A quiet revolution: Illness as resilience in Grazia Deledda's La chiesa della solitudine

Stefania Lucamante

First

2020-01-01

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Abstract

In her 1936 novel, Deledda organizes a subtle discursive counter-practice while quietly resisting the foundations of the patriarchal system and, more generally, the commonplaces of her time. The present reading of La chiesa della solitudine by Grazia Deledda examines the central theme of a woman’s self-imposed solitude in terms of character’s resistance to societal diktats as a way to dismiss the pernicious labeling often imposed upon Deledda’s voice as ‘conservative’ when compared to other contemporary female writers. The symbolic value of this pastoral novel carries rich ethical-emotional implications concerning a meditation on the virtues of solitude against the traditional existential outcome for a woman in Nuoro, Sardinia: marriage. With her choice, the protagonist Maria Concezione dispels the expectations of a female bildungsroman envisioning marriage as a woman’s only goal in life. She demonstrates that her choice of non-futurity is indeed a choice. It is a value to defend against the societal structure that envisages marriage the only existential outcome for a single woman endowed with means, such as Maria Concezione.