts throughout the story to co
alternative point of view to that of the children. Bullock emphasizes h
adoption of their viewpoint ensures the 'presence in this story of two distinct
reality', the first one relative to the children's experience, and the second th
which the reader can reconstruct.30 Perhaps 'knowledge' is a m

than 'reality'. The children are perceptive enough to regist
unable to interpret them. The reader, on the other hand, slow
picture of the mother's oppression and unhappiness leading
thus able to distance ourselves from the children's partial
reassess the figure of the mother and her position within the
is shown as highly incapable of perceiving the young woman's
her. The story exposes the false stability and solidity of a
supposed to be based on love and consensus among all its mem
as far as the mother is concerned, based on conflict, oppressio
The traditional picture of the family as a 'refuge, a nurturant
true for the mother: the reality is that the family is designe
nurturing for only some of its members, notably the childre
answer the question asked by feminists in their analyses of th
the family do for women?' or 'What does it do to women?', 'La
so many other literary representations of mothers, from Sibil
(1906) to Elsa Morante's Aracoeli (1982), would propose the ans
and motherhood regularly drive them to depression, mad
Ginzburg's analysis of the predicament of this mother ca
traditional family which comes close to the feminist re-evaluat
as the murder of women's soul and body (Thorne, p. I9).
The tension between the dominant discourse on motherh
'kills' the mother and the narrator's covert discourse in defence of her is most evident
in the last two pages of the story. It appears that happiness is easily restored at the
end with her death. She can thus be seen as the disruptive, deviant element who
must be eliminated for the sake of the solid and stable way of life which her children
cherish. However, the last sentence in the story opens the way to a recuperation of
the hidden maternal discourse: 'Gli anni passavano e i ragazzi crescevano e
succedevano tante cose e quel viso che non avevano molto amato svaniva per
sempre' (p. 407). This statement does not report the words, thoughts, feelings, or
perceptions of any character internal to the world evoked by the text, and can,
therefore, only be attributed to the narrator. Although it might appear as a surprise
at the end of the story, as it is perhaps the only full sentence which does not report, at
least partially, somebody else's discourse, its emphasis on the 'forgetting' of the
mother links back with the previous page, where the information about the
children's life after her death is organized in such a way as to highlight how society
and the family do little to allow the memory of the mother to remain alive. After the
funeral, the children are sent to the countryside to stay with their Aunt Clementina
for a while. The purpose of the visit is to distract them from their mother's death: the
result is to make them forget her altogether. In the country they are engaged in
outdoor activities thoroughly congenial to boys of their age, which soon wipes out
the thoughts the elder boy has for the mother:
II ragazzo piu grande pensava tante volte alla madre, come l'aveva vista quel giorno al caffe,
con Max che le teneva le mani e con un viso cosi disteso e felice; pensava allora che forse la
madre aveva preso il veleno perche Max era forse tomato in Africa per sempre. I ragazzi
30 Natalia Ginzburg, p. 70.

