Novels of Return:

Ethnic Space in

Contemporary Greek-American and Italian-American Literature

by

Theodora D. Patrona

A dissertation submitted

to the Department of American Literature and Culture,

School of English, Faculty of Philosophy,

In fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece

February 2011

i

στην οικογένειά μου, Ελισάβετ, Δημήτρη και Λεωνίδα που ενθάρρυνε και υποστήριξε αυτό το «ταξίδι» με όλους τους πιθανούς τρόπους… και στον Μάνο μου, που ήταν πάντα εκεί ξεπερνώντας τις δυσκολίες…

ii

Acknowledgements

This thesis would not have been possible without the inspiration, support and kind help of numerous people. Firstly, my advisor, mentor, and, I dare say, friend, Professor Yiorgos

Kalogeras who has always been my most enthusiastic supporter, guiding me with his depths of knowledge in ethnic literature, unfailingly encouraging me to keep going, and consoling me whenever I was disappointed. He has opened his home, his family and circle of scholarly friends, which I appreciate immensely. I would also like to warmly thank the other two members of my committee, Drs. Yiouli Theodosiadou and Nikolaos Kontos for their patience, feedback, thoroughness, and encouraging comments on my work. Moreover, I am indebted to Professor Fred Gardaphé who has welcomed me in the Italian-American literature and scholarship, pointing out new creative paths and outlets. All these years of research, I have been constantly assisted, advised and reassured by my Italian mentor and true friend,

Professor Stefano Luconi without whom this dissertation would lack its Italian-American part, and would have probably been left incomplete every time I lost hope. Grazie, Stefano.

At the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, I have been taken under the wings of Dr.

Smaragda Yemenedtzi-Malathouni who has always found the best in me and my work even when, in my opinion, all hell broke loose. Dr Elke Sturm-Trigonakis has been most helpful in the final stages of this project pointing out loopholes and clarifying questions. Professor Ruth

Parkin-Gounelas should also be included for patiently reading the first pages of my project and kindly commenting on it and, Professor Karin Bocklund-Lagopolou for her faith and moral support in a time of scholarly despair. I would also like to extend my thanks to the warm staff of the secretariat Eirini, Effie, and especially Tasos Paschalis, Chrissoula and

Daphne, for being true friends, with a sense of humor, in times of need and panic. Tasos with his IT expertise saved my work and years of effort more than once. For this I am extremely grateful. Furthermore, I gained important knowledge from the school librarians Ms. Foteini iii

Stavrou and Kleoniki Skoularika who have eagerly and patiently helped me discover new ways of research. Special thanks to Caroline Turner, who with her native-speaker skills

“polished” my work.

I should also mention that this dissertation has profited, among others, from three

MESEA conferences and a MESEA symposium in a wonderful atmosphere of intellectual stimuli and friendship. Thanks to all MESEA friends, and especially Drs. Eleftheria

Arapoglou, Jopi Nyman and Giorgos Anagnostou. The Umbertina chapter was presented and positively accepted by Professors Edvige Giunta, Mary Jo Bona, Anthony Tamburri and

Paolo Giordano in the 2006 American Italian Historical Association conference in Orlando, a catalytic start for my work, given their welcome. Additionally, the AIHA committee awarded

“Novels of Return” with its 2010 Memorial Scholarship on account of its originality and contribution to Italian-American scholarship.

My warmest thanks to my good friend and brilliant scholar Maria Ristani for her endless positive energy, her belief in me and my endeavor, her essential practical help with books and articles, and our endless cups of coffee and theatre nights. To my colleagues at the

Aristotle, especially Despoina K, Anna P. and Giorgos D. for their companionship. I am grateful to Maria Perifanou, for our long walks sharing our Ph.D. and life troubles, and mutual feelings of “sisterhood”. My old and closest friends, Penelope, Athena and Effie for their true friendships, positive vibes, travels and, for reading parts of this project at all times and to my cousins Vangelis and Litsa for their hospitality and care.

Last but closest to the heart, I need to thank my family Elisabeth, Dimitrios, and

Leonidas for their incessant support in all possible ways, a result of our strong bonds of love and mutual respect. This project is dedicated to you and our loving family space. And, of course, to Manos, who has opened his home and his big loving family, for believing in me iv and giving me wings to fly. To all of you thank you for honoring me with your friendship and helping me out. It meant the world to me and I will never forget it. v

Abstract The present thesis is a comparative approach to six Italian-American and Greek-American

literary works written in the last three decades of the 20th century. Based on the common

theme of the authors’ return, either metaphorical or literal to the two countries of origin and

their respective cultures, this doctoral thesis explores the common motifs of mythology, ritual

and storytelling where the heroes and heroines resort to in their quest for self-definition. In

specific, my analysis attempts to answer two questions: how is the journey to self-definition,

as well as the formation of subjectivity, connected with the recourse to ethnic space in each

of the novels examined? In addition, to what extent are these two elements affected by the

constantly changing framework of social, historical and economic conditions, covering two

decades?

Within the context of the seventies, I discuss Daphne Athas’s Cora (1978) and Helen

Barolini’s Umbertina (1979), whose heroines, caught under the spell of feminist and

psychoanalytic trends of their times, realize the importance of ethnic space in their journey

towards self-definition. Assisted by diverse theories, I argue that though differently

approached, in the end for both novels ethnic space is proven to be a site of resilience and

inspiration. Moreover, in the so-called era of post-feminism, Catherine Temma Davidson’s

The Priest Fainted (1998) and Susan Caperna Lloyd’s No Pictures in My Grave (1992) portray heroines who seek enlightenment and guidance by returning to the home country and its culture. In both cases, I consider the theoretical arsenal of revisionist mythmaking and the late-capitalist dictates reflected, and I argue that the two heroines are carriers of a similar

“haughty” air of Orientalism. I conclude that since they opt for a “selective” ethnicity, they oversimplify and disorient readers as to the importance and difficulty of the ethnic female quest. Finally, utilizing two novels written by male authors, Stratis Haviaras When The Tree

Sings (1979) and Tony Ardizzone’s In the Garden of Papa Santuzzu (1999), I break away

from the exclusive attention to a feminist approach, and view the conceptualization of ethnic vi space as this is unraveled by the powerful narrative mode of storytelling. Thus, I argue that overcoming the twenty years that separate them, both novels come to underwrite the surviving powers of the oral narrative, project the ethnic story as “alternative” history, and portray the diachronic character of ethnic space as a site of rebelliousness and anti- conformism.

On the whole, with geographical proximity, common historical and cultural background in the old countries, and similar reception of the two immigrant groups in the new world facilitating a comparative approach, I conclude that the ethnic writers discussed depict parallel courses of the ethnic persona’ journey towards self-definition and their similarly changing perception of ethnic space. Thus, this comparative study, based on its originality, should be seen as an initial attempt to liberate both literatures Greek-American and Italian-

American from their respective insularity, with the hope to instigate a better understanding and appreciation of both cultures as well as strengthen the status of both literatures within and outside their respective communities. vii

Table of Contents

Abstract……………………………………………………………………………….v

Introduction…………………………………………………………………………..1

Chapter 1 The Return to the Self and the Mystified Homeland: Daphne Athas’s

Cora (1978) ………………………………………………………………….26

Chapter 2 Ethnic Space, Umbertina Women, and the Voyage to Self-Definition

………………………………………………………………………………..69

Chapter 3 Mythic Wanderings in Catherine Temma Davidson’s The Priest

Fainted (1998)…………………………………………………...... 111

Chapter 4 Italian-American Persephone in a Sicilian Setting: Susan Caperna

Lloyd’s No Pictures in My Grave (1992)…………………………………143

Chapter 5 Reared by Myth and Folklore: Stratis Haviaras’ When the Tree Sings

(1979)…………….…………………………………………………………173

Chapter 6 Ethnic Fables of Social Justice: Tony Ardizzone’s In the Garden of

Papa Santuzzu (1999)… …………………………………………………..201

Closings and Endings……………………………………………………………...251

Works Cited………………………………………………………………………..258

Biographical Note……………………………………………………………...…..289 1

Introduction

Tell me, Muse, of the man of many ways, who was driven far journeys, after he had sacked Troy’s sacred citadel. Many were they whose cities he saw, whose minds he learned of, many the pains he suffered in his spirit on the wide sea, struggling for his own life and the homecoming of his companions. Even so he could not save his companions, hard though he strove to; they were destroyed by their own wild recklessness, fools, who devoured the oxen of Helios, the Sun God, and he took away the day of their homecoming. . . .

Odyssey 1-9, Rhapsody A

I. The Theme of Return

Homecoming, νόστος or νόστιμον ήμαρ, has emerged as a recurrent theme in artistic creation since the first works of literature, as the ninth line of Rhapsody A in Homer’s

Odyssey testifies. To diminish the distance from abode, family, friends and from the host of cultural and political connotations that envelop the homelandin other words, to be literally and physically again at homehas often been one of the most cherished wishes of those who find themselves forced to be at a distance, a prevalent and diachronic concern in immigrant literature. Homecoming has ever haunted first generation immigrants, as a pain of separation, a longing and even an incentive to improve their life abroad: for these personae, who have been forcibly uprooted from their homeland, lured by the Siren-like callings of another land that promised survival, material affluence, success and social prominence, nostalgia can be an acute pain, but also chronic, sometimes even unbearable. When the reunion with their beloved country is postponed ad infinitum, numerous immigrant artists have opted to vent their emotions through writing and, assisted by the wings of reminiscence, imagination and creativity, they “return” home, to their endless ancestral well of inspiration and sustenance.

As the relatively young field of Ethnic Studies underlines, this recurrent motif of “return” could not have escaped the hordes of immigrants settling in the remote land of America, from 2

the advent of the flow to the New World, to the latest arrivals, the undocumented Caribbean

refugees swarming the coasts of Florida. Contrary to those newcomers who have bravely

faced life in America, recording the present ordeals and feats, and embracing New World

themes and characters, numerous artists of foreign origin have chosen to nourish their ties

with the Old World and explore their ethnic tradition1 through the writing of letters,

autobiographies, novels, diaries, memoirs, poems, and songs. Thus, unable to be reunited

with their homeland, and facing a gamut of equally diverse and intense feelings, ranging from

negation to hopefulness, immigrant artists have tried to preserve relations with the Old World

and keep the memory of the home country alive for the generations to come, constantly recreating a world forever lost.

Admittedly, the passing of time and assimilation, to diverse degrees, have unraveled a new

approach to the Old World;2 the creations of the later, American born, immigrant generations

have both proved and reflected the protean quality of the bond with the country of origin and

its culture. Thus, second and third generation immigrant artists have approached a country and a past that they have usually come to know through indirect experience, frequently inspired and intrigued by solemn grandparent figures, the fragments of family stories, the colorful images of rituals and customs in the ethnic quarter, as well as their own personal readings on the immigration story and the home culture. While these generations have been relieved of the burden of nostalgia that may have tormented new comers, they have similarly re-turned to their ethnic background out of the need to shed light on their family roots and collective story, as a source of empowerment and enlightenment in their hard journey towards self-definition. Treading on their hybrid identity, several artists of the New World have been challenged to follow their ancestors’ course, only in reverse, as a literal or metaphoric

journey of return to the Old World and its culture. As Mike Crang reminds us “people do not simply locate themselves, they define themselves through a sense of place” (102). 3

II. From the Margins to the Center

With the massive wave of immigration to America climaxing between the late 19th and the

early 20th century, just before the First World War, this phenomenon of immigrant “return”, literal, in the form of a visit to the Old country, or metaphorical, as an artistic exploration into the depths of ethnicity, came to increase dramatically in the late 60s and 70s, with the coming of age of the literate descendants of the masses of first immigrants. Indubitably, this fervent love of ethnicity in the 60s and 70s also hinged upon the specific socio-historical context. As the civil rights movement paved the way, heralding equal opportunities for all, ethnic artists of diverse generations gradually encountered less resistance in their attempts to raise their accented voice and express themselves through writing. Simultaneously, the increasing interest of readers of ethnic stories highlighted the latter’s need to find their own reflections in the lines of contemporary fiction. Naturally, the emergence of a potential reading public also signified a shift in the reception by the publishing houses. Thus, authors of ethnic origin were fast discovering, to their surprise, that finding a vehicle for their views was not as difficult as before. While their personal quests for identity and their creative sprees caught the attention of the pundits, artists of ethnic descent were encouraged to labor harder, unearth long-forgotten works, practices and topics, improve the form and style of their creations, incorporate new ideas. As a result, the themes of ethnic works were amplified: the obscure past of the ethnic protagonist, the ancestral history and culture before his American baptism, as well as his adventures in the new country, his losses and gains in diverse fields of activity, displacement and reconfiguration of his ethnic identity.

Thus, hesitantly and timidly at first, later boldly and impetuously, the ethnic author of the

seventies adumbrated the cultural background of ethnic characters and sometimes employed the potential of myth, ritual and storytelling. In his work “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” 4

Stuart Hall ably acknowledges the importance of culture in the connection with the collective

past, affirming that: “The past continues to speak to us. But it no longer addresses us as a

simple, factual ‘past’, since our relation to it, like the child’s relation to the mother, is always-

already ‘after the break.’ It is always constructed through memory, fantasy, narrative, and

myth” (226). Certainly, the inherent momentum of myth, ritual and storytelling have been

repeatedly explored and elucidated by a plethora of prominent theoreticians from diverse fields, throughout the years; scholars like Mircea Eliade,3 Clifford Geertz,4 Vladimir Propp,5

Mikhail Bakhtin,6 and Joseph Campbell,7 to name but a few. Nevertheless, ethnic writers in

the seventies turned to the wealth of ethnic folklore, in recognition of its place at “the core of the ethnic being” (Banks 130) as Marilyn Sanders Mobley,8 William G. Doty9 and Marcus

Banks10 have contended. Ever since, in a rapidly changing, intensely materialistic world, the

ethnic artist, in the maze of self-ascription, has repeatedly sought the assistance of myth,

ritual and storytelling, the cultural pillars he has instinctively felt certain about and

comfortable with: to reach out into the depths of his ethnic soul, to re-connect with a

distanced cultural past, to be taught, enlightened and guided. On this voyage towards personal

and collective self-representation, the ethnic artist has learned to value and appreciate the

cultural heritage bestowed upon him, and, content and renewed, has declared his ethnic pride.

In this spirit of acknowledgement and appreciation for one’s roots, following their notable counterparts from African-American and Native-American literatures, the likes of Zora Neale

Hurston,11 Tony Morrison, Ishmael Reed, Richard Wright, Audre Lorde, and Leslie Marmon

Silko, ethnic writers like Rudolpho Anaya, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Sandra Cisneros

first, Amy Tan, and Gloria Anzaldúa later, inaugurated a new era in literature. Forever

dissolving the boundaries between mainstream and peripheral writings, ethnic writers wrote

powerful novels that reflected their respective rich and inspiring cultural backgrounds, as

they raised a loud and clear voice of self-assertion, frequently a feminist one, too. Ultimately, 5

through their artistic creations writers from the margins, following the example of inspiring

figures like bell hooks, approached their marginality differently, as a space of choice, teemed

with the spirit of defiance, explosive energy, creativity and inspiration. The limelight that

ethnic writing found itself in trickled down, and, slowly though drastically, transformed the

literary canon, by repeatedly impressing critics, publishers and readership, and securing

innumerable awards and distinctions. In this spirit of pluralism, diversity and homage to

ancestral culture, authors of previously despised “minor” literatures and the likes of Helen

Barolini, Daphne Athas, Stratis Haviaras, and Tony Ardizzone, returned to their own

collective tank of tradition and wisdom to re-discover their ethnic background. They explored

the potentialities of ethnic space and strove to become “cultural archivists” in their turn,

adding the colorful “pebble” of their ethnic story to the mosaic of world history. Irrespective

of the individual approach that transubstantiated a marginalized experience into a work of art,

the overall impact on American literature was, and still is, unique, as these ethnic creations

managed to expand, enrich, and, finally, revive a previously stagnant American canon.12 As a

result, the embracing of ethnic art by the academic world was to be completed by the

oeuvres’ gradual inclusion in university curricula, their ample inclusion in anthologies and

their becoming the topic of research in newly-found prestigious ethnic associations and

societies.

Moreover, as regards the female ethnic artists, their employment of myth, ritual and storytelling was, in many instances saturated by feminist, as well as psychoanalytic, dictates that left a unique mark on works written in decades as turbulent as the 60s and 70s. The influential writings of a multitude of prolific, but also pioneering, scholars such as Hélène

Cixous, Julia Kristeva, Adrienne Rich and Nancy Chodorow radically changed the focus of the female ethnic author. Furthermore, these feminist scholars projected new, innovative ways of viewing, evaluating as well as utilizing ethnic cultural background for the feminist 6

cause. Capturing the feminist aura and incorporating it into their writings, female ethnic

writers of the 70s, 80s and even 90s, as will later be shown, categorically rejected the

teachings of the patriarchal culture. Instead, they attempted to unearth and record the hidden,

formerly effaced, presence of their foremothers. Thus, the suffocating embrace of patriarchy,

male and female role models, in myths and stories, as well as the rewriting of male

mythology in the name of female development and nourishment, have been among the

favorite themes embraced by the female ethnic artist; on their challenging journey towards

self-assertion, doubly burdened by their ethnic status and gender, heroines such as those

generated by Helen Barolini and Daphne Athas, but also Catherine Temma Davidson and

Susan Caperna Lloyd, come to defy the norms set by patriarchy.

Nonetheless, not everything that has occurred in this new “ethnic” era is absolutely

positive: as skeptics rightly underline, the non-conformist heroines of the novels, the initial experimentations of authors with their ethnic tradition in the overall ambiance of pluralism, must not be seen through the rose-colored glasses of idealism, ignoring the novels’ increasing profitability. Thus, the experimentation and originality that characterized the creations of the first decades were sometimes followed by conformity and repetition, as the readers’ acceptance grew, and popularity and marketability increased. What was formerly considered a sketchy mapping of the ethnic experience, with a limited number of “hospitable” publishing houses and a handful of writers, evolved into a vigorous market in the 80s, and climaxed as a literal “goldmine” in the 90s and early 2000s, with profits amounting to mythical sums. As

Fredric Jameson,13 Roland Barthes,14 and Chris Weedon15 emphatically underline, the

flexible framework of postmodernism, with its focus on the margins and the suppressed,

brought to the fore, praised, and came to adore the previously despised immigrant man and

woman, their lives, troubles, and desires. Moreover, following Yiorgos Anagnostou’s

noteworthy remarks, the coming of age of later generations of ethnic readers, for whom the 7

voicing of their ethnic groups was a given, as well as their infiltration into higher education, generated a new, even wider, insatiable reading public (“Metaethnography” 386); what is

more, it also instigated the multiplication of the creators of ethnic origin, who longed to put

their personal story on paper, or record the family history, sometimes to the detriment of the

work’s artistic quality.

The miraculous blooming of the ethnic market in the nineties and early 2000s was certainly

not limited to the field of publishing: indicatively, the film, music, travel, food, clothing and

even furniture industry, are all domains that have been invaded by “the ethnic trend,”

previously considered either crude or kitsch. With blockbuster films such as My Big Fat

Greek Wedding (2002) and popular TV series, like The Sopranos (1999-2007) and Who’s

The Boss? (1984-1992), playing with ethnic stereotypes, pizza parlors and Greek diners, thriving on every other city corner, the Italian Tour for a honeymoon, and Zorba dancing lessons at your office, the “ethnic experience” seems to be spreading fast.16 In this respect,

the plasticity inherent in myth and oral narrative, have been recognized, systematically

employed and adjusted to the dictates of consumerism, used, more or less, as stepping stones

to approach the potential ethnic consumer: reverberating with mythic figures, imprinted with

massively copied ethnic symbols, the range of products and services are immense from key-

rings and stickers, T-shirts, mugs, teddy-bears, to expensive holiday packages, language and

cooking courses, and participation in rituals that follow in the footsteps of ancestors.

On their part, the postmodern man and woman increasingly consider their personal pursuit

of happiness to be linked with the journey towards self-representation, whereby ethnic origins

are inevitably attributed the leading role. Therefore, the ethnic persona of the late twentieth

and early twenty-first century, though temporally and spatially distanced from his or her

ethnic home, often counting more than three generations of separation from the country of

origin, is still, or at least sees himself, haunted by the need to return to his ancestral 8

homeland. Following the traditional American motif, the Old World is equated with

spirituality, history and meaning, imbued with culture, tradition and centuries of wisdom.

Zygmunt Bauman correctly points out that when the hectic living conditions and the

intellectual, spiritual and emotional dead ends prove to be unbearable, the affluent

postmodern ethnic can be left disoriented and helpless (180). Then, he may become easy prey

in the hands of the marketing wizards who sell self-fulfillment in the “package” of the home

country experience. As he is taught to see the Old World through misty eyes, the postmodern

ethnic consumer is encouraged to connect the ancestral hearth with the mystical values and

ideals he longs to experience in his everyday reality. To this end, the vestiges of the Old

culture he has inherited, are projected as passports to this unknown and mystic world. While

myth, ritual and storytelling are insidiously employed for the promotion of consumption, the ethnic persona, accustomed to straightforward and fast solutions, is led, by popular novels like Davidson’s and Lloyd’s, to expect miraculous changes in his self-perception and emotional state, as a result of his “return” to his ethnic origins.

