Characters
Assunta
Assunta is a wise elderly woman who sells herbal and other remedies to the local Sicilian American community. She seems to be Serafina’s only genuine friend. She listens to Serafina's boasts and rants, offers her advice, helps her during difficult times, and overlooks her rudeness.
Bessie
Bessie, along with her counterpart Flora, is described in Williams’s stage notes as a middle-aged ‘‘clown’’ with a ‘‘juvenile temperament.’’ She has commissioned some sewing from Serafina, and when it is not completed by the promised day, she becomes angry and informs Serafina about her husband’s infidelity. To Serafina, Flora and Bessie are man-chasers and generally immoral.
Bruno
Bruno is one of a group of young children who appear intermittently throughout the play. These children have minor speaking roles but are a significant stage presence, as they highlight that the play’s celebration of life encompasses more than just love, sexuality, and passion. Their wild, free, and innocent playfulness imparts a sense of life that is fundamentally creative and pure.
Father De Leo
Father De Leo is a stereotypical good priest in the play. He appears during moments when Serafina is acting antisocially and self-destructively, aiming to bring her back to reason and community. His character is defined by his profession, seeing his role as the caretaker of his community.
Rosa Delle Rose
Rosa is Serafina’s daughter. She has inherited her father’s striking good looks and her mother’s passionate nature. Despite being only fifteen, she is quite precocious and confident in her love for Jack Hunter.
While Rosa deeply cares for her mother, they differ significantly in many ways. Much of this difference stems from Rosa’s conventional education in the United States, whereas Serafina maintains the culture of her Sicilian peasant background.
Rosario Delle Rose
Rosario, Serafina’s husband, never appears on stage, but he is a pivotal element in the play. Serafina describes him as extremely handsome, very masculine, and a great lover. These traits contribute to the play’s celebration of the beauty of life, love, sexuality, and passion.
However, Rosario’s character also carries a cautionary message due to his deceitfulness. He deceives Serafina into believing she is his only love while smuggling illegal goods under the guise of his legitimate trucking business. His duplicity highlights Serafina’s task in the play: to discern what truly deserves worship and what does not.
Serafina Delle Rose
Serafina is the protagonist of the play, grappling with an intense and misplaced adoration for her husband, which extends to herself. At the start of the play, she proudly extols her husband Rosario’s attractiveness, strength, and affection for her, even though the neighborhood is aware of his affair with Estelle Hohengarten. Serafina’s pride and ignorance of Rosario’s true nature make her a figure of ridicule. Nonetheless, her character remains endearing and is central to the play’s celebration of love and passion.
Rosario dies at the beginning of the play, and during the three years that follow, Serafina continues to idolize him and cling to her memories. This excessive and unhealthy mourning suppresses her vibrant and life-loving spirit.
Serafina rekindles her zest for life upon discovering the truth about her husband and meeting a new man, Alvaro. She learns a crucial lesson from her husband’s betrayal: that no one, not even herself, is without flaws.
Serafina does everything with intensity. At the play’s start, she is extravagantly dressed; in the middle, during her sorrow, she becomes disheveled. When she loves, she idolizes; when she feels joy or anger, the entire neighborhood is aware.
The Doctor
The Doctor appears only once in the play, attending to Serafina after she learns of her...
(This entire section contains 1424 words.)
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husband’s death. His conversation with Father De Leo during this time is significant, highlighting the play’s focus on the sanctity of life and love. While Father De Leo is concerned that Serafina might transfer her worship of her husband to his memory, the Doctor fails to see this as an issue. His inability to understand Serafina underscores his purely secular nature. As a man of science, he believes solely in the physical world, unlike Father De Leo and Serafina, who possess a spiritual sense of the sacred.
Flora
Flora is a friend of Bessie and accompanies her to Serafina’s house to retrieve a blouse. Flora is distressed when Bessie reveals Rosario’s infidelity to Serafina. Because of this, Flora appears kinder and more considerate than the more impulsive Bessie.
Giuseppina
Giuseppina, along with Peppina and Mariella, is a local woman who has limited interactions with Serafina. These women primarily appear on stage to comment on the play’s events, particularly focusing on Serafina’s eccentricities. Their function in the play is similar to the chorus in ancient Greek tragedies; they observe and reflect on the events from the sidelines. This commentary either emphasizes the happenings for dramatic effect or conveys the community’s perspective. Giuseppina and her peers form a comedic chorus, as their viewpoint highlights the community’s amusement at Serafina’s misadventures. The townspeople find joy in her troubles because her pride and arrogance offend them.
Estelle Hohengarten
Estelle is the woman with whom Serafina discovers her husband was having an affair. Estelle makes only two brief appearances on stage. She serves as a foil to Serafina, representing death and order, whereas Serafina embodies life and chaos. Estelle's austere demeanor and simple attire contrast sharply with Serafina’s flamboyance and love of decoration. Estelle works as a blackjack dealer at the local casino, likely where she first met Rosario.
Jack Hunter
Jack Hunter is the young sailor with whom Rosa is in love. He is the brother of one of Rosa’s school friends. Serafina is wary of his intentions towards her daughter, but Jack seems to be genuinely in love with Rosa, just as she is with him.
Alvaro Mangiacavallo
Alvaro is a Sicilian immigrant who enters Serafina’s life three years after her husband’s death, and the two fall in love. Like Serafina’s late husband, Alvaro is a handsome truck driver who delivers bananas. However, unlike her husband, he has a clownish demeanor but remains likable. Alvaro aspires to marry someone like Serafina, who is industrious and financially savvy, as he himself is hardworking and has three dependents (a mother, father, and sister).
Initially, Alvaro’s nature repels Serafina, but she soon comes to value his positive traits, one of which is his admiration for her. Alvaro’s last name, Mangiacavallo, roughly translates to ‘‘horse eater,’’ symbolizing his great zest for life.
Alvaro’s similarities and differences from Rosario are significant and mark Serafina’s growth in the play. Meeting Alvaro after discovering her husband’s infidelity allows Serafina to see Alvaro as he truly is—ordinary—unlike her idealized view of her husband. Essentially, Alvaro’s character is shaped as much by Serafina’s perspective as by his own attributes. Had she remained deluded about her husband’s true nature, she might have perceived Alvaro as another god-like figure, much like her husband’s reincarnation.
Mariella
Mariella is a local woman who, along with Giuseppina and Peppina, comments on Serafina’s actions, reflecting the views of the broader Sicilian American community. Their commentary amplifies the drama and comedy of the play by highlighting significant and absurd events.
Peppina
Similar to Mariella and Giuseppina, Peppina is a neighborhood woman who provides commentary on Serafina’s behavior. She and the others believe Serafina needs to learn humility, so they are not particularly sympathetic when Serafina faces hardships.
The Salesman
The salesman makes a single appearance in the play to illustrate the poor treatment of Italian immigrants. As he attempts to sell his goods to Serafina, Alvaro arrives and explains how the salesman forced his truck off the road, using ethnic slurs in the process. This exposes the salesman’s hypocrisy: he is courteous to immigrants when trying to sell to them, yet secretly holds them in contempt.
The Strega
The strega is an elderly woman who lives next to Serafina, with a goat that frequently wanders into Serafina’s yard. Serafina is convinced the old woman is a witch, despite Rosa’s attempts to dispel this superstition. Whenever Serafina encounters the strega, she performs a protective gesture against the woman’s supposed evil powers, much to the old woman’s malicious delight. The strega's spitefulness is further shown through her frequent derogatory remarks about the ‘‘wops’’ in the neighborhood, a derogatory term for Italian immigrants at the time.
