Among Women Only: Analysis of Major Characters
"Among Women Only: Analysis of Major Characters" delves into the lives of several key figures navigating the complexities of postwar Turin, Italy, particularly focusing on their societal roles and personal struggles. The narrator, Clelia Oitana, is a successful couturiere returning to her roots, grappling with the emptiness of her ambitious yet unfulfilling life among the elite. Contrasting her is Rosetta Mola, a young woman from a privileged background who, despite her advantages, feels trapped in a meaningless existence and ultimately succumbs to despair.
Momina, another significant character, embodies cynicism and discontent, influencing Rosetta's outlook while remaining detached from deeper emotional connections. Clelia's interactions with Gisella, an old friend from her working-class past, highlight her internal conflict and the stark differences in their lives. Morelli, a friend who bridges Clelia’s past and present, provides a critical perspective on the superficiality of their social circle, emphasizing the emptiness that pervades their lives. Other characters, such as Febo and Becuccio, introduce varying degrees of ambition and desire, further illustrating the stark contrasts between social classes and personal fulfillment. Through these characters, the narrative explores themes of ambition, existential despair, and the quest for meaning in a world marked by superficiality and disillusionment.
Among Women Only: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: Cesare Pavese
First published: Tra donne sole, 1949 (English translation, 1953)
Genre: Novel
Locale: Turin, Italy
Plot: Symbolic realism
Time: The late 1940's
Clelia Oitana (kleh-lee-ah oh-ih-TAH-nah), the narrator, a successful couturiere, who moves from Rome to Turin, Italy, to open a fashion house. Clelia, who had escaped from the Turin working-class quarter seventeen years before, returns, at the age of thirty-four, as an attractive, experienced woman. She had been driven by ambition to get ahead but is now aware that the life she has created is largely empty. Clelia moves among the elite young people of postwar Turin and finds them to lead frivolous, meaningless lives, escaping from boredom by engaging in slumming expeditions and vicious gossip about one another. Clelia is not very happy with her life, but her work, at least, brings her satisfaction. Fulfilling work is something that her friends do not have.
Rosetta Mola, the twenty-three-year-old daughter of a rich, proper Turin family. Rosetta, a serious, naïve woman, is fed up with the meaningless existence of her social group and yet unable to find an alternative. She attempts suicide the night Clelia returns to Turin. Clelia meets her and realizes that she is in trouble but has no answer to Rosetta's fundamental question: When life and love teach you who you are, as Clelia has assured her it would, what do you do with what you have learned? The book closes with Rosetta's death by suicide.
Momina (moh-MIH-nah), a rich, well-educated, former Baroness. The fresh-faced and attractive brunette, slightly younger than Clelia, is the center of the group of elite young Turinians, with all activities revolving around her. Momina is cynical, discontented, and disgusted with life and with everyone and everything. Although she can live with the emptiness of her life and dismisses it with a cynical shrug, she feeds the nihilistic void within Rosetta. Momina is dangerous, perhaps deadly, to Rosetta.
Gisella (gee-zehl-lah), the keeper of a small shop and an old friend of Clelia. Gisella is a thin, gray woman with a bony, resentful face, in whom Clelia sees herself if she had not escaped the working-class quarter. Momina's group offers little to Clelia, but neither does Gisella or others from Clelia's past.
Morelli, an older friend of Clelia, whom she met in Rome and who provides a means for her to enter the elite circles and salons of Turin. Morelli seems to lead the same unproductive life as the other members of the Turin leisure class, but he possesses more substance. He enjoys life and points out to Clelia that she has turned work into a vice that controls her and into a criterion that she uses to judge the worth of other people. He describes to her the accomplishments of the parents of the young people that Clelia meets in Turin and shares her disgust at the aimless existence of the young, including their inability to enjoy life.
Febo (FAYB-oh), an architect who designs Clelia's fashion house. An attractive, young man who possesses a talent and who works; he is a frivolous, irrepressible womanizer and playboy. Clelia sleeps with him on one occasion out of boredom and to stop him from pestering her.
Becuccio (beh-KEW-chee-oh), the foreman of the crew reconstructing Clelia's fashion house. He is a young, competent, muscular, curly-haired man with an attractive smile; he appeals to Clelia. She sleeps with him out of attraction, not boredom, but recognizes, as he does, that their ways of life are too different to allow any more than a passing affair. Becuccio, a Communist and skilled worker, seems to suffer none of the emptiness of his “betters.”