Inevitably, a key question is raised: How do the Italian-American and Greek-American

literatures perform this “return” to their respective homelands? At this point, a brief overview of the two ethnic literatures discussed in this comparative project is deemed essential.

III. Of Ethnic Scholarship

a. In Italian-Americana

The non initiate’s question “Who are the Italian-American authors and scholars?” is easily

satisfied by reference to Mario Puzzo and his widely popular novel as well as the films based

on it, The Godfather (1969). Fortunately, Italian-American cultural production has been

endowed with artists and works that underline its presence, before and after Puzzo’s Mafia-

centered works. Among the most prominent figures is, indubitably, Pietro Di Donato, whose 9

allegorical novel Christ in Concrete outshone John Steinbeck’s now classic work, The Grapes

of Wrath in 1939, along with novelist and script writer John Fanté, whose The Bandini

Quartet17 is now deemed as one of the monumental American novels of the twentieth century. Revealing the Calabrian immigration story, Garibaldi M. Lapolla and his saga The

Grand Gennaro (1935) stills fascinates readers with its reprinting in 2009. On the female

front, prominent figures in twentieth century letters, like Diane Di Prima of the Beatnik

movement, have extensively discussed their strict Italian background, through poetry and non-fiction, a recurrent theme in Di Prima’s work. However, numerous are those whose

Italian origins are still not well-known regardless of their brilliant work in academia and art, given their anglicized last names, figures like Sandra Gilbert18, and Frances Winwar.19

Gathering important works written by authors of Italian origin, Rose Basile Green, academic and poet, with her study The Italian American Novel: A Document of the Interaction of Two

Cultures (1974) was among the first who fervently worked for the acceptance and inclusion

of literary works of the Italian-Americana in the literary canon. Moreover, Helen Barolini has

been characterized as the matriarch of female Italian-American literature, for her essential

contribution to its first faltering steps with the publication of her family saga Umbertina

(1979), as well as her milestone anthology of female Italian-American writers, entitled The

Dreambook (1985). The late 1980s and early 1990s, with the heightened interest in ethnic

studies, rediscovered authors from the past, such as Jerry Mangione (Mount Allegro, 1943),

Marion Benasutti (No Steady Job for Papa, 1966) and Mari Tomasi (Like Lesser Gods,

1949). They also brought to the forefront promising artists and scholars: Tina De Rosa and her autobiographical Paper Fish (1980), Giosephine Gattuso Hendin with her critical work as

well as literary creation The Right Thing to Do (1999), Dorothy Bryant, novelist, essayist and

playwright, writer of the powerful Miss Giardino (1976) among others, Louise De Salvo

memoirist, and essay writer of Vertigo (1997) and Crazy in the Kitchen (2005), Marianna 10

Torgovnick, academic, essayist and writer of Crossing Ocean Parkway (1997) and Maria

Mazziotti Gillan, essayist and author of numerous poetry collections.

On the purely critical front, the Italophile scholar William Boelhower, and his noteworthy

scholarly work, his numerous publications of essays and studies on Italian-American literature, such as the important Immigrant Autobiography in the United States. Four

Versions of the Italian-American Self (1982), laid the foundations for a critical study of this

ethnic literature. Additionally, scholars from the bosom of the Italian-American immigrant community, like Fred L.Gardaphé, Anthony Tamburri and Paolo Giordano, with their study

From the Margin: Writings in Italian-Americana (2000), discussed and promoted several

works of the specific ethnic literature; Gardaphé, with his long and energetic presence as a

teacher, critic and writer, has brought to the fore the works of his fellow ethnic authors, and

with both art and scholarly work he has contributed to attracting the interest of other ethnic

scholars in the field of Italian-Americana. Alongside Gardaphé, the inspiring presence of

Robert Viscusi, with his diverse essays and, namely, his study Buried Caesars (2006),

explores prevalent themes in Italian-American literature. Placing emphasis on the

interweavings between gender and ethnicity in Italian Americana, Mary Jo Bona, with her

articles, essays, and important studies, and Edvige Giunta, with her persistent research and

teaching of works by Italian-American female authors, contribute to the proliferation of

female ethnic scholarship. Finally, the conclusion of this list should by no means omit two

significant scholars from the fields of sociology and history, respectively: Donna Gabaccia

and Stefano Luconi who continue to unearth thought-provoking aspects of the Italian

immigrant life in America.

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b. The Greek-American Field

Indubitably, interest in the Greek-American immigration story and culture significantly

increased in the early 2000s, given all the publicity that was gained by the 2002 Pulitzer Prize winner Middlesex, written by Jeffrey Eugenides, an American author of Greek origin.

Though not intentionally focusing on issues of ethnic identity Eugenides’ artistry, along with

two well-known films of the decade, the 2002 blockbuster low-budget comedy My Big Fat

Greek Wedding (Zwick 2002), and the 2004 international production Brides, (Voulgaris

2004) on the voyage of Greek picture brides to America, placed Greek-American studies in a certain limelight, and inaugurated a new era, pregnant with hope.

Clearly, however, 1984 appears to be a milestone for Greek-American literature, since this is the year in which Greek-American works of fiction were gathered and systematically grouped, through Yiorgos Kalogeras’ methodic approach. As Kalogeras underlines, little was known to the wider public before the Second World War, as regards this literature, due to language limitations, the lack of English translations and the writers’ focus on culture- specific themes (“Greek-American Literature” 254). Among the most precocious authors,

Kalogeras distinguishes Demetra Vaka-Brown, a prolific writer whose fourteen novels examine the female position in the Orient, Konstantinos Kazantzes, a short-story writer, exploring the home-country background and Theano Papazoglou-Margaris. According to

Kalogeras, Theano Papazoglou-Margaris was the first to explore the Greek immigration story, though her refusal to have her works translated into English during her lifetime was detrimental to their popularity among the wider non-Greek public (“Greek-American

Literature” 255-256). After the Second World War, nonetheless, Kalogeras notes that more and more writers came to the fore, figures as prominent as the feminist poet Olga Broumas and her collection Beginning with O (1977), as well as the famous journalist and author,

Nicholas Gage, and his novel Eleni (1984), which unraveled his mother’s story of execution 12

in the Civil War (“Greek-American Literature” 256). Moreover, the poet and writer Stratis

Haviaras deploys his experience as a child during the Second World War and the Civil War

that followed, through his war trilogy When the Tree Sings (1979), The Heroic Age (1984)

and Porfyro kai Mavro Nima (‘Scarlet and Black Thread’, 2007). With variety characterizing

their works, writers of Greek ethnic origin depict their experiences in both Worlds, Old and

New, revolving around topics as diverse as family life in the New World, in Ariadne

Thompson’s The Octagonal Heart (1956), the return to Greece and female self-

representation, in Daphne Athas’s Greece by Prejudice (1963), but also Cora (1978), and

Elias Kulukundis’ The Feasts of Memory (2003); the interconnections between culture and

identity are also explored in Nicholas Flokos and his Nike (2000) and the coming of age of a

young Greek girl during the Civil War, through Irini Spanidou and God’s Snake (1986).

On the theoretical and meta-novelistic front, in discussing the works of artists of Greek-

American ancestry, apart from Yiorgos Kalogeras20, Dan Georgakas21, academic, author and

scholar, approaches Greek-American literature with the sensitivity of the insider; at the same

time, Yiorgos Anagnostou22, a Greek scholar transplanted to America, demonstrates his

interest, through his laborious works in the field of ethnography; Maria Kotsaftis23, from the site of comparative literature, has offered her critical eye on Greek-American literature. On the other side of the Atlantic, in Sweden, Vicky Johnson Gatzouras24 approaches the Greek-

American family in the immigrant novels throughout the years with a special interest on

gender and identity, while in the Greek motherland, Ioanna Laliotou25 explores the historical

aspects of the Greek-America; simultaneously, Theodora Tsimpouki26 places emphasis on

gender issues and identity in Greek-American politics, while Anastasia Stefanidou27 brings into light Greek-American poets, and Eleftheria Arapoglou28 examines ethnic space in relation to identity.

13

IV. The Current Thesis

My thesis aims to examine the challenging journey towards the ethnic persona’s self- definition, mostly female but also male, as well as the changing perception of ethnic space in contemporary Greek-American and Italian-American novels, as this is approached through the media of myth, ritual and storytelling, in novels mostly written by third generation authors.29 At this point, it should be clarified that the interpretation of the term “ethnic space” in my thesis is rather wide and refers both to the spatial, geographical and socio-cultural entity of the home country, as well as its diverse manifestations in the tenement, ghetto and even suburbs of the New World, depending on the whereabouts of the characters. In this sense, ethnic space is an apparently elusive concept, at times identified as feelings towards the ancestral homeland and its culture, or the space, literal and metaphorical, occupied by the ethnic persona in the host country. In my discussion, however, ethnic space is generally closely connected with the configuration of ethnic identity. In particular, my analysis, inspired by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s famous dictum on minor literatures that

“everything in them is political” (Kafka 17) attempts to answer two questions: how is the journey to self-definition, as well as the formation of subjectivity, connected with the recourse to ethnic space, that is to ethnic cultural pools, in each of the novels examined? And, to what extent are these two elements affected by the constantly changing framework of social, historical and economic conditions, covering two decades? My comparative critical study focuses on the specific ethnic authors’ return to the ancestral hearth, whether literal or metaphorical, and the diverse routes these authors rely on, so as to depict the voyage to self- realization, as well as ethnic identification. My approach sheds light on the limitations imposed on the characters as a result of their ethnicity, their gender, which is essentially prominent in the case of the five heroines, or even the historical setting; it also considers the modes through which the writers manage, or even, fail, to fulfill their mission to achieve self- 14

completion. In almost all of the cases, the recourse to ethnic cultural wealth is deemed

invaluable by the authors themselves.

a. Comparing and Contrasting

In contrast to the growing interest in ethnicity and minority literatures, comparative

approaches to literary products of diverse ethnic groups are rather scarce. Joint studies of the

closely affiliated Greek-American and Italian-American literatures are still in their infancy,

with very few names of authors available:30 Yiorgos Kalogeras,31 Maria Kotsaftis, and

Edvige Giunta.32 To my knowledge, a study based on a comparative examination of Italian-

American and Greek-American literature is, unfortunately, still something of a novelty in the field of ethnic studies. It is my firm belief that the juxtaposed examination of contemporary novels of the two ethnic groups liberates them from their respective insularity, their limited, and often biased, self-examination, which often results in their ethnic mystification. Instead, a comparative examination can be extremely fruitful since it provides both literatures with the next step in their development, a broader context in which to assess their strengths and weaknesses.

My intention from the outset of this research has been to explore, and attempt to chart, the

common ground between the two literatures, with the hope, and ambition, to assist in their

better understanding and appreciation within the context of ethnic studies, as well as in the

framework of their respective cultural communities. My readings of the six chapters follow

Susan Bassnett’s teachings in which, among other things, the British scholar claims that the

model of comparative literature is “one that reconsiders key questions of cultural identity,

literary canons, the political implications of cultural influence […]” (Comparative 41). I

believe that this comparative approach to the literatures of the specific ethnic groups sheds

light on the commonalities in the experiences of the ethnic subject, mostly female in the 15

chapters that follow, and underscores the overarching political framework that shapes their

lives and future, at every historical turn. Clearly, a comparative approach to American ethnic

literatures of Greek and Italian ancestry, is all the more fruitful, given the geographical

proximity, the cultural affiliation33 and the comparable historical courses, marked by enemy

invasion, deprivation, backwardness and oppression that afflicted Greece on the one hand,

following four centuries under Ottoman rule, and, on the other, the social inequality and

destitution in the Italian South. This common background of ignorance, indigence and

illiteracy justifies and explains all the more, the vital role attributed to folklore by first

generation immigrants in both traditions. Thus, as the comparative analysis will demonstrate

the detrimental powers of patriarchy are the common enemy for the heroines of both Greek and Italian origin, in Chapters 2, 3 and 4, who inevitably repeat their Old World prescribed roles in the New World, intensifying their displacement in the conflicting dual realities they

experience: conservative ethnic home, as opposed to liberal society. Moreover, comparative

readings of the novels underscore the central role of personal agency and dynamism for the

heroines in the seventies, Chapters 1 and 2, as these desired female attributes, further

strengthened by the traditions of the home country and the harsh realities that the heroines

encounter in the old world, are the goals of second wave feminism. Nevertheless, as the

novels of the nineties foreground, in Chapters 3 and 4, their respective third generation ethnic

heroines succumb to the omnipresent powers of consumerism, to tame their spiritual hunger

and disorientation, while they rush to protect their individuality under the umbrella of ethnic identity. Their common neo-colonial stance vis à vis their ethnic background, in which they are depicted as American travelers to the Old World, confirm Susan Bassnett’s arguments on the lack of innocence of the travel writer, as far as the production of the text is concerned

(Comparative 99). Finally, the discussion on the usage of storytelling by the two final male

authors and their male characters in Chapters 5 and 6, transcends temporal limitations, since 16

it disregards the twenty years that divide the novels; instead, through storytelling, the two

authors come to underline ethnic space as a site of explosive energy and rebellion, following

Edward Soja’s theories.

b. The Six Ethnic Novels

The aim in the first four chapters of my thesis is to discuss the multifaceted, transient

stance of the heroines towards ethnic space, as this is sketched in the respective novels, which

cover the last two decades of the twentieth century. In particular, with this thesis, I am

interested in the range of affiliations vis à vis ethnic space: from total rejection of ethnic

background, to mystification and enchantment, depending on the individual temporal and

spatial contexts. In this respect, particular emphasis is placed on the role of gender and ethnic

identification as driving forces, influencing the heroines’ considerations of ethnic space

during their painful journey towards self-definition. Admittedly, attraction to ethnic culture

imbues all four female novels examined in this doctoral thesis, and, inevitably, justifies the

ample discussion devoted to such. Of particular interest, in two of the novels, Davidson’s and

Lloyd’s, is the ethnic persona’s growing interest in local color, folklore and mythology, with

an emphasis on the latter’s creatively and often humorously rewritten versions, to

accommodate feminist theoretical approaches.

The first section, chapters 1 and 2, examines two novels of the seventies: Helen Barolini’s

Umbertina (1979) and Daphne Athas’s Cora (1978), two books that graphically record the

development of the female characters that populate them, the heroines’ course towards self- realization and the role of ethnic space in this journey. Thus, whereas Cora’s author, as a

second generation Greek-American, depicts ethnic space through the prism of mystification and unveils the transformative powers of the author’s country of origin on the WASP middle aged heroine, Umbertina, as a female family saga, embraces a rather pragmatic approach 17

supporting hybridity and female initiative. Moreover, Barolini regards the relation to ethnic

space as intergenerational, diachronic and protean, ultimately indicating the importance of

personal agency and female dynamism. Furthermore, twenty years later, in the nineties, in the

so-called era of post-feminism, Catherine Temma Davidson’s The Priest Fainted (1998) and

Susan Caperna Lloyd’s No Pictures in My Grave (1992), portray heroines still bewildered as

to their roles as women of ethnic origin, who feel forced to return to the home country for

spirituality and nourishment. Enveloped in the theoretical armory of feminism, the

protagonists in the third and fourth chapters of this second section envisage ethnic space with

a similar “haughty” air of Orientalism, aiming to “conquer” the country of origin; as they relish the opportunity to confirm their Western World dynamism, they anthologize only those

cultural elements of the homeland that they feel can accommodate their late-capitalist needs.

In particular, in the first chapter, I argue that, to celebrate her ethnic cultural background,

Daphne Athas returns to the ancestral homeland, both literally as well as metaphorically,

aiming to portray the mystifying ethnic site enveloped in centuries of mythology and

ancestral wisdom. Assisted by theories from gender studies and psychoanalysis, I follow

Cora’s wanderings in Greece in the company and erotic embrace of Don, a younger man of

Greek origin, and her gradual development and liberation from the fetters of WASP middle- class widowhood and motherhood. Particular emphasis is placed on the climatic pages of the heroine’s evolution, to reveal her complete transformation, in her open-air prison. Using as a theoretical springboard the diverse philosophical approaches to the concept of primary space, chora, here mostly Platonic and Kristevan, I argue that behind the drastic changes the middle- aged American heroine, Cora, experiences in her life and, most importantly, in her self- perception, Athas underscores the catalytic role of Greece, as a site of transformation.

Imprisoned in this powerful locale, Cora is able to accept and exploit the stimuli suffusing the

Greek locus, contrary to her younger Greek-American partner, who is too self-consumed and 18

immature to appreciate it. Resorting to the postcolonial perception of ethnic space, that

theoreticians like Edward Soja, bell hooks, Henri Lefebvre and Michel Foucault have

approached and depicted as a site of subversion and defiance, I argue that, through Cora’s

metamorphosis, consideration and empowerment, Athas comes to shatter the formerly delimiting horizons of the ethnic locale and identity, by demonstrating its depth and

potentiality.

More pragmatic and analytical in her approach to ethnic space, compared to Athas’s

mystified view and depiction of the ethnic homeland in the first chapter, the matriarch of

Italian-American letters, Helen Barolini, in her four-generation-female family saga

Umbertina, records the troubled course of the Southern Italian woman from Calabria to the

States. Thus, Barolini unravels the female journey towards emancipation, as the woman of

ethnic ancestry constantly negotiates her place in the universe of often opposing Old and New

World forces. Even though both ethnic authors, Athas and Barolini, embark on their ventures

with almost the same intentions, to realize the belated and encumbered female journey to

self-definition, Barolini’s story, engendering four generations of women of Calabrian

ancestry, the Longobardis, places emphasis on the shifting allegiance to ethnic space and,

finally, underscores the importance of a dynamic female agent. Thus, following Barolini’s

narrative, I discuss the four generations of the Longobardi women, their perceptions of their

remote ancestral home, and, consequently, their ethnic identity, as both are constantly

reconfigured according to the family’s living conditions as well as the overarching

sociopolitical framework. While the first two generations sever their ties with the ethnic

space, aspiring to an American life, Marguerite’s restless nature, as a third generation

immigrant, revives the interest in the unknown home country. Echoing the idealism of the

sixties the heroine mystifies the remote Calabrian village, as the hearth where her legendary

grandmother originates without ever managing to reach it. My close reading of the heroine’s 19

adventures follows and unravels the feminist and psychoanalytic projections that Barolini

adds to Marguerite’s story. It is through the fourth generation of Longobardi women and

Tina, which Barolini re-establishes the lost balance in her protagonists’ radical consideration

of ethnic space. Offering itself to feminist and postcolonial theories, Tina’s account reveals a

young woman proud of her origins, though down-to-earth; while she cherishes her ethnic

background, she assumes full responsibility for her own self-completion, aiming successfully

to combine personal life and a demanding career.

The consideration of ethnic space as envisaged in the ethnic woman’s journey towards

self-realization, assisted through ethnic myth and folklore this time, constitutes the core of the

third and fourth chapters of my thesis: the Greek-American Bildungsroman, The Priest

Fainted (1998) by Catherine Temma Davidson and the spiritual memoir, No Pictures In My

Grave (1992), by the Italian-American Susan Caperna Lloyd. Recognizing the close relation

of the two works with the travelogue, I examine them as records of their respective authors’

“pilgrimage” to the ancestral homeland; furthermore, I note their explorations in the ethnic

cultural archive, as their extensive references to myth, ritual and ethnic cuisine reveal. Thus, through first person narrations both authors comment on the process of self-definition that their respective protagonists undergo in their country of origin, solely assisted by their feminist beliefs and their personal interest in mythology and ritual. With their triumphant conclusions and their heroines’ successful and definitive completion of the journey to self- representation, however, I contend that Davidson and Lloyd appear to satisfy the aspirations of a reader content with easy, happy endings.

In The Priest Fainted, the author’s configuration of ethnic space is projected through

angles as diverse as the travelogue, rewritten mythology, recipes and a young woman’s sexual awakening, aspects that I consider carefully in the third chapter. As the young woman retraces her roots in Greece, she comes to view her ethnic background more realistically, 20

embracing, however, as I argue, a dual identity, American and Greek, whose components she

appears to believe she can successfully invoke at will. The novel’s inclusion of feminist

rewritten myths that reflect the narrator’s family stories are mostly seen from their popular

and humorous side; additionally, the colorful recipes along with the spicy love stories of three

generations of ethnic women, succeed in engaging the reader till the end. Based on post-

feminist theoreticians, as well as critics of the late capitalist era, I examine the framework of

the late nineties, the market conditions and the state of the feminist movement. I thus claim

that the employment of myth, amply used in the film and television industry, besides

appealing to the reader’s imagination, oversimplifies, in the case of The Priest Fainted, a more complicated as well as serious issue: the ethnic woman’s self-representation and her perception of ethnic space.

