Impact of History on Private Lives
In Natalia Ginzburg’s fiction, the family and its relationships determine the parameters of the action. Domestic experience is the source of her inspiration, as it is the starting point of all human development. This novel, however, which draws on Ginzburg’s own experience of the time she spent in the Abruzzi, where her husband was a political prisoner, has a historical dimension rare in her fiction. Her essential theme is the impact of history on private lives, the way public events have of intruding on personal existence and shattering the illusions of security and complacency. Every gesture seems politically determined, including the father’s devotion to his anti-Fascist memoirs and the example he hands down to his son and friends, who establish their own anti-Fascist cell. Later, each member will offer a precise response to the war, beginning with Ippolito, whose suicide as a protest against the collapse of liberal Europe makes him the first war casualty. Anna’s pregnancy coincides with Ippolito’s death and the advance of Nazism. Her giving birth is, in context, an unconscious challenge to the atmosphere of violence and death and a vote of confidence in a future that will outlast the war. Her marriage to Cenzo Rena will open her eyes, and those of the reader, to the southern experience of which she was largely unaware, and ally her to a liberal reformer and the ideals of social engagement. Apolitical as she is, Anna cannot go unmarked by this experience and its tragedy.
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