Two Women: Analysis of Setting
"Two Women: Analysis of Setting" explores the contrasting environments that shape the lives of the main characters, Cesira and her daughter, Rosetta, during World War II in Italy. The narrative begins in Rome, where Cesira, after marrying an older man, adapts to urban life, managing a small shop and raising her daughter amidst the challenges of war. The story then shifts to Sant'Eufemia, a remote village in the mountains, where the women seek refuge. Here, they confront the harsh realities of rural poverty and the violence of occupation, revealing a stark contrast to their previous life in Rome.
The town of Fondi further emphasizes this disparity, showcasing the relative prosperity of the plains compared to the struggles faced in the mountains. Ultimately, the journey leads the women to Vallecorsa, Cesira's family home, which they find deserted and transformed by war. This setting serves as a backdrop for Rosetta's traumatic experience and subsequent loss of innocence, reflecting the broader impact of conflict on the younger generation. The evolving dynamics between mother and daughter, set against these varied landscapes, highlight themes of resilience, adaptation, and the harsh consequences of war on personal identity.
Two Women: Analysis of Setting
First published:La ciociara, 1957 (English translation, 1958)
Type of work: Novel
Type of plot: Social realism
Time of work: 1943-1944
Asterisk denotes entries on real places.
Places Discussed
*Rome
*Rome. Capital and largest city in Italy. Cesira goes there from her girlhood home in the mountainous region of Ciociaria after her marriage to a much older husband who owns both a small shop and an apartment in Trastevere in Vicolo del Cinque. The city forces Cesira to adapt to a different way of life from her rural upbringing and provides Alberto Moravia with a base against which he can later contrast the experiences of Cesira and her daughter in the country.
After the death of her husband, Cesira is content with her small shop, her tidy flat, and raising her teenage daughter. When the war comes she initially prospers by selling black market goods she acquires from peasant farmers outside Rome. In spite of all the changes in her life, Cesira remains very much the same person she has always been until she confronts the war at first hand in the mountains after fleeing Rome to return to her family home at Vallecorsa with her daughter, Rosetta.
Sant’Eufemia
Sant’Eufemia. Small village high in the mountains where Cesira and Rosetta take what they believe will be only temporary lodgings in a crude lean-to with a peasant family. There, amid the ramshackle huts and rude life of the peasants, Cesira rediscovers the customs of her childhood, and her daughter is subjected for the first time to the hardships of country living, with its attendant poverty, isolation, and fears.
Moravia uses the nine months of the women’s stay at Sant’Eufemia to introduce readers to the degradation of rural Italian life, far from the comforts of Rome. As their stay lengthens, the women are gradually exposed to the realities of a shooting war and the German occupation of Italy, as they wait for Italy’s liberation by British and American armies. Moravia also uses this period in their lives to present to his readers the violence and humiliation of the occupation.
Fondi
Fondi. Town closest to Sant’Eufemia. It provides a contrast between the relative prosperity of life on the lower plain, with its amenities, and the poverty and misfortune of peasants living in the mountains. This contrast is a consistent theme among postwar Italian novelists, especially those like Moravia who espouse socialist solutions to the problems of modern Italian society. Fondi is also the place where the women first encounter the Allied troops and receive food, shelter, clothing, and finally transportation to their initial destination, Cesira’s family home at Vallecorsa.
Vallecorsa
Vallecorsa. Cesira’s original home. When the women eventually reach the village, it is deserted and all of its houses are boarded up because the occupants, including Cesira’s own family, have fled approaching military action. Throughout the novel Cesira assures Rosetta that her village will be a place of safety and sustenance. Instead, they arrive at the village at the lowest ebb of their fortunes, and there, in the local church, Rosetta is raped by French Moroccan soldiers. Afterward, Rosetta changes. Gone is her innocence and sweetness; she becomes hedonistic in her pursuit of the scarce goods, food, clothing, and pleasure, long denied her by the ravages of the war. For Moravia, Rosetta becomes emblematic of the postwar generation. At first devastated by her daughter’s rape and the subsequent transformation it makes in her, Cesira becomes angered by Rosetta’s behavior and her abandonment of what she perceives is a proper way of life. Eventually, however, she realizes that she must accept her daughter as she is despite everything that has happened to both of them. This recognition provides for the epiphany with which the novel closes.
Bibliography
Cottrell, Jane. Alberto Moravia. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1974. Overall survey of the work up to that date. At times cursory, and particularly so in its proclamations about what women are and what they are not and why Rosetta and Cesira cannot be authentic depictions.
Dego, Giuliano. Moravia. Edinburgh, Scotland: Oliver & Boyd, 1966. Thorough study of Moravia’s output that proves of use with respect to Two Women.
Heiney, Donald. Three Italian Novelists. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1968. Studies of Cesare Pavese, Elio Vittorini, and Moravia. Focuses on the technical aspects of novel writing and the political and psychosocial aspects of the three novelists’ works.
Lewis, R. W. B. “Alberto Moravia: Eros and Existence.” In The Picaresque Saint. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1949. Worth looking at for Lewis’ analysis of Moravia’s use of sexual encounters as provinggrounds of the existential.
Ross, Joan, and Donald Freed. The Existentialism of Alberto Moravia. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1972. Good attempt to place Moravia’s writings in relation to existentialism.