On a similar note, in Susan Caperna Lloyd’s spiritual memoir, the narrator’s consideration of ethnic space through her love for Sicilian folklore, which is ritual, mythology and diverse sites and ruins intrigues my reading. Clearly, Lloyd’s novel depicts a parallel situation to that of Davidson’s, since in this case too, the bewildered and dissatisfied ethnic narrator finds solace in the spiritual bosom of Sicily. My approach to Lloyd’s visits and sojourns in Sicily considers the late postmodern anxiety many bourgeois Western females experience, and, most importantly, I ponder over the respective remedy offered: the promotion of the “home country” experience, the delight in savoring the Italian travels that unveils the consumerist ethos of the narrator’s era. Closely following the narrator’s experiences in diverse settings, I detect the heroine’s high-handed attitude to her “bonded” Sicilian sisters. Content in her symbolic acceptance as an initiate in the rituals along with the men, the narrator stops worrying about the female position in Sicily, from which she was largely exempt, given her

American passport. Like Davidson’s narrator, she believes in a dual identity, the components of which she utilizes to fall back on, depending on the context. 21

The final section of my thesis differs from the foregoing since it does not revolve around

the theme of female self-representation. Utilizing two novels written by male authors, Stratis

Haviaras and Tony Ardizzone, I break away from the exclusive attention to a feminist

approach, and view the conceptualization of ethnic space as this is unraveled by the powerful

narrative mode of storytelling. In fact, I claim that the embedded stories the diverse characters tell in both novels depict the ethnic personae that feature in them as resilient and defiant agents; overcoming the twenty years that separate them, both novels come to underwrite the surviving powers of the oral narrative, and portray the diachronic character of ethnic space as a site of rebelliousness and anti-conformism.

More specifically, in the fifth chapter of this thesis, Stratis Haviaras follows the role of

ethnic space and folklore in the process of a young boy’s identity formation. Though never

explicit about his temporal and spatial setting, in this autobiographical story Haviaras

outpours his personal traumatic experiences in Greece at the Second World War and the

ensuing Civil War, and constantly underlines the empowering role of ethnic culture. On a

parallel to Daphne Athas’s Cora, and her philosophical and mythological allusions, I view

Haviaras as more interested in lore, focusing on legend and the subversive powers of the

puppet theatre, Karaghiozes. My reading of Haviaras’ novel, regards these cultural elements

projected as life-giving forces, constantly employed to provide the young narrator with important lessons in political education, with traits such as resilience, bravery, and historical continuity. Exploring aspects of the post-colonial and post-modern theoretical framework on subaltern folklore and history, I closely observe the uses of storytelling, and the overall importance attributed to ethnic culture in When The Tree Sings, parameters that remain

central for the boy’s process of identity construction. I thus conclude that, through his powerful storytelling, Haviaras voices the subaltern’s story in most adverse conditions and manages to project a personal story as “alternative” collective history. 22

Similarly, my reading of Tony Ardizzone’s novel In the Garden of Papa Santuzzu, is imbued with the author’s attempt to record and project Sicilian-American history, viewing it kaleidoscopically, through the different prisms of his numerous narrative voices, which transcend generations. My chapter on this Sicilian-American novel focuses on two of the author’s chapters in this frame-tale narrative, Gaetanu and Teresa’s tales, two stories that center around life in Sicily, immigration and Sicilian-American participation in early twentieth century socialist activity, both male and female. In this sense, my interest lies in the multifarious ways in which the two chapters incorporate storytelling and, assisted by the potential of magic realism, present again ethnic space as a site of potentiality and subversion.

To this end, I closely follow the colorful embedded stories Ardizzone includes, with topics as diverse as the children’s socialist indoctrination, the revelation of the immigrants’ ordeals, women’s seclusion in Sicily and female participation in the socialist struggles. Interweaving in my analysis corresponding theories on the different topics that Ardizzone touches upon, as well as parallel works of fiction, ethnic or otherwise, I argue that this mosaic of the Sicilian-

American experience of immigration, like Haviaras’ traumatic story, should also be read as

“alternative” history.

In closing, before embarking on the labor of a detailed analysis of each individual novel and the respective considerations of ethnic space, it should be stressed once again that the current thesis is a first comparative attempt to bring together contemporary novels by authors of Italian and Greek ancestry in America. As such, it aspires to be regarded as a small contribution to the vast, intricate and fascinating field of ethnic studies. It is the doctoral candidate’s hope that her work could act as another springboard for a fertile comparative analysis of the two ethnic literatures, an exciting new voyage, and a “re-turn” to two neighboring homelands, Greece and Italy.

23

Notes

1 In an interesting approach to the connections between identity and art, Mike Crang mentions the term “genius loci” “the unique spirit of a place” (108). According to Crang, “if the meaning of place extends beyond the visible, beyond the evident into the realms of emotion and feeling then one answer may be turning to literature or the arts as being ways people can express these meanings” (108).

2 As Mike Crang reminds, “Countless stories go on to suggest that returns are rarely unproblematic. Indeed modern stories often suggest how things can never be as they were before. The notion of ‘home’ created through this structure might be called a retrospective fiction-a nostalgic looking back on what has been lost” (48).

3 For Eliade see Images and Symbols: Studies in Religious Symbolism (1991).

4 For Geerzt see The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (1973).

5 For Propp see Theory and History of Folklore (1984).

6 For Bakhtin see The Dialogic Imagination (1988).

7 For Campbell see The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1972).

8 See Folk Roots and Mythic Wings in Sarah Orne Jewett and Toni Morrison: The Cultural Function of

Narrative (1991).

9 See Myth: A Handbook (2004).

10 See Ethnicity: Anthropological Constructions (2004).

11 Zora Neale Hurston died in the 60s. Her literary value, however, was recognized posthumously.

12 Moreover, the increased interest of the reader in previously marginalized authors even found satisfaction in the discovery and revaluation of older fascinating works that had initially been neglected, such as those by

Anzia Yezierska or Mary Antin.

13 Indicatively, for Jameson see The Cultural Turn: Selected Writings on the Postmodern, 1983-1998 (1998), and The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (1983).

14 For Barthes see Mythologies (2000).(

15 For Weedon see Feminism, Theory and Politics of Difference (1999).

16 In his important recent study Contours of White Ethnicity, 2009 Yiorgos Anagnostou underlines, among other interesting points, the uniformity and homogenization that the commodification of ethnicity procures (8).

17 The Bandini Quartet consists of four novels: Wait Until Spring, Bandini (1938), The Road to Los Angeles

(1985), Ask the Dust (1939), and Dreams from Bunker Hill (1982). 24

18 Among other important works, Sandra Gilbert has co-authored, along with Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic (1979), a landmark for feminist studies.

19 Frances Winwar, née Francesca Vinciguerra in Taormina, Sicily, was a book reviewer, novelist, translator and biographer, well-known in the first half of the twentieth century.

20 See Works Cited.

21 See Georgakas’ and Moskos’ New Directions in Greek-American Studies (1991).

22 See Works Cited.

23 Indicatively see “Between Scylla and Charybdis: Greek American Persephones in Helen Papanikolas’s The

Time of The Little Black Bird” (2003)

24 See her unpublished dissertation in Works Cited.

25 See Transatlantic Subjects: Acts of Migration and Cultures of Transnationalism between Greece and America

(2004).

26 See Works Cited.

27 See Stefanidou’s dissertation Ethnic and Diaspora Poets of Greek-America (2001).

28 Indicatively see “Identity Configuration and Ideological Manipulation in Nicholas Gage’s A Place for Us”

(2005)

29 Of the six novelists, Barolini, Ardizzone, Lloyd, and Davidson are third generation immigrants. Haviaras is first generation and Athas second.

30 Notably the 2000 AIHA conference, entitled “Greece and Italy: Ancient Roots and New Beginnings, 9-11

November 2000,” Lowell, Massachusetts with the comparison between the two cultures, had very few comparative approaches basically focusing on the ancient common course of the two cultures. Among the very few, the historian Stefano Luconi examines American politics in the mid-twentieth century and the controversy between the two ethnic communities competing for Nixon’s favour. For more information see “Little Italy’ vs.

‘Little Greece’: The Selection of Richard Nixon’s 1968 Running Mate” (13-23), Editors Mario Aste, Sheryl

Lynn Postman, Michael Pierson, University of Massachusetts Lowell, AIHA Volume 33, 2004.

31 Kalogeras is currently doing research on the interconnections between Greek-American and Italian-American film.

32 For Greek mythology and Italian writing see Giunta’s essay “Persephone’s Daughters”. 25

33 The reading of Davidson’s and Lloyd’s books, and especially the Persephone myth, recall once again common cultural threads, since Greek mythology and ritual of the Greek Pantheon were incorporated into

Roman culture.

PART I

(DE)MYSTIFIED ETHNIC SPACE: NOVELS OF THE SEVENTIES

26

Chapter 1

The Return to the Self and the Mystified Homeland: Daphne Athas’s Cora (1978)

I write the myths in me,

the myths I am, the myths I want to become.

The word, the image and the feeling have a

palatable energy, a kind of power.

Gloria Anzaldúa The aim of this first section and its two chapters is to examine two novels of the seventies:

Helen Barolini’s Umbertina (1979) and Daphne Athas’s Cora (1978), both of which depict the development of the female characters that populate them, which is the heroines’ painful course towards self-realization and the important role of ethnic space. Thus, while Athas initially approaches ethnic space through the prism of mystification, she concludes by underlining the potential for personal transformation and empowerment that stems from the resilient WASP heroine and her inner struggles. On the other hand, Barolini through her female family saga, projects a constantly changing and intergenerational, realistic conception of the ethnic background underlining hybridity and again placing emphasis on female personal agency.

I. Daphne Athas: From the American South to the Peloponnese and Back

Daphne Athas’s long journey through artistic creation reflects the diverse cultural backgrounds she has been nurtured in. Born in 1923, the daughter of a Greek-American father and a New Englander, Athas was transplanted into the vibrant American South at the tender age of 15. Athas’s four published novels The Weather of the Heart (1947), The Fourth

World (1956), Entering Ephesus (1971) and Cora (1978), along with her travel memoir

Greece by Prejudice (1963), her poetry collection Crumbs for the Bogeyman (1991), her

“maverick language book” Gram-O-Rama: Breaking the Rules (2007), and the plays she has co-authored, all mirror her diverse talents and her wide range of interests. Recipient of 27

numerous awards and honors for artistic merit,1 Athas has studiously imparted her art to

numerous eager students2 of the Creative Writing Program, at the University of North

Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she has taught since 1968.

Though an acknowledged writer of the American South,3 Athas has repeatedly proved her

esteem for and appreciation of her Greek descent. In particular, two of her books are situated

in and dedicated to the Greek homeland: the travel memoir Greece by Prejudice (1963), with her impressions of her visits to Greece in the mid-fifties, and Cora (1978), a challenging

novel, interweaving mythology, history and fiction, based on the aforementioned travel memoir. Winner of the Sir Walter Raleigh award in 1978, Cora pays homage to the

mythological, philosophical and historical Greek legacy of the author, while it unveils its

heroes’ adventures in Greece in 1971 that is, during the hardest year of the seven-year-

military dictatorship (1967-1974).

II. Cora (1978): the Storyline

Athas initiates her story with the young American soldier of Greek origin, Don Tsambalis,

who, being in Naples, Italy, accepts to deliver a christening gift when he visits Greece.

Returning to his father’s homeland, the young motherless man is in search of an intense

experience, either spiritual or sensual, which he calls “the search for the Goddess.” There

Don encounters the enigmatic middle-aged American widow, Cora, herself on a quest for

self-definition. When he thinks he discerns in Cora the mother he never knew, Don decides to

search with her for vestiges of the obscure Goddess. Postponing his errand, to deliver the

christening gift, Don finds himself pursued by the police and implicated in a murder.

Engrossed in their affair and wanderings, Cora and Don are finally seized by the police who

torture Don and imprison Cora. With his sexual potency endangered due to the tortures he is

subjected to by the police, Don cannot wait to be reunited with Cora; simultaneously, Cora 28

undergoes a complete physical and emotional metamorphosis in her outdoor prison, evolving

into a dynamic, assertive, and wiser woman. At the end of the novel, Don manages to free the

American woman, and, along with her, they flee the country. The ambiguous end to the novel finds the two heroes in the States, far from the life threatening adventures they experienced in

the Mediterranean; Don regains his virility and, in a brief reunion with Cora, becomes certain

of her mental instability.

III. In the Swirl of the Mystical Ethnic Space

With respect and pride for her ethnic heritage, Daphne Athas endows her novel, Cora

(1978), with numerous intricate mythological and philosophical references. A

Bildungsroman, with notable influences from the travelogue genre, the detective story and the author’s psychoanalytic readings, Cora is indeed a challenging novel4 for anyone attempting

a close reading. Undoubtedly, the intricacy of the author’s writing calls the examination of

her work from diverse perspectives some of which I discuss in the ensuing pages. Weaving

the complicated fabric of her story with threads as diverse as the Greek political landscape, ancient Greek grandeur and Greek contemporary culture, Daphne Athas, though constantly and playfully evasive, indubitably foregrounds the spiritual uplift a trip to Greece offers. The heroine, “searching for her core5 self” (Cox 42), initially denies the position “assigned” to her

as a respectable mother and widow, in the first part of the novel, and seems to transgress her

designated role in life, with her intense sexual encounters with Don, a young man her son’s

age. Nonetheless, Cora’s irrevocable departure from her former self occurs in the solitude of

her open air prison, somewhere in Greece, where Athas relates the heroine’s complete

physical and spiritual transformation. Clearly alluding to the well-known Greek myth, the

naïve, though middle-aged, Kore of the beginning of the novel descends to the Underworld of

the Greek wilderness, only to return a new woman, full of self-confidence and wisdom. In the 29

obscure embrace of the mystical Greek spatial and historical setting, Athas projects Cora’s

unique external and internal metamorphosis, comparing it and contrasting it to Don’s meager

development in his torture chamber, as a result of his single-dimensional personality and the

trauma of his childhood years. With this interesting reversal of the roles, the WASP female

initiate is the one who benefits more from the contact with the Greek cultural depository. On

the contrary, the self-consumed male ethnic character, here represented by Don, proves to be

short-sighted and rigid. In this way, Athas emphatically points towards ethnicity and its

cultural wealth for the answers postmodern wanderers seek in their identity quests; at the

same time she reinstates her allegiance to the mother country, alongside the diverse ethnic

writers of the seventies.

Delving deeper into Athas’s novel, the focal point of my argumentation in this chapter is

Cora’s unique transformation during her imprisonment: through this “cosmic experience,” as

Athas characterizes it, I consider that, beyond the two heroes, the real protagonist in Athas’s

novel is the Greek chora, as the pun on Cora’s name suggests. Through constant allusions,

chora as the focal element of the sea, Cora’s open-air prison, and, synecdochally, Greece of

the seventies, are presented as a mythical and mystical topos “filled with historicality and

sociality, with historical and social as well as spatial ‘determinations’” (Soja, Thirdspace

171). Considered the birthplace of philosophy and mythology, Greece is perceived as a site of

transformation, “a luminous landscape that affects deeply the book’s formal and thematic

concerns” as Yiorgos Kalogeras emphatically states (Between Two Worlds 174). Ultimately,

Cora’s first person narrative from her confinement, seen through the impact of the Platonic or

the Kristevan chora6 relates the woman’s re-configuration of her identity as a resilient,

assertive, artistic woman. Grafting life-changing qualities onto a site of suffering, Athas

manages to transform a site of oppression into a magical and powerful locale, a unique

interstice of infinite possibilities, to be explored and exploited for one’s self-evolution 30

following Cora’s example. In this respect, the author pays allegiance to the postcolonial Third

Space, a most inspiring and radical site in which, like the heroine, the oppressed shatters the

pre-fabricated notion of self, a locus where predetermined notions of identity are contested,

reformulated and enriched.

IV. The Political Greek Underworld: the Colonels’ Junta (1967-1974)

At this point, an overview of the temporal framework within which Cora and Don’s

adventures take place is deemed necessary: the novel unfolds in 1971, the most difficult year in the seven–year–dictatorship that dawned in the early hours of 21st April 1967. On that

night, Greeks were surprised to see tanks moving in the streets of Athens where democratic

elections were to take place in just one month; such an outcome would have finally

terminated a turbulent period of political instability with a clear socialist victory. On the

pretext of preventing the “Red Threat,” that is, communist domination of Greece, the group

of CIA-trained colonels assumed total political control in Greece. They immediately halted all democratic procedures, imprisoned political leaders and exiled intellectuals, artists and

any potential dissenters.7 The regime, lead mostly by the shadowy figure of colonel Yeorgios

Papadopoulos, condensed its beliefs in the triptych patris-thriskeia-oikogeneia, that is “home country-religion-family.” Furthermore, it expressed its supporters’ ultra conservative and nationalistic credos through obstinate, sterile devotion to the ancient culture, and a fervent rejection of all foreign influence as being too liberal, ultimately corrupting local morals. As a result, this period of oppression and transition becomes the ideal temporal setting for unique life-changing experiences: Athas has the junta police entrap her heroine on the deserted beach, forcing her to survive, to come to terms with the situation and, most importantly,

herself. In this sense, Cora’s temporal setting of the Greek dictatorship, with injustice, cruelty

and absurdity tormenting the heroine, alludes to Homi Bhabha’s fin de siècle, that is “the 31

moment of transit where space and time cross to produce complex figures of difference and

identity, past and present, inside and outside, inclusion” (The Location 1).

Daphne Athas’s Cora, published in 1978, a mere four years after the reconstitution of democracy in Greece on 24th July 1974, utilizes this absolutist political framework, still too

fresh in the Greeks’ memory, but too distant and obscure for the Greek-American author’s

English-speaking readership, on the other side of the globe. A nexus of facts, erroneous

decisions and adverse conditions marked the end of this dictatorship in Greek and Cypriot

history of the twentieth century, with the coup, the Turkish invasion and division of the island

of Cyprus. Among the multitude of fields it covers, Cora also brings up the issue of Greek

Resistance to the junta. Through the character of Zoë and her comrades, Athas sheds light on the defenders of democracy, both in Greece and abroad, with special emphasis on the role of

Greek ex-patriots and exiles. Moreover, to emphasize the sadistic practices the junta used, tactics which reminded some of those the Nazis used, as Andreas Papandreou emphatically states (373), Athas elaborates on Don’s persecution, his detention, the brutal abuse and barbaric torture. She also portrays Cora’s imprisonment, for the pleasures of some womanizing police official, her ordeals and the irrationality behind human suffering brought about by such circumstances. In this manner, Athas’ narratives, which revolve around her heroes’ internal struggles8 and human rights infringements in the Greek political Underworld

in which they find themselves in, inevitably project a succinct political angle to her novel,

and another level of interpretation.

V. Don as Adonis

To the reader’s surprise Athas refrains from any reference to Cora, after whom the novel is

named, for the first thirty-five pages of the book. Instead, the Greek-American author

intentionally focuses on Don’s character, deploying his bohemian ventures in Greece. In 32

these pages, the reader has access to Don’s inner thoughts, while Athas comes up with a

rough personality sketch, underpinned by the young man’s difficult upbringing and his

relationship with his brother. Neither exclusively a male quest in obeisance to the long

Western literary tradition, nor the female search for self-definition her contemporary authors

often explore, Athas’s Cora combines both themes, to critique and overcome them,

underlining personal agency and response to the stimuli of ethnic background irrespective of

gender. At the same time, Athas’s opacity and reticence surrounding Cora’s reflections,

personality and past, enhance the aura of mystery. The latter constitutes a vital ingredient of

the detective story from which the novel often borrows elements9, thus building up suspense.

Cora’s gradual revelation, as a mature, decisive woman, claiming her own identity, cannot but intensify the shadows over Don’s image as a traumatized, self-absorbed and immature young man.

In particular, Athas formulates a male hero with features that would stereotypically be attributed to a traditional macho male: a US soldier, a good sportsman and, naturally, a womanizer, as Athas hastens to point out from the first page of her novel. Of the three, the latter proves to be his most salient attribute, since it accompanies the hero throughout the novel, until the denouement, constantly influencing his judgment and leading his actions. As the first page of the novel informs us, the twenty-three-year old Greek-American soldier, Don

Tsambalis, is found in Naples playing a crucial semifinal game of table tennis, when his attention is distracted by the entrance of a Mediterranean beauty, a woman he senses looks

“more Greek than Italian” (9). To place emphasis on the young man’s ethnic origin, the woman, significantly named Zoë,10 is depicted as the epitome of classic Greek looks and

reminds Don of the statuesque symmetry of the Caryatids; to Don’s mind, she also unites and

embodies unique elements of the ancient Greek culture such as tragedy and myth. In Athas’s

powerful words: “The base of her eyebrows rose in a spasm of gallantry from the root of her 33

nose, catching that moment of conflict when life engages tragedy. And the drama of

cheekbone, eyebrow and forehead ended in something telltale, the mortal mouth. No Athena

appearing to Achilles in battle would have such a mouth” (3). The immediate connection

between what Don calls “the Face” and his father’s ethnic heritage, certainly places emphasis

on the prominent place of ancient Greek culture for the hero.