31 Barrie Thorne, 'Feminist Rethinking of the Family: An Overview', in Rethinking the Family, pp. I-24
(p. I5).
giocavano col cane della zia Clementina, un bel cane che si chiamava Bubi, e impara
arrampicarsi sugli alberi, perche prima non erano capaci. Andavano anche a fare il b
flume, ed era bello tornare la sera dalla zia Clementina e fare i cruciverba tutti
(p.406)
The narrator stresses their happiness repeatedly: 'I ragazzi erano molto contenti
di stare dalla zia Clementina. Poi tornarono a casa dalla nonna e furono molto
contenti' (p. 406). Even though they go to the cemetery every Sunday with t
grandmother, the children find it hard to connect the tombs and the crosses wit
their mother, and the customary stop at the bar to take 'il ponce caldo' (p. 406) o
the way back from the cemetery seems to be a more important ritual for the child
than the visit to the grave. The text quickly switches to the positive changes in
children's lives brought about by the mother's death: when she was alive they had
keep away from her in bed because she 'sempre si lamentava che le stavano addos
e le davano calci nel sonno' (p. 397); now they have the whole bed to themselves: '
letto era ora molto grande per loro, e avevano un guanciale per uno' (p. 40
Although they try at times to remember her, her features quickly fade away to
become a yellow dot, a reminder of the yellow powder which she used to
unsparingly on her face. They realize that they had not loved her much, but the
consideration that 'forse anche lei non li amava molto, se li avesse amati non avre
preso il veleno' (p. 407), a statement in Free Indirect Discourse reporting what th
had heard 'Diomira, e il portinaio e la signora del piano di sotto e tanta altra gent
(p. 407) say about their mother, prevails over every other thought and is functio
to erasing her from their memory for ever.
We are able to see now how the text contains a harsh criticism of a culture which in
the first place had caused the mother not to relate to her children in the way she
would have liked to and her children in turn not to love their mother, as a
consequence of the limitations imposed on her which had affected and obstructed
their relationship. This same society has then driven her to commit suicide and thus
to abandon her children. Silenced, and therefore powerless, while she is alive, she is
not even entitled to exist in the memory of her children after death.
I have tried to establish that 'La madre' reflects the contradictions concerning
motherhood which were current during the period in which it was written. The
children's stance represents the traditional view of motherhood commonly held in
those times (and still strongly supported in our society). The hidden, narratorial
stance presents a critique of this view. Even though Ginzburg could think of and
portray no better solution to the predicament of this young mother, she is not
suggesting that the mother's death is the only solution to an 'abnormal' family
situation. The fact that Ginzburg also exposes the process by which this woman is
driven to self-destruction, and highlights the failing of society towards her, in
contrast to the view that she is a social misfit and has failed her children, clearly
indicates that the story is challenging the dominant view of women's roles within
and responsibilities towards the family. The two different points of view present in
the story (the primacy of the children's needs against the mother's right to her own
individuality as a woman) remain irreconcilable, thus mirroring the contradictions
of a society which resists change and refuses or is unable to respond to new concepts
of femininity and motherhood with new social practices. The criticism of the
contemporary ideology of motherhood present in the story goes far beyond that
which Ginzburg might have predicted, or the critics have been prepared to credit
her with. This criticism is clearly visible despite its being ind
despite its being mitigated and the tragedy played down by G
tically ironic approach to characters and events. (The servant's
the bad quality food which the mother brings home (p. 398), th
the servant and the grandfather about the coffee and th
bare-footed grandfather wearing his coat over his pyjama
mother in the middle of the night (p. 400), are humorous
promote our sympathy for all characters, who are ultimately,
all her characters, 'ne buoni ne cattivi, ma comici e un po' mis
Critics group the mother of this story together with the oth
alienated women who populate Ginzburg's early works an
victims of their marriages and families.33 Marriage is never th
succumbing to a mixture of social pressures and conventions a
rule the protagonists' lives. Motherhood, like marriage, is har
for Ginzburg's characters, who become mothers either bec
married woman to have children, or from accident, from lack o
attempt to give themselves an aim in life. We follow the
marito' and E stato cosi in their increasing alienation from their
unsuccessful attempts to rectify their unhappy marriages thr
La strada che va in citta, in which the protagonist marries he
indifference, if not dislike, towards both her child and her hu
that he now loves her. Yet 'La madre' gives the reader a glimp
was perhaps founded on love and might have been happy, had
husband. The mother displays a will to rebuild her life, and, i
happiness, sets herself apart from the characters of Ginzburg
drag themselves through life with apathy and indifference. W
is not her weakness but, rather, her powerlessness in the face
finds in her way and the weight of a social reality which crush
Ginzburg's women who attempt to take their life into their ow
just as much as those who do not (see also the mother in Sagit
In the light of the later developments in Ginzburg's work, on
that in 'La madre' Ginzburg was already moving towards the r
decline of the traditional family as a consequence of the decli
father, at this stage exemplified by his 'legitimate' absen
increasingly attribute the crisis of the family to the decline
weakening of men. It has been remarked that her men are in
tive, suicidal, weak, vain, idle, selfish, or totally absent.34 O'H
birth and development of Ginzburg's idea of a 'fatherless' worl
'La critica', in which she lamented that 'se e estinta o quas
critici, e perche e estinta o si sta estinguendo la stirpe dei padri
with Sandra Bonsanti for Epoca, in which she claimed she was
32 'II mio mestiere', p. 78.

