Pirandello, Luigi - Maria Grazia Di Paolo (essay date 1993)
Maria Grazia Di Paolo (essay date 1993)
SOURCE: "Women's Marginality and Self-Obliteration in Some of Pirandello's Novelle," in Forum Italicum, Vol. 27, Nos. 1-2, Spring-Fall, 1993, pp. 204-13.
[In the following excerpt, Di Paolo assesses Pirandello's characterizations of women in his short stories, finding them stereotypical and limited in variety. ]
When reading Pirandello's novelle (and his other works as well), we become more and more convinced that his female characters convey traditional myths, which can broadly be so identified: woman as Flesh, as Nature, as Muse. Under these categories we encounter images of women in a variety of roles common to a male-dominated tradition. The most common among them are those of mother, caretaker, and fallen woman. Consequently, I intend to discuss here some novelle not only because they are important in themselves, but because, more than others, they illustrate modes of...
[The entire page is 3873 words long]
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