Moreover, with her hero mesmerized by the irresistible beauty of the enigmatic heroine,

Athas inevitably creates the setting of a classic film noir: enchantment and a femme fatale,

psychological pressure, suspicion and lurking dangers à la Hitchcock: the next scene cannot

but be Don’s inevitable involvement in some seemingly innocent errand that, however, places

him in mortal danger. Don is befriended by the odd group of Greek exiles, Lefteris, Michalis

and Zoë and, utterly allured by the latter’s appearance, he consents to deliver the christening

gift, the coufetta, to Zoë’s parents in Athens, once he arrives. To underline Don’s

recklessness and infatuation, Athas has her heroine admit her involvement in the Resistance,

a revelation that does not stop the hero; by portraying a dynamic woman and a man ready to

yield to her wishes, the author demonstrates a complete reversal of the prey-hunter role for the young man and instead falls back on the stereotype of the femme fatale; this outcome prevents him from considering the dangers of such an embroilment. Fantasizing he is having sex with Zoë, the hero agrees to grant her the favor, thoughtlessly triggering a series of

encounters with the Greek police.

As the author starts to reveal what lies behind Don’s handsome face, she underscores the

central role of the female in the young man’s life, which is also the motivation for his second

visit to his paternal homeland. Athas’s intrusion in Don’s mind and her focus on his desires and problems should also be seen within the broader context of the seventies, when academia demonstrated an increasing interest in the sphere of masculinity (Carrigan, Connell and Lee

139). In his essay “The Cult of Masculinity,” Michael S. Kimmel explains this trend by 34

characterizing the era after the Second World War, and especially the 80s, as a critical period that led “men’s struggles and America’s national struggle, to appear heroic and masculine”

(246). Using the aforementioned adjectives as her springboard, the author portrays Don’s flight to Greece as an important mission: to experience the ultimate female, whether spiritual or sensual, what he has labeled “tracing the Goddess.” On the alert for possible “signs” arbitrarily pointing to the Goddess (16), the hero, consumed with romantic fantasies, embarks on a wild goose chase, unable to define the real object of his search or the way to obtain it.

Furthermore, Don’s course through Greek sites, his wanderings, reflections and plans,

constitute for Athas her chance to imbue the text with witty comments on contemporary

scholarly trends and movements. Although Don is expectant of any sign that may guide him

in his quest, he is fast to reject the conventional approach that comes from archaeology and

its sites. The hero’s exclusion of any excavation site as a possible location of the Goddess,

signifies Athas’s rejection of the late twentieth century trend of a feminist religion11 and the feminist rewriting12 of male myths. While Don is sarcastic about those who rest their hopes

on Athena’s powers to “avenge what Christianity had done” (17), Athas appears to be

commenting on the futility of the heroines’ endeavors with the rewritten myths, in Chapters 3

and 4 respectively. Further to support her allegations on the inadequacy of this feminist

strategy, which originated in the seventies, Athas reveals Don’s reflections on the corruption

of previous religions, since antiquity. Even overcoming the obstacle of the Judeo-Christian

factor, for Athas the Goddess’s face and potential had been distorted since ancient times, a

fact evident even on Athena’s statue (17).

Contrary to Susan Lloyd’s heroine, who values archaeology in her quest in Chapter 4 and

is disappointed to see the Levanzo cave remnants, Don finds the evidence inadequate. Like

Lloyd’s heroine, however, Don shares similar thoughts as regards the mystery, spirituality

and obscurantism of the Orient, remnants of centuries of colonization as Edward Said 35

underscores (Culture). When the main sites disappoint him, the hero decides to head east and

arms himself with patience, courage and clarity of mind, since the object of his daunting

quest is elusive and hard to recognize. As Don confesses: “As he went east, he thought, the

Goddess would lose her identity and become more indistinct, more threatening. He would have to fight his fear if he expected to recognize her” (17). The danger and fear inherent in the task, underlining the “colonizer’s prejudice,” recall the central motif of the heroic quest in literature.

It is precisely this male heroic quest for the Goddess that the Greek-American author

curiously employs, instead of the depressed heroine feminist authors project, interestingly to

reverse the roles. She thus sketches a hero with queries traditionally attributed to women, a

man in his attempt to recover the Goddess, which for him equates with a process of self-

identification, discovering “the truth” (35). By attributing what would be a female quest to a

heterosexual male, Athas playfully breaks the norms and blurs the boundaries between male

and female needs and goals. Thus, as if in unison with the bewildered heroines in Chapters 3 and 4, the young man envisages his search as the unique escape out of the deadlock of offered roles available as a consequence of his upbringing: what Don labels as “icons always waiting” (35). Oscillating between his brother’s need to fit in as a fully fledged American citizen and his father’s stubbornly accentuated Greek origins, the motherless Don has been forever trying to define his identity, a central issue for him as he admits, in stressing “the real decision left to man is the universe he chooses” (12).13 In his non-conformism, Don rejects

his father, Philo’s “icon-making,” as well as the pseudo-rebellion of his brother, Theo’s, who

rather than escaping from the prescribed norms, all he does is fit into the image of the ideal

husband. For Don, the only way to avoid being trapped in the “icon” is realizing its power

and its truth, as well as following the “unknown” (35) here represented by the Goddess.

36

VI. Shedding Ample Light on Don’s Darkness

Given its year of publication in 1978, the same year as Nancy Chodorow’s The

Reproduction of Mothering was added to feminist scholarship, Athas’s novel, reflecting once

again the author’s love for meta-fictional commentary could not but implicate psychoanalytic

and social conditioning theories in her work. The Greek-American author winks at two of the

prominent perspectives of her time in literature and criticism, and connects Don’s current

“mission” and condition with his background and childhood through the use of flashbacks.

Moving one step further from feminist theories, the author also acknowledges “fathering,” as

a crucial factor in child development (Flax 181). She, thus, creates a hero whose personality

is formulated by two important parameters: the Spartan upbringing he has from his father,

austere, loveless,14 and strict, and the gaping absence of his mother.

As the trend of Don’s flashbacks reveals, the boys, Don and his older brother, Theo, are

raised in a Greek cultural milieu, transplanted to somewhere in the American South with their

father, a first generation Greek, whose unconventional, baffling and abrupt retorts to their

childish questions introduce them into the world of philosophy. Philo, Philemon Tsambalis, is

presented as an interesting amalgam of the contradictory elements of his ethnic cultural background: brave, upright and just, at times stubborn, monolithic, conservative. Following

Don’s able description of his father, “Philo may have had an ancient heart, but his brain was

Byzantine” (19). Furthermore, Athas’s fragmentary descriptions of Don reveal a tormented

ethnic persona, whose idealism, mentality and upbringing result in a life of bitterness and

maladjustment, be that as regards his adopted country or the dramatic changes in his life. As

is to be expected, in Philo’s obstinate existence, Athas mirrors first generation immigrants of

the early twentieth century and their painful vacillation between two opposing worlds; thus,

Philo, as the embittered ethnic persona, is extremely proud of his ethnic identity, adamant

about his sons’ acceptance of their ethnic heritage and its superiority over the American 37

culture (91); he is a man painfully torn between the harsh capitalist reality and his idealistic

credos, as his ever-failing business ventures prove; an inconsolable husband, he cannot be

relieved from his pains by religion, being a cynic and a fervent church hater (41). In

particular, refusal to accept the loss of his wife, leads Philo to avoid communicating the true

story to his sons; therefore, whenever the boys dare ask about her, he constantly alters his

version of the truth (22-24). However, as “children absorb what is unspoken along with what

is spoken” (Sprengnether 15), their mother’s ghost constantly accompanies them, filling the

void.

Inescapably, the mystery surrounding their mother’s disappearance from their lives and

the father’s evasiveness about the conditions surrounding her life and death, kindle the boys’ imagination (22-23); in the absence of a photograph of his mother, Don bases his image of

his mother on his older brother’s descriptions “she had black hair and she was beautiful,” (23)

and identifies her with the Minoan woman of the Encyclopedia Britannica. This way, and not

accidentally, Don connects his Anglo-Saxon biological mother with his father’s

Mediterranean background and the prototype of Greek beauty. In other words, even as a

child, the motherless hero utilizes his cultural foremothers’ image, when the image of a real mother fails him. In response to the creation of a matriarchal concatenation by her coeval feminist authors, Athas inserts a heterosexual man who seeks relief in similar images. In her constant interplay with her contemporary theoretical framework, Athas employs the theoretical role model that women like Davidson and Caperna’s heroines do in chapters 3 and

4, two decades later. This way, Athas amplifies the role of the ethnic background, by extending its significance into the realm of male self-identification.

To accentuate further the dire need for a mother that the hero experiences in his childhood,

Athas presents Don’s fantasies about her: “She had pale golden eyes, like Philo’s, which

loved him, and she bathed him in gold when she leaned over him” (23). Paraphrasing Gaston 38

Bachelard’s statements on memories from home, Don’s memories of the mother reveal a poet

in him since, as Bachelard claims: “[w]e are never real historians but always near poets, and

our emotion is perhaps nothing but an expression of a poetry that was lost” (6). Echoing

Sigmund Freud’s theories15, the mother’s loving presence in Don’s dream of her is troubling

him; apparently, the imminent closing of the embrace that, however, is never completed,

generates an almost erotic feeling, just as the embrace remains unconsummated. As Don

confesses:

But the leaning-over threatened some terrible bliss that never came to be. An

embrace. He fantasized this embrace: she wore a gray, thin, ruffly dress; his

head was just on the verge of being enveloped in her bosom; bosom because

he had no notion of it having outlines, of being formed by two breasts; if there

was flesh it was only a cool white space above a cleavage which did not show;

(24)

Since his contact with the mother in his fantasy is incomplete, Don is overwhelmed by a

feeling of constant “desire” for the mother, a lack of fulfillment, having merely experienced

“a place” as he says and “not a touch.” In Don’s words: “it was an impending, soft, deep, and

enveloping embrace, faintly perfumed and endless; a place but not a touch; it remained forever filmy. If the embrace could have been completed, he would have known something”

(24, my emphasis added). For Don, the motherly figure is characterized by vagueness, a lack of conclusion that leaves him wondering what it could have been like.

Moreover, the hero’s choice of verb is not accidental: “know” instead of “feel”; placing emphasis on his rational abilities, Don gives precedence to his mind when it is a matter of the heart that he is considering. Yiorgos Kalogeras affirms Don’s overall logical stance, and he

views his quest for the female as a manifestation of the hero’s need to conquer, to possess, a

male attribute in the capitalist world: “Don is a rationalist who seeks not transcendence but 39

the possession that comes through understanding” (Kalogeras, Between Two Worlds 177).

Besides, Don’s current occupation as a soldier, as well as being an athlete, further accentuate

his inability to be intimate, expressive and true. As Bruce Kidd contends, on male intimacy

and sports: “Through sports, men learn to cooperate with, care for, and love other men, in a

myriad of rewarding ways, but they rarely learn to be intimate with each other or emotionally

honest” (259).

Nonetheless, it is the child’s problematic relationship with the mother and the female,

deprived of tenderness and substance, that becomes the hero’s prominent attribute; a central

issue for Athas, this characteristic is unavoidably and emphatically reflected in his adult

relations with the other sex. As a result, Don constantly limits himself to superficial, bodily

contact, which revolves around sensation and sexual performance, but is unfortunately devoid

of depth and meaning. In this way, Athas pinpoints, on the one hand, the hero’s underlying

heterosexism/homophobia, a condition that, following Patrick D. Hopkins, underlines the

male need to be constantly reassured and prove his masculinity, through sexual acts with the

female Other (123-24). On the other, Don’s sexual dexterity might be worthy of admiration

and his potency might be tremendous; the alternation of sexual partners, though, is also

linked by the author to the hero’s attempt to discover the true womanhood he has so eagerly

searched for since his childhood (27). As he admits: “All his life he had been good at sex and

control, just as he had been bad at love and ultimate purpose” (34).

Examined in this light, Don’s self-naming as Adonis, playfully changing his name from his

Greek Antonis, stresses, yet again, the centrality of the hero’s longing for the maternal and

the female. As is known, the mythic figure16 of the young handsome boy, Adonis, was worshipped by the goddesses of love and death, Aphrodite and Persephone, a young boy

coupling with older women and dividing his time between light and darkness respectively.

Seen through a psychoanalytic prism, the mythic figure Adonis represents the young man14 40

who craves to be united with the maternal17 and ends up being destroyed by her (Neumann,

The Origins 47). In his son-lover persona, the young man boosts his ego by having sex and

dominating young girls, until he meets Cora. Don admits to himself during his affair with the

older Cora: “All the time I thought I wanted these nymphets, I was a mother-fucker [sic]”

(132). Irrespective of the young man’s considerations, Don’s adoption of the Adonis name should not be viewed light-heartedly. Demaris S. Wehr warns against the illusion of the innocence of archetypes, since “such language is the tool of the most powerful legitimating process: the creation of a symbolic universe which gives us a matrix of meaning” (27). By

“internalizing” his Adonis personality, Don eagerly endorses his obsession with the mother, and, as a result, he perpetuates his vain quest and problems, ad infinitum.

VII. Cora and Don: Transgression versus Inadequacy

At this point, a clarification of the author’s narrative approach seems necessary. When

Athas orchestrates the encounter of the two heroes on their way to Tripolis, the reader has a

detailed image of the traumatized hero, through the eyes of whom they will perceive the

heroine. In fact, in the first part of the novel Athas opts to recount the couple’s adventures in

diverse locations in Greece and, essentially, gradually create, with careful and skillful strokes,

Cora Ellison’s portrait, filtered through Don’s limited perception. The second part of the

novel, however, centering around the heroine’s solitary confinement, is privileged with a first

person narration; it consequently shatters the previous erroneous and superficial image of the

heroine that the immature and problematic hero had projected, while it illuminates the female

transgression and metamorphosis.

Thus, when Don and Cora meet for the first time, the reader is presented with the young

man’s impressions of the American heroine, a curvaceous, naïve, middle-aged female tourist,

enthusiastic about her trip to Greece: “She looked like an English-woman, plump, with a 41

pink, schoolgirl complexion. Or a Renoir. At least forty years old. She rushed toward him

with a gaze beautiful but inane, pointed at something behind his head which she recognized

and which filled her with joy” (37). Interestingly, Athas obstructs her hero’s sight and

judgment first with his lower middle class mentality, and later with the trauma of the lack of a

maternal figure in his life. Thus, reflecting Don’s class complexes, Cora’s malleable image

first equates the quintessential affluent New England housewife, exploring the world: “She

was kind. She was refined. One of these middle aged-ladies who travels the world oohing and

aahing over everything and staying in the best hotels. Her beauty swallowed up the views,

she probably painted in watercolor badly, her helplessness prevailing over donkeys, bellboys, peasants and poppies” (38). Watching Cora on the bus and listening to her conversations with the other passengers, the hero soon alters his perception, yet again foregrounding his psychic injuries from childhood: “Just as she lifted her face, he caught her gaze. She turned into his mother threatening him with the embrace. But it was a blue color, not gold as it had been when he was a child, and the irony was not lost on him that he was looking for the Goddess in Greece when that main mother force he had known was un-Greek” (43). Just as with the image of the Minoan woman that he used to visualize the unknown mother as a child, Don’s

quest in Greece should be perceived as proof of the bonding he sustains with his father’s

country of origin and the culture in which he was raised. Naturally, one seeks the mother in a

place he considers home, this general admission underlining Don’s unconscious consideration of Greece as his homeland.16

Following Don’s brief visit to his elderly aunt Thea Vasiliou, where he can display his

tenderness for the female by taking care of the bedridden elderly woman, Don meets Cora

again and delves deeper into the female nature that has intrigued him for so long. The young

hero poses questions to quench his curiosity on taboo physical female issues, like

menstruation, labor, menopause and orgasm. Athas utilizes these indiscreet questions to 42

instigate Cora’s confessions of intimate details from her life as a woman (88). Through

Cora’s personal experiences of her womanhood and her down-to-earth approach, “so that’s

how it is” (88), Athas comments on the feminist trend which glorifies female physicality, as a source of female pride and empowerment. In this sense, the Greek-American author seems to be in agreement with Gillian Rose, demystifies femininity by warning against women’s confinement behind those terms that were constantly underlined, by patriarchy, as the points of difference (12). Through Cora’s uncontrollable tide of memory, Athas unmasks her heroine’s prior New England existence: a submissive wife and devoted mother, with

suppressed artistic interests and needs, a persona who resembles Barolini’s Marguerite, in

Chapter 2. Unlike Barolini’s suffering heroine, though, Cora had never denied the role of

mother and “happy” wife, but she had let nature take its course (90), connecting her life and

tasting death with her husband, Dwight’s death, as she was expected to (87).

Ironically, Cora’s real life starts anew while her husband’s is coming to an end (90-91).

Confronting her children, Cora states her wish to make a fresh start now that her husband is

gone. Cora’s subsequent severing of the ties that connect her with her children completes her

dual liberation, from the chains of motherhood and wifehood, only to enable her to embark

on a belated voyage of self-definition in Greece. Following Ian Ang’s train of thought, Cora’s

desire to travel and see the world as part of her postmodern voyage of self-exploration,

should be considered within the broader trend the scholar characterizes as “formalist,

postmodern tendency to overgeneralize the global currency of the so-called nomadic,

fragmented and deterritorialized subjectivity” (qtd. in Cresswell 18). In order to become yet

another traveler “in the same postmodern universe” (Ang qtd. in Cresswell 18) Cora must be

freed from the obligations that were determined both by her age and gender, and,

consequently, become ageless and sexless. As she declares: “I have arrived (…) having

fulfilled the duties or expectations of a woman on earth, to the state of Vagueness” (87). 43

Drawing inspiration from the poststructuralist movement of the 70s in America, that “shifted attention on to the symbolic order, to the mediated processes and politics of representation”

(S. Friedman 70), Athas liberates her heroine from the parameters that framed her being.

Consequently, not only does Cora rebel against the assigned roles of mother and wife and

focuses on a spiritual journey, but she also becomes entangled in a shocking love affair with

Don.

As Athas follows closely the couple’s erotic encounters in Greece, first through Don’s

thoughts and later through Cora’s ruminations, she unravels each hero’s perception of the

other on this voyage, as well as their expectations of this affair. Don, in the typical male

manner, considers Cora the object of his quest and attributes his fulfillment and completion

solely to her. Consequently, success in manipulating Cora and all that she represents,

signifies for Don the triumph of male sovereignty over female irrationality, reason over

feeling. Daphne Athas reveals Don’s thoughts: “But this destiny demanded his will to the

other side of femalehood; it required a loosing of his inchoate self. She personified it. He

recognized that, having spent himself last night (a failure, he decided), he would have to trap

her, to pin her down” (117). Incorporating another stereotypical male view into her novel,

Athas projects Don’s previously stressed characteristic, his reasoning, as it finds its

complementary Other in Cora’s “insanity” and “eccentricity.” Among other scholars, Gillian

Rose aptly stresses this male perception as follows: “The white bourgeois heterosexual

masculinities which are attracted to geography, shape it and are in turn constituted through it,

imagine their Other in part as feminine. Their Other is associated with all that they deny as

part of themselves: the bodily, the emotional, the passionate, the natural and the irrational”

(11). In his entrapment in perceptions of binary attributes that were bestowed upon him

male/female, reason/feeling, male aggression/female passivity Don is presented as another 44

victim of patriarchy, showcasing the author’s attempt not only to conform to female

victimization, but also expand this notion to the masculine sphere.

Conversely, as she reveals later, Cora does not view Don as the end of her voyage towards

self-realization but merely as her companion and aid. Following Cora’s thoughts: “It was not him she wanted. She wanted something toward which he could go only as her Partner” (143).

Her affair with Don, and their bold sexual encounters in public, even in church, underline the heroine’s newly-acquired freedom from the fetters of bourgeois mentality and social conventions; they also allude to the invincible powers of physicality and sensuality that are

intrinsically associated with the Goddess and her cult, rendering Cora the latter’s initiate. The

heroine, salvaged from the preconceptions she had inherited from her WASP background,

conceptualizes her travels in Greece together with Don as an intimate spiritual and esoteric

experience. With her heroine’s quest “beyond culture, beyond patriarchy into the unknown,

the outlawed” (E. Friedman 244), not only does Athas engender in her novel the dictates of

the female texts of the seventies, but she also creates a heroine who constitutes the mere

embodiment of Foucauldian transgression. In his essay “A Preface to Transgression,” Michel

Foucault elaborates on the elusive notion of transgression, by underlining the multitude of

possibilities such a concept unleashes. In Foucault’s “poetic” words, “Transgression contains

nothing negative, but affirms limited being-affirms the limitlessness into which it leaps as it

opens this zone to existence for the first time” (74). Following the French theorist’s approach,

the author’s descriptions of Cora’s current sensual and spiritual awakenings in Greece shed

light on the limitations of the middle-aged woman’s past life; what is more, they underline

both the character’s current development and the immense potential for radical change that

awaits her in the future, a concept explored in the second part of the novel.

45

VIII. Dreams of the Goddess

As the Greek-American author dexterously weaves Cora’s personality development and

transgression, Athas resorts to the five dreams Cora has during her adventures with Don,

where the glamorous figure of the English actress Vivien Leigh becomes the protagonist. The

choice of Vivien Leigh, a colossal influence for all American girls of Cora’s generation, is

easily explained, as the heroine admits that she had completely identified with the two most

famous roles that Leigh embodied: the passionate and resilient Scarlet O’ Hara of Gone with

the Wind (1939), and the outcast Blanche Du Bois of Elia Kazan’s film Streetcar Named

Desire (1951). As is blatantly clear to the reader all these features can easily be attributed to the legendary Goddess figure, who stubbornly survives while at the same time remaining elusive.