33 O'Healy describes 'La madre' as 'one of Ginzburg's most chilling portrai
within a traditional conformist family' ('Natalia Ginzburg and the Family',
34 Bullock, Natalia Ginzburg, p. 84, andJen Weinstein, 'II maschio assente n
di Natalia Ginzburg', in Donna: Women in Italian Culture, ed. by Ada Testaf
Italian Studies, 7 (Ottawa: Dovehouse, 1989), pp. 89-98 (p. 89).
35 In Mai devi domandarmi, pp. 102-08 (p. 102).
fine dei padri nel nostro mondo: la chiave di tutto sarebbe di ricostruire la fi
padre'.36 Yet, her works do not indicate how such a task might be accom
Caro Michele (I973) is, for O'Healy, a novel exemplifying humanity's fa
condition (O'Healy, pp. 31-32). Women are at the centre of most of Gin
novels, and mothers, often overpowering individuals, and daughters are lef
charge of the family. Whatever the reasons for the decline of the family and
the fact that the characters of Ginzburg's later works seem to express a 'nost
the disciplined stability of the patriarchal family' in contraposition to her
'condemnation of family relationships' (O'Healy, p. 22), Ginzburg's whol
exposes the happy Italian family as a myth and an illusion, and suggests tha
institution of the family itself is in danger of extinction.37
Ginzburg's differing attitudes towards the family seem to coexist in 'La m
Condemnation of an institution which oppresses its members (the narrator'
and nostalgia for a lost stability (the children's stance) converge to rev
strength of this apparently dying institution, the lasting power of patriarchy
mechanisms by which the latter perpetuates itself. The boys are ultima
transmitters of the values and ideas of this society, particularly of the myth
'ideal mother', an essentially self-sacrificing, selfless being whom every
should aspire to become. Ironically, this 'deviant' mother has not impe
development of her children into beings who are entirely acceptable to the
group to which they belong. Sara Ruddick proposes that maternal pra
governed by three demands: to preserve the children's lives, to foster their g
and to shape them into adults that others can accept.38 To satisfy the third d
which proceeds from the social group rather than from the children (as is
instead for the former two), most mothers adopt, obey, or endorse do
patriarchal values, in order to obtain the approval of society and thus be lab
'successful mothers'.39 The mother in the story appears to disregard the valu
social group in which she lives. However, her timid attempts at bu
relationship with her children, based not on authoritarianism and powe
freedom and equality, are perceived by the children and everyone else
practically result in, confusion, incompetence, and powerlessness. Her failur
to sanction the values she had attempted to overthrow. The continuation of
structure in which motherhood corresponds to the annihilation of women's
tivity is thus ensured. 'La madre' exposes the process by which the institut
motherhood is put to the service of the reproduction of patriarchy. But und
ing patriarchy is no little step towards dismantling it.
UNIVERSITY OF BATH ADALGISA GIORGIO
36 Quoted in O'Healy, 'Natalia Ginzburg and the Fam

37 Corinna Del Greco Lobner, 'A Lexicon for Both
Contemporary Women Writers in Italy: A Modern Renai
Massachusetts Press, 1990), pp. 27-42 (p. 27).
38'Maternal Thinking' (1980), in Mothering: Essay
(Savage, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1983), pp. 213-
39 Ruddick, pp. 220-23.

Modern Humanities Research Association The Modern Language Review

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Modern Humanities Research Association The Modern Language Review

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Natalia Ginzburg's "La Madre": Exposing Patriarchy's Erasure of the Mother

Author(s): Adalgisa Giorgio

EXPOSING PATRIARCHY'S ERASURE OF THE MOTHER

In the course of a writing career spanning almost sixty years, N

1 In 'La condizione femminile' (I973), Ginzburg deplores the antagonism betwee

narratore non velato da alcun sapere preesistente'.7 Ginzburg's literary prefe

observations, feelings, and perceptions. Anne-Marie O'Healy's statement that 'the

character or a centre of focalization. The narrator's presence is felt through

Here Free Indirect Discourse effectively conveys the children's consci

MADRE NONNA/DIOMIRA ALTRE MADRI

molto giovane abbastanza vecchie

piccola e magra molto grassa grassa, grandi corpi

sottana blu, blusa di vestita di nero baveri di pelliccia

modo buffo e timido corpi [... ] imperiosi

si dava il nero alle ciglia

non sa fare la spesa

sbagliava le strade, non sbagliava

dimenticava sempre non perdeva le cose

andava al cinema sedeva in cucina

rientrava molto tardi non rientrava tardi la

non aveva voglia di brava a cucinare le

piangeva, si lamentava saggezza e forza

non permetteva ne forte nel permettere

non potevano contare ci si poteva fidare

non potevano chiederle si poteva chiedere un

The children continually compare their mother with an idealized image of

On the other hand,

The grandmother provides a continuation of their primary union with their

19 See Chodorow and Contratto, pp. 70-71.

I am not suggesting here an identification of the story's character with Gin

which the reader can reconstruct.30 Perhaps 'knowledge' is a m

30 Natalia Ginzburg, p. 70.

32 'II mio mestiere', p. 78.

36 Quoted in O'Healy, 'Natalia Ginzburg and the Fam

You might also like