Implying Freudian psychoanalytic theory, the Greek-American author times Cora’s dreams

on a parallel with the course of her relationship with Don, as well as her process of self-

definition. In Cora’s dreams, Leigh’s presence reveals the internal process the heroine

undergoes as she progresses in her quest for self–definition. Consequently, the first Vivien

dream comes before the beginning of Cora’s affair with Don, just after their visit to Delphi;

in it, all the cinemas still play a successful Vivien Leigh film, released long after the actress’ death, reassuring the self-conscious Cora of her appeal, long after the passing of her prime and the onset of menopause (73). As the couple spends more time together and Cora feels the attraction for the younger man, she has her second dream (109). Vivien takes the lead and sings the musical version of a book Don and Cora have created, indirectly urging the dreamer to set herself free and allow her instincts to prevail. Moreover, following their first sexual encounter, a perplexed and hesitant Cora dreams of Vivien complaining to her for neglecting her, in other words, lulling her feminine side to sleep with fears and misgivings (125). Later on, at the peak of their intense sensual adventure, Cora is led by the actress in the dream, to 46 go through an underground passage, and, this way, descend into the depths of her existence

(133). At this point, Cora, having satisfied her libidinal needs, can now concentrate on her personal identity quest, since, according to Laurie Brands Gagné, “the awakening of one’s sensuality might appear as the beginning of one’s spiritual journey” (2). Contrary to Don’s literal interpretation of a real underground passage to explore somewhere in Samos, Cora’s calling is inward and spiritual, foreshadowing the degree of the changes that will be expedited, in the second part of the novel. Finally, the heroine’s last Vivien dream (139) comes just before the couple’s arrest: the dreamer sees herself as Don and receives a marriage proposal from Leigh, in the dream of a marriage that will, however, be unconsummated. The dream apparently comes at a time when Cora wishes to avoid all sexual relationship with the young man and simply be his friend; as soon as she realizes that their affair has run its course, and noting that with his authoritative actions he strives to control her, she feels he is hindering her voyage to self-realization.

While Cora narrates her dreams to Don, Athas discloses only the latter’s mental interpretation and commentary. At the same time and not by chance, the author yet again is enigmatic about Cora’s inner processes, open to any interpretations on the part of Cora. Self- centered and engrossed in his pursuit of the Goddess, Don hurries to incorporate the dreams into the Goddess quest and consider them as signs pointing to the Goddess. As Don identifies

Leigh with the Goddess, he sees the similarity with the Minoan woman. As a result, he inevitably entraps himself, once more, in his personal trauma and drama, revolving as always, around his maternal quest. Imprisoned in his motherly deprivation that becomes an obsessive streak, Don proves to be too problematic a persona to be able to process the stimuli and evolve.

47

IX. Tortured and Imprisoned

Subsequently, in the second part of the novel, following their arrest at the exit of the

underground passage, Athas explores the separate courses of the two protagonists in their

distinct prisons. Interweaving the threads of Don and Cora’s individual stories during

captivity, the author contrasts their aches and pains, as well as the reflections on their

respective sufferings, and foregrounds Cora’s tremendous changes as opposed to Don’s

minor ones. Admittedly, the heroine’s open-air prison sojourn cannot be compared to the brutality and the blows Don suffers in the torture chamber; the evolution of the heroine’s personality, though, is still incommensurate to the hero’s respective response: as Cora herself phrases it, when she meets Don again, “How amazing that one can travel an inch and go miles, whereas another can travel miles and go an inch. That is Don. I know what he thinks.

He thinks that he is Adonis. It is irrelevant what he thinks, this almost knowing which has led him here” (304). Following Edward Soja’s reflections on the possible reaction of the oppressed against the mechanisms of hegemonic power, Adonis falls into the category of those who accept “making the best of it”; Cora, on the other hand, becomes a source of inspiration, empowerment as a heroic figure, intent to “mobilize to resist, drawing upon their putative positioning, their assigned “otherness,” to struggle against this power-filled imposition” (Thirdspace 87). As the heroine admits during her ordeal, “I have nothing to lose,

not even my body now. And I cannot lose my soul” (254). 17

The emphasis that Athas places on Don’s elliptic knowledge, “this almost knowing,”

underscores the dormant state of Don’s spiritual development throughout the novel. His central aim remains essentially the same: from finding the Goddess, to finding Cora, whom he now identifies as the Goddess. Lacking a stable core in his life, the young man needs to resume control over his mother-mistress, to feel at ease again. In the background of his ordeal, the humiliation, the imprisonment and the torture, the hero resorts to his sole aim and 48

hope to be reunited with Cora, as a means of finding some meaning and balance in his life.

The brutal practices of the junta shock the reader with their perverse devotion to their mission

to force the hero to testify against the resistance. The massive attack on Don’s genitalia

temporarily stops his sexual activity and can be placed on a parallel with Adonis’ tragic end by a boar sent by Ares. In Don’s case, though, the punishment for his recklessness comes from the keepers of the law, the police. With a smirk at the conservative junta ethics, Athas cauterizes the young man’s boldness to wander around Greece, sleeping with a woman old enough to be his mother. On the whole, little does the hero change when his most powerful asset, his potency, is wounded: his ego appears to soften somewhat as he relies on Zoë for his mistress’s liberation, and his sexual approach becomes less aggressive.

X. From Cocoon to Chrysalis: Cora’s Metamorphosis

On the other hand, with an ingenious shift to a first person narration, for the excerpts that refer to Cora’s confinement, Athas records the emotional turbulence the heroine experiences, while her radical changes are in progress. Imprisoned by the junta police in the ruins of a deserted fort in the Peloponnese for reasons she largely ignores, the heroine, devoid of human contact, finds herself in a wilderness where she must overcome her personal limitations, in order to survive. Cora’s desolation, a seclusion imposed by the actors of the Greek political status quo at the time, is certainly not a voluntary process of introversion; the heroine’s response, however, and her struggle to survive and surpass the numerous difficulties evolve during this period of imprisonment into an enriching experience. Joseph Campbell in his study on myth underlines the role of the hero’s withdrawal from the noise and frivolity of everyday life, and sees this period of isolation as a means for self-enhancement (18).

Cora’s gradual familiarization with her surroundings and her dominion over the elements

of nature, all in the name of survival, are inextricably related to the diverse phases she 49

undergoes, in her process of maturation. Ranging from lack of consciousness and resignation,

to self-assertion and determination, Cora’s stages of development in the bosom of the Greek

historical and spatial setting, reach a climax and conclusion with her transformation, her

internal as well as external metamorphosis. Being the setting of the heroine’s rite of passage,

this picturesque solitary spot imbued with Greek history and culture, qualifies for the attribute of “crisis heterotopia.” Michel Foucault defines crisis heterotopias as “privileged or sacred or

forbidden places, reserved for individuals who are, in relation to society and to the human

environment in which they live in a state of crisis” (“Of Other Spaces” 24).

Furthermore, in a display of her love for mythology, Athas likens her heroine’s ordeals in

her heterotopia to Persephone’s traumatic descent in the Underworld, the prototypically

mythic rite of passage. The middle-aged American Cora, whose name playfully alludes to

that one of Kore in the myth, as pinpointed by the priest on the bus en route to Tripolis in Part

One (47), approximates her adolescent mythic counterpart in terms of the dramatic changes they both undergo during their ordeal. While the Greek-American author points to the mythic nuances of her story and highlights the catalytic role of Greece in Cora’s life, she exemplifies

Artemis Leontis’s argumentation concerning certain travelers’ perception of Greece as “the site of myth: a noninhabitable space to which they may return to reflect on their own lost origins” (105). As an ethnic writer, however, through her fascination for the Greek locus and myth, Athas pays homage to her Old world background and affirms her pride for her roots.

Doreen Massey acknowledges the recourse to place and the rediscovery of ancestral cultures as the practice that generates a feeling of stability and comfort in shaky times in relation to identity. As Massey states in Space, Place and Gender,

So the search after all the “real meanings” of places, the unearthing of

heritages and so forth, is interpreted as being, in part, a response to desire for

fixity and for security of identity in the middle of all movement and change. A 50

“sense of place”, of rootedness, can promote –in this form and on this

interpretation-stability and a source of unproblematic identity. (151)

Nonetheless, in contrast to the grim Kingdom of the Dead where Persephone is taken,

Athas describes her own father’s birthplace in Pylos as a Mediterranean paradise (Raper 39).

Cora’s jail is illuminated by the scorching Mediterranean sun, while her “open air prison cell”

alludes to glossy tourist brochures: sun and deep blue sea with a group of rocky islands

nearby, a deserted fort and an old orthodox chapel all placed on a peninsula at the foot of a mountain. In the initial stage of her stay in the fort, Cora expresses her enchantment with the landscape she finds herself in: “It is a huge, deserted like crumbling Venetian fort. Odd- angled walls stretch against the light. Beyond, a mountain rises. The processes of my mind are fragments, associations, not memories” (165). The austere beauty of the barren Greek landscape that the American middle-aged woman wakes up to, as well as her ignorance as to

her whereabouts and the circumstances of her arrival there, confer a dream-like quality on the

setting, while highlighting the heroine’s inability to distinguish between reality and fantasy.

As the first person narrator declares, “It may be Greece, but this has no reality” (165). This

feeling of hallucination simultaneously alludes to Foucault’s concept of “heterochrony,” the

slice in time associated with the heterotopia the heroine finds herself in (“Of Other Spaces”

26). It is only through this “absolute break with the traditional time” (“Of Other Spaces” 26),

as well as the imposed solitude of her imprisonment and seclusion, that the heroine can

experience her rite of passage to its full extent.

Moreover, her first remarks concerning her surroundings reveal her fear of the unknown,

as well as her awe for the breath-taking scenery. Following Cora, “The sea is lost. It is not

friendly. The sun is dead upon it” (166) and later on: “The world is new in the slendering

light, the evening air intense and fragile” (168). Athas’s poetic descriptions, reflecting her

admiration for the wild beauty of the Greek homeland, are, for James Duncan and Derek 51

Gregory, cases of “industrialized romanticism” (8), whereby regardless of its mundane and flat character, late twentieth century traveling is still perceived through a romantic prism. As a second generation Greek-American, Athas’s powerful descriptions of such an enchanting topos should also be viewed as proof of her patriotic fervor for the Old country, whose tourist industry of the early seventies is underdeveloped and insufficiently promoted.

Simultaneously, the author’s sting of irony towards the Greek political condition should not go unnoticed: under the colorful image of festive Greece projected by the colonels, lies the bleak reality of prisons and exiles.

Confined in this stunning wilderness, though disoriented and in a state of shock in her first difficult hours there, the heroine senses that she has probably sustained a new birth (166), which she never really witnessed. Her notion of the new life born in her absence signifies a fresh beginning in the heroine’s life, but also adumbrates the gravity of this final experience and the toll it finally takes upon her. Like a new-born, Cora feels privileged in this new

“floating” state of existence: she seems to be between life and death, as she renounces her old memory and, thus, her previous life and self, so as to complete her initiation and metamorphosis. In Cora’s words: “No, I do not want to be reminded of earthly existence anymore. I want this total freedom from thoughts of Greece, Don, America, Dwight, death,

Eleanor, Corey, etc. I want this total freedom of unexplored birth” (172).

What force the heroine to return to reality and accept that she is still among the living are her pressing bodily needs: her tormenting thirst is essential, since it incites a series of successive emotional reactions. At its apex, it leads to desolation and despair, to hallucinations and the resolution to die of sunstroke (174). In search of water, the heroine resorts to the Orthodox chapel and the deserted castle, only to be further disappointed in her quest. The author’s inclusion of these two sites is an indirect reference to the spiritual alleviation that both the official Greek Orthodox religion, as well as the historical past cannot 52

offer. The same disappointment with religion and the male historical past will be expressed by the two heroines in Chapters 3 and 4. Cora’s frustration with the lack of water in both church and castle can also be connected with Don’s prior comments on the death of the Greek

as well as the Judeo-Christian world, in his quest for the Goddess. Cora’s thirst, on a literal as

well as a metaphorical level, is unquenchable. When the two traditional anchors, history and

religion, castle and church respectively fail her, Cora is forced to rely on her own self as a

source of strength and wisdom.18 Philippa Berry eloquently phrases the new conditions

imposed on man and woman in this “post-religious” void,19 in the following words: “He or

she must become instead the site in which something else, whether this be nonhuman Being,

or the nonhuman materiality of ‘place’ itself, can become manifest” (176).

Consequently, encouraged by her inner source of strength, following another prophetic

dream, Cora is determined to fight for her life: “I decide not to die. I am Euphoric. I decide to accept the Universe” (174). As soon as the heroine’s instincts for survival are triggered, she realizes the mortal danger she is in, and starts tackling her practical problems of hunger and thirst, by resorting to the sea for survival. Athas, again casting an eye at a psychoanalytic interpretation, underlines the sea as the rejuvenating source of life, both on a spiritual and a physical level, for the heroine. According to Chris Fitter, who discusses Mircea Eliade’s reflections on the perennial symbolic presence of water in mythology and religion,

Water stands for the formlessness of primal substance, and the myths of

Deluge and cataclysm, as well as the rituals of immersion show “a temporary

reintegration into the formless,” a dissolving of all form, that may purify. But

the “water of life” is also latent, containing in its babbling, flowing life, “the

seeds of things”: and hence belief in curative properties of magic wells, and

the mythological identity of sperm, rain and rejuvenation. (6) 53

Thus, submersion in the Greek waters is identified as a new hopeful beginning, another return to the depths of one’s pre-existence, “a regression into the pre-formal” (Eliade 151). Cora’s newly acquired skills of diving and shell-picking are contrasted to her previous inability to snorkel and her inane attitude in the first part of the novel. As the heroine is gradually reduced to primitiveness and animality, survival in the harsh landscape being her only goal, the sunburned woman cannot but declare her steely determination: “I am a fat animal full of water. I am going to cut out fat little sea animals and fill myself with their water. I no longer feel the pain of the sun. I am merciless” (175).

While Cora’s stay in the open air prison is prolonged, Athas tests the heroine’s dynamism and assertiveness with the appearance of a Pluto figure in Cora’s jail. Elias, in the double role of savior and keeper, lover and tormentor, saves Cora from death and nurses her when she falls ill; he also signifies Cora’s ultimate physical bonding with the space that envelops her.

Equating Elias with the satisfaction of her basic needs, the grateful heroine inevitably falls for him, admitting: “It is natural that I should love him, love the hand that saved me with water, love my keeper” (199). Resonating the mythic pattern in the Persephone story, Elias-Pluto feeds the heroine the Greek “funeral food,” wheat grain with pomegranate seeds, the latter being the mythic element that forever linked Demeter’s daughter with the Kingdom of the

Dead. Surprisingly, it is on Cora’s demand and hunger strike that the funeral food is procured, this way subconsciously revealing her attachment to the Greek topos and her desire to stay there forever.

Suffused with contentment, in her basic and peaceful existence, Cora, dazzled by the beguiling scenery, reveals her wish to stay permanently in her “jail,” in the following words:

“I feel this passion to live right here in this sun on these rocks where this wave is hitting my foot” (235). In harmony with the environment that envelops her, Athas’s heroine steers clear from any attempt to alter her surroundings and impose herself on nature, the typical male 54

attitude of dominion. Susan Bassnett, based on Gillian Rose’s viewpoint, explains the

“feminist concept of geography” here exemplified, through Cora’s purely ecological attitude:

“But a feminist concept of geography sees the world differently: here the goal is not to map

every detail, but to reinsert a physical dimension into the discourse, to engage with the every

day as an end in itself, not as a means to a different end” (Travel Writing 230).

Moreover, utilizing Cora as her mouthpiece, the Greek-American author expresses her own

thoughts on this idealized setting, which she metonymically relates to the ancestral culture20 she wishes to be forever in contact with. Stuart Hall labels this phenomenon as the

“landscaping” of cultural identities. According to Hall: “The association of national cultures and identities with particular landscapes therefore helps to construct and to fix in place a powerful association between culture and ‘home’” (“New Cultures” 182). For the Greek-

American author, the beach where the middle-aged heroine is imprisoned is viewed as the home, being literally close to her paternal home, the village of Hora, near Kalamata (Francis

57).

X. Chora and Cora

Indirectly contrasting the two Coras, before and after her imprisonment in Greece, Athas does not halt the changes that occur in the heroine as a result of a male presence in her life.

While her husband’s influence condemned her to subjection and inactivity, and Don demanded total control over her, her keeper, Elias, does not affect Cora’s transformation which, rather, reaches its peak. For several pages, Athas has prepared the reader for a unique shift, “a separation,” characterizing it as “volcanic and ecstatic”; for example: “Some separation is going to be accomplished, like that of a snake or a silkworm” (194) and “At the slightest movement of my body I can hear and feel a creaking, a slipping sound. Like canvas.

The sky is pulling the tepee of my skin to an infinite distance above me, pretending to give 55 me the freedom of day” (197). This preparation ultimately climaxes with a most interesting occurrence, Cora’s separation from her old skin: “Something along my back moves. A seam rips from my shoulders to my wrists. The water I have drunk has thickened to a sludge. The sludge begins to leak through the seam. ‘Help me! Help me!’ I scream. ‘My body is coming off’” (201). Through these words, Cora is experiencing her separation from her old self and her unique transformation, in her open air prison and particularly in the sea surrounding it.

It is only when she dives again into the cool, reinvigorating, waters of the sea that Cora fully perceives her metamorphosis, to its full extent. Athas’ focus on water is reminiscent of

Erich Neumann’s characterization of water, as “the primordial womb of life, from which in innumerable myths life is born” (The Great Mother 47). Cora realizes the infinite power of the sea, as well as the mysticism of the Greek waters, as she considers that “water understands the secrecy of prehistoric places and seals wounds” (214). In this sense, through the all-powerful image of the Greek sea, the author interestingly alludes to the quintessential concept of chora, a philosophical notion that since Plato has puzzled numerous philosophers and scholars, in diverse fields and genres,21 notably Julia Kristeva, Jacques Derrida,22 Luce

Irigaray,23 Judith Butler24 and Elisabeth Grosz.25

Cora’s chora, pun intended, appears to be a concept difficult to pin down since, admittedly, the author is laconic and refrains from further clarifications as to her philosophic affiliations.

As a matter of fact, in her 1997 interview to Mark Meares, Athas states the relativity of each philosophical system and the distance she opts to maintain from them. What she certainly chooses to emphasize, however, behind her novel, is the significance of what she labels as “a cosmic experience.” As Athas confesses: “I wasn’t going to tip my hand as to the meaning of the book. […]. It was about a cosmic experience in which the people’s lives are greater than a political framework, greater than feelings of love-greater than the characters themselves can 56

conceive of-because they are part of larger forces. Cora understood that. Don did not” (qtd. in

Meares 78).

To savour the intricacy and elusiveness of Athas’ incorporation of Cora, a detour to the

Platonic and Kristevan approaches is required, on a parallel to Athas’ text. I opt for these two

considerations, among the numerous ones, since, as a close reading of the text reveals, the

reader, familiar with the diverse theories on chora, cannot but notice the playful allusions to

Plato, as well as Kristeva. Explaining the origins of life and the world, Plato first briefly referred to chora in Timaeus, as a space, likened to the maternal womb, “the wet-nurse of

becoming” (Plato 52d-53a), in one of the earliest and most fundamental definitions of

primary space presented as “the receptacle of the Universe” (Nicolchina 19). Cora’s first

references to the sea, in the beginning of her captivity, underline the ambivalent feeling the

sea creates in the heroine: “The sea’s familiarity with me contrasts with its sheer space and

silence” (167). In this manner, Athas highlights the feeling of the known, emanating from

chora’s affiliation to the maternal and, simultaneously, the unknown, referring to chora’s

elusiveness, immensity and eerie silence, it being the perennial gestation “receptacle.”

Untouchable by the passing of time, perennial and ageless, Plato’s chora is, however, merely

perceived and not sensed; most importantly, chora is deprived of any qualities, as it is solely

characterised by what it engulfs (Plato 52b-c, 52d-53a). Edward Casey, discussing the

“Platonic matrix,” underlines its immaterial character and likens it to a mirror, since “it has

no qualities of its own for if it did, it could not be altogether receptive of the qualities of the

things that occupy it, nor would it reflect them faithfully” (33). In this sense, Cora’s baptism

into the Greek waters of her prison, yet again, reflects a return to her own resources, by

merely reflecting herself, her potential. With a double pun, the author points towards the

heroine’s reflection in Don’s eyes, as well as the sea, as a mirror: “I wonder what I look like

now that I have become fierce in looks as well as soul. I have not seen myself in a mirror. I 57

have entered the only mirror that was present, the opaque milk of sea, Don’s gaze, and

broken the way to my freedom” (253). In this manner, Cora contrasts the liberating powers of

the Greek chora that favour her metamorphosis, showing her the recourse to self, as opposed

to the restricting and demanding gaze of her young lover.

Additionally, Cora’s contact with the sea and its soothing liquid calmness, is often

described as an experience with a living, a breathing creature: “[t]he breath of the sea snorts

in imitation through holes in the lava rocks” (176). It is this rhythmic action of respiration,

later even more clearly attributed to the personified sea, which alludes to Julia Kristeva’s

famous interpretation of the Platonic chora, a notion saturated with psychoanalytic meanings.

Published in the mid seventies, a few years before Cora’s publication, Revolution in Poetic

Language introduced the French-Bulgarian scholar’s approach to chora uniting philosophy and psychoanalysis: in her study, Kristeva uses the Platonic chora as her stepping stone, adjusting it to the child’s psychic development, whereby chora is “articulated” by the drives, and is termed as “a non expressive totality formed by the drives and their stases in a motility that is full of movement as it is regulated” (Kristeva, Revolution, 25). Admittedly, for

Kristeva chora should be distinguished as an “uncertain and indeterminate articulation”

(“Revolution in Poetic Language” 93) and clearly not perceived through the senses, as is essentially the case with Athas’s Greek sea. However, the author’s stress on the regulated, stable and repetitive movement of the waters, a force that controls even the heroine’s own

movement, should not be taken light-heartedly. Following Athas’ poetic wording, “The water

is thick and tenuous as velvet. It holds me in its breathing, moves me in its breathing until I

see that, lying in its arms, I am moved by its breathing alone” (237). Refraining from a detailed account of the concept, Kristeva emphatically underlines its most pertinent characteristic, since chora “is analogous only to vocal and kinetic rhythm” (“Revolution in

Poetic Language” 94). Moreover, within the Kristevan “semiotic chora,”26 all production is 58

non-verbal, in other words “semiotic,”27 offering as an example the infant who is yet unable

to speak or the psychotic who has lost the ability to communicate meaningfully (Nicolchina

19). Nonetheless, the semiotic is evident in adulthood in the unique and subversive means of

communication available through the arts, such as music, dance and, most importantly, poetry

(Lechte 129). It is what Henri Lefebvre envisages as “an interstice or interval” (202), “mixed

space-still natural yet already produced- of the first year of life and, later, of poetry and art.

The space, in a word, of representations: representational space” (203). Therefore, by accepting the semiotic chora as “an excess that makes language sing and that explodes light

into color” (Nicolchina 19), Cora’s positioning within the semiotic chora and her rhythmic

movement following the sea, can be identified as the heroine’s initiation into the semiotic

signification of art, her passing from the conventional and pedantic into the transcendental.

That is why, at the end of the novel, the heroine admits her doting on paper, the medium for

writing.

Thus, in her own cosmic experience, in the Greek waters,28 enveloped in spirituality, the

heroine achieves her permanent separation from her past identity and the acceptance of her

new one. Shocked, she sees her old skin, and consequently metonymically her old self,

floating: “It is myself inflated by air! Myself cast off from myself and floating out to sea. It is

horrible! I shudder” (214). In his enlightened analysis The Book of Skin, Steven Connor

characterizes skin as “the sign of our transformability, our alentity, so to speak, or ability to

become other, as well as our identity, our ability to persist and survive in that becoming

other” (32). With the dramatic image of the shedding of the heroine’s skin Athas emphasizes

the ultimate separation from the final film enveloping the prior New England existence and

the revelation of a new empowered self. At this point, I may refer to an extended quote by

Rosi Braidotti, a piece effectively describing the personal effort required for transformation,

which could just as well be referring to Cora’s change of skin, as opposed to Don’s inertia: 59

The way to transform psychic reality is not by willful self-naming; at best that

is an extreme form of narcissism, at worst it is the melancholic face of

solipsism. Rather transformation can only be achieved through de-

essentialized embodiment or strategically re-essentialized embodiment: by

working through the multilayered structures of one’s embodied self. Like the

gradual peeling off old skins, the achievement of change has to be earned by

careful working through; it is the metabolic consumption of the old that can

engender the new. Difference is not the effect of will power, but the result of

many endless repetitions. (171, my emphasis added)

The heroine’s new skin “brown as a crocodile’s” (302), as Don later reveals is contrasted to her initial appearance as, “plump, with a pink school girl complexion” (37) and gives Athas the opportunity masterfully to shift attention to Cora’s baptism into the realm of color: from milky whiteness, passivity and detachment, to earthy brown, struggle, experience and initiation into the depths of hybridity and inbetweeness. In the few pages that follow her metamorphosis, from the heterotopia of her open-air prison somewhere in the Peloponnese, Cora realizes her powers and demands what is rightfully hers, claiming her right to a complete and meaningful selfhood: “but I do not want my freedom, for I have it. I want to get down to brass tacks. I want to be specific again” (254). In this manner, not only does the heroine take the reins in her life, making decisions even while in confinement, but she also seems to be using her situation to subvert it. In this sense, a brownish and assertive Cora, in Athas’ hands, can be regarded as a symbol of the hordes of oppressed, who do not stoically accept their diverse confinements but manage to realize, overcome and subvert them. Such a thought inevitably alludes to bell hooks’ famous commentary concerning the marginal status of blackness in her renowned Yearning:

Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics; there hooks envisions marginality as “a site one stays in, clings to even, because it nourishes one’s capacity to resist. It offers to one the possibility of 60 radical perspective from which to see and create, to imagine alternatives, new worlds” (149-

150).

Consequently, the reconfiguration of Cora’s identity, her metamorphosis, in turn transforms, her open-air prison and her disadvantageous position into a Third Space. Her calmness and resilience, despite of the adversities of her prison, what can be labeled as her “intervening space,” render her restricted and restrictive area of imprisonment a “space of intervention”

(Bhabha, The Location 7), in which defiance, radicality and strength replace fear and obedience. Following Homi Bhabha’s reflections on the radical potential of the Third Space:

Being in the “beyond” then, is to inhabit an intervening space, as any

dictionary will tell you. But to dwell “in the beyond” is also, as I have

shown, to be part of a revisionary time, a return to the present to reinscribe

our cultural contemporaneity; to reinscribe our human, historic

commonality; to touch the future on its hither side. In that sense, then, the

intervening space “beyond,” becomes a space of intervention in the here and

now. (The Location 7)

Discussing bell hooks’s29 approach to colored space, Edward Soja eloquently describes the hopefulness of the term now engulfing all and any experience of discrimination and segregation:

Thirdspace as Lived Space is portrayed as multi-sided and contradictory,

oppressive and liberating, passionate and routine, knowable and unknowable.

It is a space of radical openness, a site of resistance and struggle, a space of

multiplicitous representations, investigatable through its binarized oppositions

but also where il y a toujours l’Autre, where there are always “other” spaces,

heterotopologies, paradoxical geographies to be explored. It is a meeting

ground, a site of hybridity, and mestizaje and moving beyond entrenched 61

boundaries, a margin or edge where ties can be severed and also where new

ties can be forged. (“Thirdspace” 276)

Therefore, although she is technically able to end her confinement by escaping, the heroine voluntarily decides to prolong her imprisonment by being “entombed” in Elias’s house, away from sunlight, so as not to be seen; cherishing her marginality she prolongs her stay. Alluding to the Persephone myth, yet again, Athas places the heroine in darkness, in case she raises the suspicions of the neighbors. In this shady paradise, Elias, the sun god of ancient religions that was replaced by the prophet Elias in the Christian religion, becomes her own personal sun

(291), her link with the outdoors. To prove the prisoner’s powers over her guard, however,

Athas reverses the roles, with the guard being guarded and watched in his sleep. Elias’ final words of release seem redundant, since the heroine has been free and responsible for her choices all along. In her new frame of mind, Cora considers the possibility of return, with contempt for the superficiality and frivolity of her culture and language. As she admits, “At the same time I think of the country I have come from, the language that I once spoke, and I am leaving a perfection of dumb glory which is sustained by my imprisonment and his danger, for that dead world” (296). Through Cora’s rejection of the New World, not only does the Greek-American author pledge her allegiance to the Old World heritage, she also enthusiastically underlines the potential opened up by ethnic space as Third Space.

Cora’s return to the States is inevitable, however, when Zoë, the woman accompanying

Don, who has come to rescue Cora, dies, hit by Elias’s bullet. Revealing the immensity of

Cora’s change, Athas orchestrates the former lovers’ meeting and projects Don’s shock at the sight of a new woman he barely recognizes. Don eloquently states:

He saw Cora up through the rotten steps of the stairway, although she looked

nothing like his Cora. She was thin as a cadaver, bones. All the fat he had

loved was vanished. Gone the lightness, the insubstantiality which had made 62

their lovemaking spiritual, elusive, flimsy as his mother’s embrace. Her hair

was bleached white, not a thread of black left. Her ice-blue eyes streaked fire

out of a skin as hard and brown as a crocodile’s. (302)

Drawing the novel to a cinematic end,30 with the couple leaving Greece by boat, Athas

opts to unveil Cora’s last thoughts with the final glimpses of Greece: instead of pondering

over her rebirth, the American woman’s mental images revolve around the group of islands

she called “the stone woman,” the latter’s eternal presence, as well as the spiritual potential,

long after Cora’s natural end. Beyond all temporal events and occurrences, beyond the heroine’s metamorphosis, Athas highlights that the real novel’s core and protagonist is not

Cora searching for the core of her self, following the author’s pun; it is the chora which provoked the heroine’s transformation, this magical site, suffusing light and mysticism, that continues to vibrate through the centuries; ultimately, Athas depicts this heterotopia as

Foucault’s “space of illusion,” “that exposes every real space, all the sites inside of which human life is partitioned” (“Of Other Spaces” 27), a site with the potential to procure the rebirth of those who decide to surrender themselves unto its unique embrace.

XI. The Novel’s Denouement

In the final pages that follow, Daphne Athas ends the novel with the reunion of the two

heroes, after some time has lapsed. Don, relieved and sure of his sexual potency after a brief

affair with some woman, seems unchanged, still engrossed in his Adonis façade. When he

finds Cora working as a stationery shop assistant, he still has the same feeling he had when he

first met her in Tripolis; he feels she is either inane or insane. Cora’s statement “I absolutely

dote on paper” (309) leaves Don wondering about her mental state, still unable to read the

meaning behind her words. In the last lines, ending the novel with the solitary hero, Athas has

Don walk out on Cora, as empty and restless as in the beginning, with his quest unfulfilled, 63

“as if something he had had in his shirt pocket were missing” (309). Having forever lost

control over the mother-mistress, the young protagonist is again at the point where he started:

a traumatized young adult, looking for a surrogate mother, untouched by his Greek

experience.

Indubitably, in Cora’s ending, Daphne Athas refrains from any spectacular final

statements, rendering it open-ended and inconclusive, just like the hero’s quest. Instead, the

author’s final strokes on her two heroes reinforce the notions she has been building: Don’s static and one-dimensional personality, as opposed to Cora’s flexible, elusive, even artistic essence, here still evolving through her love for paper, probably a flair for the art of writing

(Moose 63). On the whole, the Greek-American author seems to focus on the reader’s

enjoyment of the “journey” of the novel and not its end, the voyage to Ithaca and not the

destination itself. In this manner, Athas appears to be confirming Dennis Porter’s remarks on

Roland Barthes and his postmodern works: “The reward for the recipient of a Japanese

package as for the reader of a postmodernist text, on the other hand, is not the final act of possession, the revelation of its hermeneutical secret, but in the more or less elaborate detours that take you toward it” (300). On a final note, using Greece of the early seventies as the vehicle for her heroine’s initiation into spirituality, with a novel so episodic and the Goddess herself, Athas justifies Elizabeth Moose’s praise as a “great myth-maker” and a giver of “new forms to lead us to a deeper understanding of our spiritual selves” (64).

64

Notes

1 “MacDowell fellowships: 1961 and 1962; National Endowment for the Arts Awards: 1969 and 1980; Sir

Walter Raleigh Awards, 1972 and 1979; citation Pushcart Prize Collection 1984 as Outstanding Writer in Non-

Fiction; Katherine Kennedy Carmichael Award for Excellence in Teaching, 1987; citation by Esquire 1992 in recognition of her standing as one of the nurturers of young writers in the nation; North Carolina Writers

Conference Tribute to Daphne Athas, 47th Annual Meeting, 1995; Honorary Doctorate of Letters St. Andrews

College 1997; special Issue of Pembroke Magazine #29, 1997 devoted to her work and life”. (Taken from the author’s personal webpage at UNC-CH http://english.unc.edu/faculty/athasd.html/accessed on 11/3/09 .

2 See “Introducing Daphne Athas” a poem written by Athas’s former student Wallace Kaufman http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/introducing-daphne-athas/ accessed on 11/3/09.

3 See “Pembroke Magazine,” No 29 1997.

4 Fred Chappell, declaring his admiration for Athas’s technical merit, describes its complexity in the following words “starting up as a standard looking suspense story, it becomes step by adroit step, a meaningful variation of the story of Persephone” (28).

5 Tamara Cox perceives a double pun in Cora’s name: besides the evident Kore, it is the English word “core” that is exemplified in the middle aged heroine’s quest.

6 A thorough discussion of both theoretical frameworks will be later provided.

7 According to Theodore D. Sabatakis, junta records state that 6509 people were arrested in the first few days of the new regime, 1328 of whom where soon released. However, the same historian further adds that, according to the Greek political parties, and the local press, this number should be doubled (527).

8 Miranda Cambanis wonderfully sums up Athas’s intentions with Cora, as follows: “Her writing encompasses the brutality of times full of contradictions and the softness and pliability of peoples without ever losing the starting point, from within” (35).

9 Don’s involvement with the Greek trio of the Resistance and the christening gift he is asked to hand in in

Athens trigger a series of adventures: the hero’s one night stand with the Belgian Annette, and her consequent death, result in Don’s trouble with the police, only some ingredients of the detective story apparent in the story.

10 Zoë’s name, meaning life in Greek, seems ironic, given her death at the end of the novel and since she causes the two protagonists so much suffering. 65

11 In her enlightening article “Feminist Theology as Post-Traditional Theology,” Carol P. Christ underlines the spiritual rather than theological character of the “Goddess movement.” As Christ elaborates: “Having felt silenced by traditional theological discourse, its adherents are highly suspicious of theological truth claims.

They are more interested in religious practice, especially individual and communal rituals, than they are in discussing ‘right belief’” (83).

12 See also Micaela Di Leonardo Exotics at Home page 110.

13 Following Miranda Cambanis: “Don is young but not blind, and in his search he is able to redefine and understand both tradition and inheritance from diametrically opposite parents and from belonging to two different worlds while trying to belong to himself” (35).

14 For Julia Kristeva, the lovelessness of the modern father is partly to blame for the critical condition of the modern soul (Nikolchina 63).

15 See Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams (1991).

16 In his monumental work The Golden Bough, James Frazer examines Adonis in the broader context of the

Near Eastern cultures and mythologies. As Frazer states, “The appellation of Adonis is merely the Semitic Adon,

‘lord’ a title of honor by which his worshippers addressed him […]. In the religious literature of Babylonia

Tammuz appears as the youthful spouse or lover of Ishtar, the great mother Goddess, the embodiment of the reproductive energies of nature. The references to their connection with each other in myth and ritual, are both fragmentary and obscure, but we gather from them that every year Tammuz was believed to die, passing away from the cheerful earth to the gloomy subterranean world, and that every year his divine mistress journeyed in search of him ‘to the land from which there is no returning to the house of darkness, where dust lies on door and bolt’” (393). As far as the Greek counterpart is concerned, Frazer recounts the myth in the following words:

“Mirrored in the glass of Greek mythology, the oriental deity appears as a comely youth beloved by Aphrodite.

In his infancy the goddess hid him in a chest, which she gave in charge to Persephone, queen of the nether world. But when Persephone opened the chest and beheld the beauty of the babe, she refused to give him back to Aphrodite, though the goddess of love went down herself to hell to ransom her dear one from the power of the grave. The dispute between the two goddesses of love and death was settled by Zeus, who decreed that

Adonis should abide with Persephone in the under world for one part of the year, and with Aphrodite in the upper world for another part. At last the fair youth was killed in hunting by a wild boar, or by the jealous Ares, 66

who turned himself into the likeness of a boar in order to compass the death of his rival. Bitterly did Aphrodite lament her loved and lost Adonis” (394).

14 “The early stages of conscious-unconscious relations are reflected in the mythology of the Mother Goddess and her connection with the son lover. The Attis, Adonis, Tammuz and Ossiris figures in the Near Eastern cultures are not merely born of a mother; on the contrary, this aspect is altogether eclipsed by the fact that they are their mother’s lovers: they are loved, slain, buried, and bewailed by her, and are then reborn through her.

The figure of the son-lover follows on the stage of embryo and child. By differentiating himself from the unconscious and reaffirming his masculine otherness, he very nearly becomes the partner of the maternal unconscious; he is her lover as well as her son. But he is not yet strong enough to cope with her, he succumbs to her in death and is devoured” (Neumann, The Origins, 47).

17 “Jung did, however, develop a quite specific technique by which he applied mythology in clinical practice.

This technique is interpretation by amplification. Jung ‘amplifies’ the clinical material of patients by reference to myths (That is he compares the clinical material to the same or similar mythological material in order to establish archetypal parallels and, on that basis, to interpret the clinical material to the patient). In order to interpret ‘all images that show an unmistakably mythological character’, it is necessary. Jung says to adapt what he calls the “amplificatory approach.” The amplificatory approach is an interpretative technique that Jungian analysts employ to delineate a parallel process” (Adams 17).

16 See Doreen Massey, “The Conceptualization of Place.”

17, 18 Cora’s epiphany in her Greek prison seems to reverberate Gloria Anzaldúa’s empowerment through knowledge, her “travesia” that radically changes everything: “Knowledge makes me more aware, it makes me more conscious. ‘Knowing’ is painful because after ‘it’ happens, I can’t stay in the same place and be comfortable. I am no longer the same person I was before” (48).

19 “Institutionalized religion fears trafficking with the spirit world and stigmatizes it as witchcraft. It has strict taboos against this kind of inner knowledge. It fears what Jung calls the shadow, the unsavory aspects of ourselves. But even more it fears the supra-human, the god in ourselves […] In my own life, the Catholic

Church fails to give meaning to my daily acts, to my continuing encounters with the “other-world.” It and other institutionalized religions impoverish all life, beauty, pleasure” (Anzaldúa 37).

20 “Place and culture gave us a sense of communal oneness” (Tuan 29). 67

21 For a comparative commentary on the diverse theories see, among others, Teresa Brennan, Cecilia Sjöholm,

Inger J. Birkenland.

22 Jacques Derrida in his own deconstructive attempt to interpret Khora, as he opts to write it, also underlines its unique character, its “subversive potential” (Sjöholm 49), since: “She/it eludes all athropo-theological schemes, all history, all revelation and all myth. Preoriginary, before and outside of all generation, she no longer even has the meaning of a past, of a present that is past. Before signifies no temporal anteriority. The relation of independence, the nonrelation, looks like the relation of the interval or the spacing to what is lodged in it to be received in it” (“Khora” 125).

23 From her feminist perspective on chora, Luce Irigaray identifies it with the maternal womb, and underscores its debilitating use by patriarchy. Based on chora, Irigaray underlines female condemnation as perennially unfulfilled, since her “[o]ntological status makes her incomplete and uncompletable” (Speculum 165); the

French scholar sees the devaluation and inertia of the female, whose lack of attributes reduces her to “nothing”

(Speculum 307), since “she is always a clean slate ready for the father’s impressions, which she forgets as they are made” (Speculum 307). Nonetheless, for Irigaray, it is from this marginalized position that the feminine subverts the patriarchal order, as Judith Butler notes (45).

24 Judith Butler condemns Plato’s perception of the chora as it imprisons the feminine within an elusive inchoate label: “Plato’s phantasmatic economy virtually deprives the feminine of a morphe, a shape, for as the receptacle, the feminine is a permanent and, hence, non-living, shapeless non-thing which cannot be named. And as a nurse, mother, womb, the feminine is synecdochally collapsed into a set of figural functions. In this sense, Plato’s discourse on materiality (if we can take the discourse on the hypodoche to be that), is one which does not permit the notion of the female body as a human form” (53).

25 Elizabeth Grosz accentuates the mere supportive and nourishing role of the Platonic chora, approximate to the maternal, as opposed to the traditional patriarchal procreating character of the father (115). For Grosz, Derrida’s deconstructivist view of chora, though “ingenious,” remains “fundamentally ambivalent” (119). Using

Irigaray’s reflections as her springboard, Grosz discerns behind the use of mystified chora and similar theories of defining space, the insidious workings of the patriarchal status quo to restrict women in passivity, imprisonment and victimization. In her critique of Plato and Derrida’s conceptualizations, she argues: “[T]hat unnameable recalcitrance that men continue to represent as an abyss, as unfathomable, lacking, enigmatic, 68

veiled, seductive, voracious, dangerous, disruptive, but without name or place may well serve as one of the earliest models of this appropriation and disenfranchisement of femininity” (124).

26 “Kristeva famously renamed Lacan’s ‘Imaginary’ the ‘Semiotic,’ insisting that it persisted into adulthood as an alternative mode of signification. She borrowed from Plato the term “chora,” meaning womb or enclosed space, to refer to the pre-Oedipal pulsions with which the Semiotic is linked” (Milner 74).

27 “The semiotic could be seen as the modes of expression that originate in the unconscious whereas the symbolic could be seen as the conscious a person tries to express using a stable sign system (whether written, spoken, or gestures with sign language). The two modes, however, are not completely separate: we use symbolic modes of signifying to state a position, but this position can be destabilized or unsettled by semiotic drives and articulations” (McAfee 17).

1828 At this point, it should be underlined that inevitably the immense potential of the sea is reminiscent of Gilles

Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s writings on space, striated and smooth, in the case of the sea and desert: “Smooth space is precisely the space of the smallest deviation: therefore it has no homogeneity except between infinitely proximate points, and the linking of proximities is effected independently of any determined path. It is a space of contact, rather than a visual space like Euclid’s ‘striated space.’ Smooth space is a field without conduits or channels. A field, a heterogeneous smooth space, is wedded to a very particular type of multiplicity, nonmetric, acentered, rhizomatic multiplicities that occupy space without ‘counting’ it and can ‘be explored, only by legwork’” (A Thousand 371).

29 Following Soja, “bell hooks attempts to move beyond modernist binary oppositions of race, gender, and class into the multiplicity of other spaces that difference makes; into a re-visioned spatiality that creates from difference new sites for struggle and for the construction of interconnected and non-exclusionary communities of resistance” (Thirdspace 96).

30 In her interview to Mark Meares, Daphne Athas admits the cinematic influences on her writing (72), apparent especially in Cora’s beginning as well as ending. 69

Chapter 2

Ethnic Space, Umbertina Women, and the Voyage to Self-Definition

I. Helen Barolini: The Author at Work

In appreciation of her manifold and valuable contribution, Helen Barolini has been

justifiably characterized as a matriarchal figure in Italian American literature. Barolini, a

budding writer in the sixties, was also occupied with the work of her husband, Italian poet,

novelist and journalist, Antonio Barolini. The seventies, however, saw Barolini’s deeper

initiation into literary production, with her Umbertina1 (1979), a monumental female

Bildungsoman, which delineates the harsh road towards self-definition and ethnic

identification, for four generations of Italian-American women. A few years later, with her

milestone collection The Dreambook: An Anthology of Writings by Italian American women

(1985), Barolini gathered diverse and often unknown works of female poetry, fiction and drama. Thus, she completed a task of utmost importance for Italian Americana: the amplification of female voices. Her constant efforts to highlight the artistic ability and experimentation of women of Italian origin need to be considered and also contrasted in the temporal setting, the early seventies and eighties. It is, admittedly, a period when the specific nascent ethnic literature, is unfortunately, mostly identified with Mario Puzzo’s Mafia- centered novels.2 Restless and resourceful even in her eighties, the recipient of numerous

awards and distinctions, Barolini3 never ceases to explore her ethnic background. Clearly, the

range of genres Barolini has explored is wide, from the cookbook Festa: Recipes and

Recollections of Italian holidays (2002), to essay collections, like Chiaroscuro: Essays of

Identity (1999), as well as books of poetry.4

70

II. Umbertina: Autobiography and Bildungsroman

In her essay “The Personal is Political,” Helen Barolini characterizes Umbertina, as “a novel of development, a cross-cultural and generational novel. It’s a novel of transformation- from one world view to another, in the course of several generations” (156). As she has repeatedly confessed in her interviews and essays, Barolini draws inspiration from her own family history,5 mainly the prominent figure of her maternal grandmother Nicoletta, and transubstantiates a personal family story into a work of art. In particular, the author of Italian descent deploys the diverse troubles that torment four generations of women in her family and their literal, as well as emotional, journeys between Italy and the States, in the time span of one century. Through her writings, Barolini seems to confirm Browdy de Hernandez’s statement on autobiography as “linking past and present, individual and collective” (52). The voices of pragmatic Umbertina, assimilated Carla, fragile Marguerite, passionate Tina and revolutionary Weezy, are masterfully blended to express their personal struggles, all adding individual strokes to the intricate portrait of the ethnic woman’s plight for survival, social and personal freedom.

Undoubtedly, at times the novel reverberates William Boelhower’s definition of autobiography, as “a hyphenated self’s attempt to make it in America” (“The Making” 133), especially when Barolini outlines the first generation immigrants’ ordeals, through

Umbertina’s arrival in America in the 19th century, and her rise to business success; in obeisance of the strict social norms which demanded women’s seclusion in the kitchen,

Umbertina’s entrepreneurial feats are attributed to her much older and quiet husband

Serafino. With her maternal grandmother, Nicoletta, as the prototype for dynamic Umbertina,

Barolini contrasts the primitive strength and coarseness of the immigrant mother to the daughter, Carla’s, refinement and passivity. Simultaneously, the author brings together the granddaughter, Marguerite’s, sense of displacement. Thus, Carla denies any relation to her 71

contemptible ethnic origin; she prefers to enjoy her family’s hard gained affluence and social

status, content with the WASP respectability of mother and wife that she is entitled to,

through marriage. On the other hand, Carla’s daughter, Marguerite, a reflection of the

author’s own life course in the late forties, feels the appeal of her unknown roots and is

unable to compromise with the docile role she is expected to play. Entangled in the insidious

web of patriarchy, Marguerite resorts to the male solutions offered, so as to conclude her

existential dilemmas: marriage to a much older Venetian poet, psychoanalysis with a

patronizing male analyst, a dead-end love affair with a younger ambitious and unscrupulous

Italian young writer. After pregnant Marguerite’s enigmatic death, Barolini points to

optimistic future possibilities, through the deceased woman’s daughters. It is only through the

activist Weezy and fervent scholar Tina, who defy social conventions and choose to follow their hearts that the women in the family saga reach some of the balance they have been longing for. With a special emphasis on Barolini’s explorations of the trials and tribulations of women towards self-representation, Edvige Giunta envisions Umbertina as “Barolini’s complicated search for cultural origins and continuities, a search linked to the development of feminist consciousness” (Afterword 430). Clearly, with its focus on the female struggle for self-definition, Umbertina, as a “sophisticated mélange of social, familial and personal

histories” (Giunta, Afterword 430), has long crossed the strict ethnic boundaries and

characterizations and has been embraced as a powerful feminist statement.

III. Ethnic Space: From Oppression to Creative Impetus

In the previous chapter, I focused on the transformative powers inherent in ethnic space,

drastically affecting the heroine’s life following Athas’s orchestrations, once the heroine

overcomes her marginality and explores it; for Barolini’s four generations of Italian-

American women, however, self-identification proves to be a long, painful and complicated 72

process. Through the four female figures that cover a century of feminist struggles, I contend

that Barolini adumbrates the shifting allegiance of the Umbertina clan towards ethnic space

and the consideration of their ethnic identity. At this point, it is important to note again that

by ethnic space, I refer to both the geographical and socio-historical nexus that accompany

the concept of Italianità. As the plot of the saga unfolds, both homeland and ethnic identity perception are constantly reformulated in the diverse contexts the heroines find themselves in. Thus, I discuss the stress the author places on her heroines’ different phases of

emancipation and self-definition, as well as the inner resources required for a woman of

ethnic ancestry to reach self-realization. In this sense, Barolini graphically depicts the

evolving consideration of ethnic space: from a site of oppression to mystification and

empowerment.

Therefore, as I underline in the following pages, the desolate Calabrian village, Castagna,

constantly remains in the background of the author’s narrations, to emphasize the deprivation

the Amazon figure of Umbertina escapes from and her complete severing of ties. Barolini

portrays her indigent heroine as motivated by the desire to provide for herself and her family;

Umbertina, reproducing the myth that attracted hordes of immigrants, regards America as the

land of “milk and honey,” where she and her loved ones can finally lead a life of material

affluence, based on their diligence and merit. As it is to be expected, the second generation,

here represented by Carla, is freed from any emotional attachment to their parents’ homeland.

Consequently, both Castagna and Italianità, are utterly despised by Carla for all their

degrading connotations of serfdom and exploitation, vulgarity and narrow-mindedness; the

old world life, culture and tradition are rejected by the second generation sybarite daughter,

as they are identified with marginalization, segregation and oppression.

For romantic Marguerite, Umbertina’s granddaughter, caught under the spell of the ethnic awakening movement, the Calabrian village is mystifying, as her legendary grandmother’s 73 birthplace; to Marguerite, it is the long-lost homeland that could perhaps empower her as it did her grandmother, and alleviate her from the burdens of self-definition.6 In the temporal setting of the mid-twentieth century, fettered by the male norms, Marguerite confuses her priorities and her goals in life, a bewilderment I examine from diverse angles. The heroine equates her self-fulfillment to male acceptance, be it her husband, her analyst or her lover.

Marguerite’s sophisticated Roman lifestyle, the privileges of the Italian distinguished literati she enjoys, due to her husband’s artistic activities, as well as the duties of a mother and wife, constantly divert her attention. As a result, Marguerite neglects the journey to the ancestral land and inevitably, her personal quest for self-definition. In this manner, she perpetuates her misconception of the homeland continuing its mystification; since she erroneously equates the visit to her mother’s birthplace with her empowerment, she continues to postpone working on her self-assertion and dynamism and looking for them in areas other than herself.

With the legacy of her mother’s wish for the Calabrian pilgrimage, at the end of a long and adventurous journey, insightful Tina comes to counterbalance the prior misconceptions of either total rejection of the ethnic space or romantic consideration. For Tina and ultimately

Barolini, the “salvation” the postmodern ethnic woman so desperately craves for stems from her personal struggles, as the latter turn her hybridity into a source of empowerment and inspiration, in real life. In this sense, through her last heroine in the concatenation of Italian-

American women, Barolini seems to share similar views with Athas, on ethnic space as Third

Space. Therefore, through her inter-generational approach to the configuration of ethnic identity and the creative exploration of ethnic space, Barolini’s oeuvre echoes Gardaphé’s perception of the novel as “the historical evolution of the Italian woman into the American woman, […] the feminization of the Italian woman as she becomes the Italian-American woman” (Italian Signs 125).

74

IV. Pragmatic Umbertina: Home is Where The Family Eats

In his commentary on Umbertina, in Italian Signs, American Streets, Fred Gardaphé

underlines the vital role of the grandparent figure in the connection of the third generation

Italian-American writer with his ancestral past (120). Through Umbertina herself and her

story line, Barolini, in the role of the traditional storyteller or “cantastorie,”7 relishes the opportunity to unearth the adventures of the first immigration wave of Southern Italians and the tumultuous period of their settlement in the States, that occurred from the late 19th century until the beginning of the Second World War.8 With the focus on the female

protagonist of the immigration story, the author imparts the intelligence, resilience and

courage that Italian women of the South concealed behind the traditional roles of obedient

wife and devout mother.

Umbertina is introduced in the pastoral setting of Castagna, in Calabria, as the illiterate

goat girl striving for her family’s survival, placed in a topos previously stamped with ancient

history and culture, now left in ruins and decay. Through the rough goat girl’s narrations,

Barolini portrays Calabria as the bleak site of peasant destitution, emanating from the

corruption of the church and the aristocracy (24). Evidently, it is this decadent state that

eventually instigates the immigrant exodus of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Therefore, Umbertina is doubly disadvantaged, being both a woman and a pauper. The image

of Calabrian indigence is completed with the natural disasters that periodically occur, to

enhance the fatalistic notions of the prejudice-stricken villagers (29). The bitterness of the

starving Calabrians is expressed through Umbertina’s husband, Serafino Longobardi. As he

incessantly toils to survive in this harsh landscape, meek but hard-working Serafino outpours

his indignation when he states: “Italy doesn’t want us-it makes us bandits or beggars in our

own country. It pretends to give us land in exchange for our money and work, then takes it

back with taxes and interest while the rich are exempt” (47). 75

In contrast to her husband’s sentimentality, the heroine’s conviction that her young

family’s future lies in the New World, arms her with strength and determination not to shed a

tear for the ancestral hearth she is abandoning. In the realistic words of Umbertina: “We

cannot live here” (47). The severing of the ties with the homeland is not mourned as an

absolute and abrupt separation from home. Instead, what preoccupies the pragmatic heroine is

not the uprooting, but the transplantation to a new land, as her own thoughts betray: “They

were transients in the land of their fathers, heading away from it, and it gave them a queer

sense to be adrift between the old country and the new, belonging to neither. The journey

impressed her with the feeling of place: wherever it might be, one had to have a place in the

world” (51). According to the scholar Mariolina Graziosi, Umbertina’s arrival in America is

imbued with the optimism of the desperate who craves for a change. In Graziosi’s words, this

immigration should not be viewed as a “metaphysical loss of the home but on the contrary as the arrival in the true home that will allow her to liberate herself from the misery” (201).

Umbertina realizes the fluid status of the immigrant, the Longobardi “in-betweenness,” and wishes to find the niche that will entitle her family to stability first, and growth later. In her mature years, for the dynamic heroine, the notion of finding her place in the universe of life and powers, acquires a metaphoric dimension, that of having a purpose in life. In

Umbertina’s words to her daughter, Carla: “The important thing, she told her daughter, is to find your place. Everything depends on that. You find your place, you work and like planting seeds, everything grows. But you have to be watchful and stick to it” (139). To mark her new home, her “reign” in the New World, Umbertina uses the rosemary root she carries from

Calabria; according to the Old World legend of which Nelda, Umbertina’s compatriot, reminds us, the existence of a rosemary bush proves that the women of the house where the plant thrives are its strength. Although she has rejected the Old World evils, the resilient 76 heroine chooses to preserve the rosemary, in a symbolic attempt to maintain this vestige of the Old World tradition,9 the only bridge connecting her with her past life.

Her subsequent relocation to the New York tenement house, since the city was definitely

“the geographical stronghold of the immigrant” (Boelhower, Immigrant Autobiography 14), tests Umbertina’s optimism and dreams of a new life in America. Irrespective of Umbertina’s stubbornness and motivation, it will take the Longobardis two years of hand to mouth existence in the New York slums, and under the padrone’s claws, before they can truly be optimistic about their lives in America.10 Even in her bleakest hours, however, the heroine abstains from a nostalgic and emotionally-laden perception of Calabria; on the contrary, she recollects the rural image of Castagna, imbued with the light, air, peace and quiet of the countryside, to brighten the gloomy images of New York, and be encouraged to stabilize her new life. With the passage of time, Umbertina recalls the bare beauty of her Calabrian homeland and admits the dreamy quality of Castagna that forgetfulness brings about. As the heroine’s confesses: “But Castagna was becoming more unreal and insubstantial as time passed, and her memory glossed over past fatigues to fasten on to the present ones” (69).

In his commentary on Umbertina’s disillusionment with the material conditions of life in the tenement world, the scholar Francesco Mulas comes to foreground the newly-found concept that enthuses the heroine and counterbalances her aches and pains, that is “freedom to choose one’s destiny, freedom to fail or to succeed” (21). Liberated from the chains of nepotism and determinism that tortured the plebeians in Southern Italy, Umbertina’s character evolves, from the sidelines of female confinement into a participant in the intoxication of the American Dream; according to the latter’s theoretical background, everything is possible, through diligence and persistence. In the name of a better future, sensible Umbertina sacrifices her final bond with the past, her only precious belonging from

Calabria, her bedspread, to rescue her family from the grey urban center. Ironically, her 77

“freedom” to start fresh again in the New World is obtained at the expense of her only

treasure from the homeland. This final separation is yet another symbolic removal from

Calabria and the universe it represents. Once out of New York, in the countryside, Umbertina is certain of her family’s survival based on their own crop production from the fertile

American land, a space that for the immigrant acquires Edenic dimensions.

Wayne Franklin and Michael Steiner elaborate on the first immigrant experience of the

vastness and fertility, so typical of the American land. They comment on the “sprawling,

unfinished vistas [that] are both exhilarating and daunting beckoning a fresh start for some,

bringing emptiness for others” (3). The contrast between the two worlds is immense and not accidental since it testifies to the abundance11 and the opportunity available. Through

Umbertina’s eyes the readers visualize the following:

Here the fields weren’t rocky, walled, dusty patches with thin rivulets of

irrigation as they were in Calabria, where nothing could be allowed to lie

fallow and recover its strength. There farming had been plundering, sacking

the dry earth beyond its endurance; here she saw such abundance of wild

green that it put her soul at ease-it would never dry out and force them to be

uprooted again. (80)

Since the heroine envisions her future through the lens of pragmatism and business ambition,

her life plan excludes the return to the homeland or the maintenance of any relations with

Calabria, apart from commercial ones.12 She even refuses to assist her relatives back home

financially lest they retard her ascending course. For Umbertina, Calabria belongs to the past

forever and the sooner one realizes that, the better he will adjust and thrive.13 As the heroine

graphically states: “Once the uprooting had taken place, everything from then on had to go toward regaining strength in the transplantation. […] Can one keep moving one’s roots and buds? Not and produce good fruit-that much she knew” (110). Only in her final hour of 78 weakness, on her deathbed, does the octogenarian woman ask for some of Castagna’s water; this way, Barolini concludes Umbertina’s life journey on Earth and America with the same last deed she performed, before embarking on the ship to the New World.

Admittedly, Barolini’s portrayal of the Old World is detrimental to female creativity and development. Like Caperna Lloyd, in her memoir No Pictures in My Grave analyzed in

Chapter 4, Umbertina’s author rejects the seclusion southern Italian women experienced; moreover, she welcomes their baptism into the emancipating waters of the New World, by pinpointing Umbertina’s initiative. It is this shift in the spatial setting, from arid Calabria to the fertile East Coast fields that signifies Umbertina’s transformation, an indispensable attribute for the acquisition of the American identity as Michael Soto highlights (158).

Umbertina’s arrival in America is the catalytic event in her life that instigates the unmasking of her business skills: the ignorant and illiterate goat girl, motivated by her family’s need and transplanted to American soil, through diligence and persistence, turns into a perceptive businesswoman who manages to create her own family empire. While her portrait is saturated with the Franklinian triptych, the “newly Americanized” Umbertina is vested with all the respectability of the New World order; in this respect, she is privileged in a way that the inflexible and traditional Italian system of the nineteenth century would never allow. William

Boelhower highlights that the notion of the American Dream is essential for immigrant autobiography, in a culture where the self-made man and, in this case, woman, acquire mythical dimensions (Immigrant Autobiography 27). Umbertina’s impetus to provide her family with better living conditions in America, as well as her optimism for the new life and opportunities that lie ahead, are her prevalent attributes: these two characteristics seem to be her safety nets that even in her darkest hours, like her children’s deaths, manage to sustain her. 79

Nevertheless, Barolini’s heroine, though far from Calabria, is still within the restricting confines of ethnic space. Far from a feminist pioneer, her will and initiative as a female agent are not limitless. They are simply provoked, formed and controlled by the heroine’s need to insure her family’s welfare. Thus, Umbertina’s ascending course as an entrepreneur in the

New World is halted by her husband’s death. With a eulogy praising Umbertina’s skills,

“customarily” assigning them to her deceased husband Serafino, Barolini places a tombstone

on her heroine’s development, to emphasize the limits of the newly-acquired female progress.

The American air of self-reliance allows the Old World heroine the liberty to simply cater to

her family’s needs, under a male name; with the centrality of the family yet again projected

as the ultimate Italian ideal, the Old World values prove to be tenacious to the feminist

victories in the New World. Serafino’s eulogy and Umbertina’s subsequent widowhood

suggest to the readers Umbertina’s real possibilities as a woman, in a world still made by and

for men. Once a widow, she is denied any further recognition as a person; in fact, she would

never even consider such an alternative, since, as the heroine herself admits, a woman

without a husband is nothing. It will take at least two more generations and Umbertina’s

great-granddaughter, for Italian-American women to acquire independence and control over their lives. Inescapably, as a carrier of the Old World mores and tradition, Umbertina’s

confinement is bestowed upon her daughters. In accordance with the traditional Italian

upbringing as well as the stereotypical middle-class American of the time, Umbertina’s

daughters are raised to be docile, ornamental and submissive, in the haven of their home.

V. Carla: The Need to Fit in

Rudolph Vecoli, theorizing on Italian-American assimilation, eloquently states: “Ethnicity is a form of memory and many Italian-Americans are suffering from amnesia” (14). In the case of Umbertina’s youngest daughter Carla, though, curiously it is amnesia imposed on her 80

by the mother, who considers all connection to the ethnic past an impediment in the course of

Americanization. In this respect, as the determined Umbertina severs her children’s ties with

their ethnic past, in the name of their well-being in America, she is contrasted to the image of

the narrator’s mother and grandmother, as treasurers of the ethnic tradition graphically

depicted in Chapter 3 of Davidson’s novel. As a first generation immigrant who longs to

benefit fully from the new country, Umbertina is adamant about her children’s learning

English at school, even at the expense of standard Italian. This conviction triggers Sister

Carmella’s protests: “It is the cultural heritage of these children to know their mother tongue”

(93). Nevertheless, the Italian immigrant’s retort to the Sister’s remark predictably favors

survival, as opposed to culture: “The culture will come after we make a living, God willing”

(93).

Even though Umbertina does not prioritize the acquisition of their mother tongue for her

American-born children, she chooses to raise her offspring following traditional Italian

dictates. The heroine focuses on material success and despises the things she considers less

important, like sophistication and self-fulfillment, leaving them to the powers of the

recipient’s osmosis. Thus, since “the future of the name and business was in her sons” (100),

Umbertina provides her daughters with the skills and traits that are necessary for their domestic roles (131); in this way, however, Umbertina deprives her daughters of the fighting spirit their older male siblings are endowed with, reinforcing their immobility within the oppressive confines of ethnic space. Consequently, the boys are urged to work hard, exploit their potential and make the important decisions for the family business; on the other hand, the girls are prepared simply to assist on an occasional basis, and, in reality, prove their worth in the spheres of motherhood and wifehood (135). Contrary to her own personal development on arrival in the New World, Umbertina recoils to the conservative role models of the two sexes, as they were bequeathed to her in the Old World; to the immigrant woman’s mind, her 81

own deviance from the traditional female role is an exemption that resulted from the extreme

need and hunger14 her family experienced.

As a result, the youngest daughter in the big Longobardi family, Carla, shy and

inexperienced, finds herself in her element only when she is in the bosom of the Italian familial setting. This she obediently considers her own personal niche of stability and

security, the realm of every docile and traditionally minded good Italian girl, the family.

Umbertina’s teachings urging Carla to see her place beside her husband are forever engraved

in Carla’s mind. In need of self-confidence and self-esteem, Carla never questions the

limitations of ethnic space; instead, she is unable to surpass the family boundaries set for her

and survive outside the family circle. Thus, when marriage moves her to a neighboring town,

she laments the separation from the safe familial haven.

Like the other affluent American girls of her age, Carla is influenced by the films and

novels she is exposed to. She is initially presented as a romantic, gullible girl, who naively

considers “love [to be] a Gloria Swanson movie.” Clearly, affected by Swanson’s cinematic

image, Carla fantasizes a marital life full of suspense, glamour, and adventure. Carla’s New

World “rose-tinted expectations” of love and marriage are contrasted to her mother’s Old

World reticence and traditionalism. In a discussion over love and her own husband,

Umbertina scolds her daughter for her romantic ideas and repeats the female moral

obligation: “He was a good man-a little sentimental, but good; and I did my duty. That’s what

marriage is, not all this love and romance. Marriage is to start a family, it’s not a carosello- a

merry-go-round. It’s a woman’s duty!” (139).

Only momentarily does the heroine escape her prescribed place within the confines of the

family home, and dares to express her aspiration to continue her studies in college, possibly

influenced by the progressive ideas of her era, which called for women’s education and

development. As expected, her wish is soon to be negated. Her dream for self-exploration and 82 self-development, admittedly rather sketchily presented, is not solid enough and it is easily trampled by her family, especially her mother. When Carla is offered limitless credit for her material needs by her brother, if she leaves high school to assist in the family business, her aspirations vanish. Predictably, it is Umbertina who denies her a higher education; the first generation immigrant is appalled at the possibility of a daughter spending the night away from home and discerns the risks of damaging the good family reputation, “l’onore della famiglia.”15 Carla’s lack of a real wish to educate herself is again confirmed on another occasion, in the case of a “liberal” American suitor: when the latter expresses his support for her future studies, the traditionally-minded Carla finds him too progressive and eccentric to her liking. A marriage to such a man frightens Clara, who cannot but reject him. Yet, she consents to marry an Italian-American self-made man who, as she believes, will never surpass her family’s local reputation and prestige.

As a representative of the second generation, first American-born Italian-Americans,

Carla’s driving force remains her need and aspiration to be embraced as a fully-fledged

American woman. The wealth her family has accumulated over the years has offered Carla the material prosperity she wished for. What she needs to acquire now is the New World social prestige and acceptance. From her new place among the American nouveaux-riche,

Clara, following her mother’s alienation from her Old World family, avoids being associated with anything remotely connected to her ethnic background, apart from her family. Among numerous other scholars, Agnieszka Bedingfield expounds the second generation stance vis-

à- vis their ethnic past and identity, stressing the inevitability of their disinterest, considering the lack of emotional bonding with a land and a culture so distant. In Bedingfield’s words:

For the second generation “returning” is emptied of its original connotation, as

there is no particular “site of memory” attached to the concept. It becomes a

hollow sentiment, a second-hand emotion, an abstraction without much 83

relevance to their American life which is the only life they know and yet one

that has a profound effect on that life. (343)

Only once does Carla wonder about the immaterial Italian-American achievements apart

from their “cars and furs and big houses” (136). In a confession on her own personal route,

Helen Barolini justifies the second generation’s haste to obliterate all links with the poverty

and squalor of the Old World, but also its language and culture. In Barolini’s words: “Both

my parents, children of immigrants, passed on to their children conflicted feelings about their

origins. In striving to get past the old generation they severed themselves too drastically from

it; their lives became all in the foreground, without depth or ties to the past, all a surface of

American success” (“Becoming a Literary Person” 263).16 Following Anthony Julian

Tamburri’s analysis of Carla’s materialism, this second generation immigrant can be

characterized as the “apathetic individual,” since she filters her perception through the

economic prism, but also “avoids the conflict of cultural duality by de-emphasizing and ‘de-

emotionalizing’ natural origin” (358). In contrast to the mystifying Greek homeland that Don

as a second generation immigrant experiences in Daphne Athas’s Cora, Barolini, with Carla,

breaks the fairy godmother’s spell, only to retrieve the pumpkin and mice that Umbertina, as

the young and poor Cinderella, was familiar with. As expected, Carla’s experience of the

Italian homeland leaves her not only untouched but also indignant and determined. The

heroine’s honeymoon sojourn in Calabria, on the last leg of a luxurious stay in Europe,

shocks her, with the lack of all modern amenities she is used to in America. Her “Calabrian”

experience shatters any misgivings she might have had concerning the Italian past: there can

be no connection with that primitive culture (Barolini, “Becoming a Literary Person” 263).

84

VI. Marguerite and the Agony of Self-Definition

In spite of her grandmother’s and mother’s conformism, Marguerite, “the searcher” for

Barolini,17 stands out as emblematic of the long female fight to obtain independence and

fulfillment in life. Even though the middle-aged heroine senses the reverberations of the

feminist movement of the 60s, she does not participate in it. Yet, she is haunted by gender

and identity issues: the ethereal and fragile Marguerite finds herself trapped between the

demands of a suffocating marriage and motherhood, while she also lacks an outlet for her

artistic needs. As regards her ethnic identity, the heroine feels disconnected from a collective

past that remains unknown to her, and, thus, she seems to be constantly uprooted and

“restless.” Marguerite, therefore, appears entwined in what Barolini herself has pointed out as

“the drama and high intensity of living astride two cultures: the internal family-oriented

Italian one, and the external one of American pressures of self-realization” (Chiaroscuro 61).

To Marguerite’s mind, the imposing figure of her enigmatic grandmother embodies the assertiveness and self-confidence she wishes she had; as a result, Marguerite’s return to

Umbertina’s birthplace, Castagna, is considered of vital importance to the young heroine’s empowerment. Similar to Athas’s accounts of Don’s romanticized fantasies on Greece as a place where he would have an intense experience with the female, Castagna is perceived by

Marguerite as another magical chora of transformation, where the heroine could immerse herself in order to be imparted with some of the grandmother’s admirable personality traits.

In my view, through Marguerite, Barolini comments on the romanticized expectations women of the third generation are often consumed with. On a par with the heroines in

Chapters 3 and 4, Marguerite craves a return to the ancestral space, so as to be imparted with the “hereditary” traits of resilience, assertiveness and shrewdness that her Americanization deprived her of. 85

Before she embarks on her quest for self-definition, Marguerite must first escape the forces that imprison her, as well as “the enormity of the repression that has kept her in the dark”

(“The Laugh of the Medusa” 374), following Hélène Cixous’s classic feminist teachings. To find the necessary strength and enlightenment, the heroine seeks solace in psychoanalysis and resorts to the male psychiatrist’s couch. This way, through Marguerite’s agonizing effort to regain control of her life as well as her inner conflicts, the novelist restages the all-powerful battle between traditionalism and feminism and presents the heroine as a “woman in her inevitable struggle against conventional man” (Cixous, “The Laugh of the Medusa” 374).

VII. Marguerite in the Wonderland of Psychoanalysis

Julia Kristeva praises the benefits of psychoanalysis by equating it, at its end, to “a state of perpetual rebirth” (Intimate Revolt 233); Donald Winnicot considers the analytical cure as liberating, because it shatters all the “false selves” that were previously employed as defense mechanisms, while re-establishing the original psychic unity (qtd. in Kristeva, Intimate

Revolt 233). Both of these remarks stress the cathartic quality of psychoanalysis and underline its unique potential for the change and healing that the Italian-American heroine so desperately seeks.

The reader’s first glimpses of Marguerite reveal a self-conscious, confused person who hates to leave her doctor’s office without reassurance or answers for the issues that torment her. She pleads with the doctor not to conclude the session without adding his opinion on the validity of her decision to divorce her husband; at the same time, she secretly craves the analyst’s lovemaking, as a sign of his acceptance (3). Her wish “Don’t reject me, make love to me” (3) initially recalls Sigmund Freud’s notion of “transference”; that is, “feelings derived from elsewhere, that they were already prepared in the patient, and, upon the opportunity offered by the analytic treatment, are transferred on to the person of the doctor” 86

(494). However, Marguerite’s similar erotic fantasies, later on in the story, concerning the

acquaintance she makes on a train, the shoemaker, the flowerman and even her daughter’s

boyfriends (7-8), unveil a constant preoccupation with the issues of love and sexuality; the

heroine herself condemns analysis of those erotic dreams (4); clearly, though, it is her

constant need to feel reassured and caressed by a male figure that possesses her. On a parallel

to Davidson’s narrator in Chapter 3, Barolini creates a persona who cannot survive without a

male touch.

In a male-dominated world, women have forever depended for their self-image on their

male relatives, be it father, husband, brother, son or even lover, since they have been refused personal autonomy and development. This way women are cunningly deprived of the right to achieve maturation, and complete Carl Jung’s life-long process of “individuation,” that is, reaching a balance between the opposing male and female attributes in the psyche, by fully exploring themselves and their potential. Adrienne Rich elaborates on this male strategy and rightly feels it is “always a stolen power, withheld from the mass of women in patriarchy”

(246).

In particular, Italian-American women, with the history of painful survival in the harsh landscape of the Old country and the hostile surroundings of the New, would never dream of functioning away from male protection. Following Helen Barolini’s remarks, “women outside the family structure were scorned as deviants from the established order; they were either wicked or pitiful, but always beyond the norm” (Introduction 13). That is why

Umbertina’s potential vanishes along with the death of her husband, as was previously mentioned. Moreover, whenever women of Italian ancestry acted separately from the men, they became Louise De Salvo’s “puttane”-“whores” (94). In this light, Carla’s accommodation in a college dorm as a student was rejected, since it would be morally unacceptable. 87

Within this social and mental framework, the family and its needs have always been the

sole sacred mission of every woman and her only way to survive. As Barolini puts it: “Family

was the focal point of the Italian woman’s duty and concern, and by the same token the source of her strength and power, the means by which she measured her worth and was in turn measured, the reason for her being” (Introduction 13). Given the heroine’s traditional background, it is not surprising that she feels stressed, facing a future out of wedlock, when she confesses: “I’m about to dissolve a marriage without another prospect in sight” (4). On

the same note, Mary Jo Bona stresses Marguerite’s “realistic marital choices” (Claiming a

Tradition 137); obviously, it is her need for safety and affection, rather than her dream of

self-evolution, that leads Marguerite to marry the much older Venetian poet Alberto

Morosini.

Surely, it is a far cry from the generations of women who were characterized as neurotic by

their analysts, due to their wish to have equal rights at work, in pay and education (Sayers

102). Change does not come about in one day, though. Barolini emphasizes the gradual

evolution through the four generations of women; Umbertina was totally ignored as a

businesswoman; she never transmitted her strength and skills to her daughters assigning them

an ornamental role. Consequently, Carla’s conformism and domesticity are a result of

Umbertina’s upbringing. However, Marguerite is tormented all her life by a sense of

“dislocation” and “displacement;” she even dares to consider divorcing her husband to pursue

her artistic interests proving that there has been significant improvement in women’s equality

issues.

On the threshold of self-liberation, the Italian-American analysand has all her bottled up

feelings emerge in the sessions; it is at this point that the rejection of the mask of a “business

receptionist,” her adopted pleasing personality as mother and wife, seems certain: “Now she

was another step removed, watching herself watch the receptionist; thinking it was time to 88

fire her and her goddamn personality smile” (6). While the heroine seems to detest her life,

she contemplates the change of her life course and the dissolution of her unwanted marriage as the next step to take: “The stage props had dropped and she had been left alone in all the

artifice to get out of her sham costume as best she could and find another part, in another theater with other actors” (7).

Marguerite’s agonizing questions as she anticipates the analyst’s support reflect her

agitation, as well as the emotional dead end she finds herself in. As Luce Irigaray argues:

“Since the desire of the analysand is blocked, help is needed to release it. Analysands are in

analysis because they could not unaided release themselves” (qtd. in Whitford 36).

Unfortunately, once again, Marguerite relies on male guidance to liberate her, and like

another Persephone18 salvage her from her imprisonment in this Shadowy Underworld (16).

The author’s employment of this popular mythological motif, which confirms the significance of mythology and its perennial symbolism among ethnic authors, is extensively

utilized and discussed in Chapters 3 and 4 with more recent literary works. For Barolini’s

Marguerite, Helios the sun god, that is Dr. Verdile in her mind, is not as helpful and drastic as

she would hope; the psychoanalyst’s attitude justifies numerous feminist attacks against

psychoanalysis, by which psychoanalysis is a means of comprehending the unconscious

structure of patriarchy but not a strategy for change (Sprengnether 8).

Dr. Verdile’s responses recall Elaine Hoffman Baruch and Lucienne Juliette Serrano’s statements on maintenance of “the autonomy of the patient in all her particularities” (6). They could perhaps be accepted as ethically and professionally correct; however, they are definitely not what Marguerite needs to hear. Far from the analyst’s advisory role that the patient might have wanted, he chooses to remain detached; his answers: “you must do as you feel” (2), “it’s what you think that counts” (17), “you insist on hearing what I think when it’s you who’s important” (17) aim at Marguerite’s expression of her own wishes and the 89 development of her independent thought; therefore the analyst seems to follow the dictates of

Jung who, as Estella Lauter and Carol Schreier Rupprecht comment, “trusted the analysand’s experience and insight, de-emphasizing the analyst’s authority and insisting that it is more important for an analysand ‘to understand than for the analyst’s theoretical expectations to be satisfied’” (5); therefore, the analyst’s tedious questions intend to force the woman to confront a situation she has been forever avoiding, “the self-punishment” she has inflicted on herself. Nonetheless, Carol Hymowitz and Michele Weissman remind us that “women’s lack of confidence, creativity, aggression and mastery were used as proof of their inferiority”

(347), in this manner prolonging, ad infinitum, their subservience. Clearly, Marguerite, like the white rabbit of Alice in Wonderland that is “timid, tremulous, always late, fearful of duchesses and everything else” (5), certainly needs to work on her self-esteem and assertion.

Besides his seemingly objective stance, however, the psychoanalyst, with what initially seem to be well-meant, casual comments, unmasks his deeper thoughts concerning his female patient and women in general. For him, Marguerite Morosini has all the positive attributes a woman can have: “young, pleasing, elegant-not like some women who are impossible” (7), as he declares. In his effort to restore her optimism, he simply infuriates her (7). It is not accidental that his adjectives praise her appearance, her youthful looks, her easy-going temperament but never her intellect, her dynamism, experience that comes with age, all of them male attributes. Expressing the Jungian trend, the analyst considers Eros, or the principle of relatedness, as the dominant characteristic of the female psyche by nature, and

Logos, thought and reason, as always being a recessive attribute (Lauter and Rupprecht 6). In this manner, the analyst forever assigns women an ornamental, superficial and passive role.

His comments could be considered as a perpetuation of Carla’s influence, because they continue Marguerite’s given state and are not conducive to her personal evolution. 90

Furthermore, the analyst’s observations, at this point, are somewhat saturated with

Freudian teachings, which called for female domesticity and passivity in its extreme version,

even promoting a return to the Victorian female state (Hymowitz and Weissman 300).

Characteristic of his patronizing attitude towards women is the degrading remark he makes on the “typical female wile,” of signing the divorce papers first and then going to bed with their husbands (6). Apparently, for the psychoanalyst, women, incapable of dynamic action and reaction, have to resort to petty tricks to realize their goals.

Naturally, his suggestions induce the frustration of the heroine who muses: “Did he think

she would fall into the trap of letting him persuade her about the female role? The hell with

the minor roles, she wanted to be a person as much as he” (6). Fully aware of his sexist

behavior Marguerite reacts, exasperated with life in the margins; instead of the emotional

support she had expected from the psychiatrist, she senses his detachment, and piqued by his

comments, she questions him, thinking: “You are not different from me she thought, looking

at his chewed fingernails. Except that you can hide it better under your analyst’s uniform:

pipe, turtleneck sweater, thick black-rimmed eyeglasses, white hairs all over your trousers

from the Dalmatians you keep at your country place, dispassion, intelligence, aplomb,

Swissness” (4). Her impatience to transform her whole life and “recuperate” fast, is tried by

the slow results of the psychoanalysis and this provokes a gamut of negative feelings for the

psychiatrist like dislike, “smooth, self-assured, deep-voiced” (3) and exasperation: “it’s the

effect of analysis. I want my life to be my own, not conditioned by these meetings with you

and the whole thing pressing on me like a chain I can’t lift” (4). Moreover, Marguerite senses

her helplessness: “if she could sort and act on her feelings that neatly she wouldn’t be there at

all” (3), “he never helped.” Analysis revokes all the emotions Marguerite had suppressed

beneath the costume of the elegant wife of the successful poet. As she evaluates her

detestable condition, her inertia reinforces her feelings of self-depreciation (5-6). 91

VIII. Strong Enough to Defy the Current?

As she delves deeper into the issue of female conditioning, Barolini employs flashbacks

from Marguerite’s childhood. “Mad” Marguerite –as they called her at school-had always

been different, restlessly looking for happiness (153), aspiring to a full and exciting life. The

narrator sketches Marguerite’s personality and notes that: “It made her sad in a way to be

unlike the others, but also proud. It made her think that her life was going to go in diverse

ways from what she saw around her-it might not be popular but it would be richer in

experiences, more intricate, like an exotic dish or a fabulous place such as she saw in the

pages of Holiday magazine” (149). Although the heroine lacks a clear sense of orientation in

her identity formation and any emotional support, she rejects all the “trodden paths” indicated

by her family (153); Marguerite has mixed feelings about her “uniqueness” but she is

determined to explore and taste life to the full, since she longs “to find her place in the world

as her place card at the senior Banquet read” (154). Thus, in Demaris S. Wehr’s words, she

represents all women fighters as she is “acting out the culture-wide struggle of all women to

realize their full humanity in a society which devalues them and offers no complete vision of

their possibilities of empowerment” (34).

Marguerite’s early rebellion is opposed to the image held by the mother image that seems

determined to combat her young daughter’s reactionary personality. Carla, relishing luxury

and upper-class security, insists on pressing her to conform, become “popular” and

pragmatic, so as to assume her “decorative” role in life and marry well: ‘“All you want me to

do is smile, play golf, and have dates as if that’s what life is all about’. ‘What is life about’

her mother asked. ‘I don’t know…but I’ll find out, and it won’t be what you think.’ Too

serious for a girl they all agreed” (152). As Nancy Chodorow insists, this is the way that

women are psychologically prepared for mothering, through their upbringing (39); however, 92

this early teaching of the woman’s position in the world, of what is considered appropriate

and expected behavior, is emphatically and categorically rejected by Adrienne Rich as not

“mothering” (243). Marguerite recalls the lack of affection in her childhood and the sense of

detachment: “Fires of understanding and affection never glowed in that household, throwing

off either light or warmth of those shadows of conflict and passion that come from deep

involvement. They didn’t touch” (153). Instead of tenderness and love, her parents lavished

the children with material goods, unable to understand and cater to their offspring’s

emotional needs: “And if they had been told that the only gift a parent can make his child-the unconditional affection that alone generates freedom-had been withheld while they figured the dollar costs of camps, private schools, sailboats, clothes, sports cars, and allowance, they would have been indignant: ‘That’s gratitude for all we’ve done’” (153-154). Within the same train of thought, women like Marguerite who have not been mothered enough, something Rich considers frequent in patriarchal society, find marriages of convenience to their liking: due to their need to be mothered they often seek to discover a motherly figure in the face of their husband (Rich 242).

In this process of self-discovery, young Marguerite resists the conservative and restraining

morals of monogamy; her successive affairs shock her family who, after her brief and failed

marriage send her off to Europe. Marguerite views sex as a liberating force that frees her from her family’s conventionalism and conformity; whereas it is not as dangerous as love, it equals catharsis. In Barolini’s wording: “Sex was the way to unpeel all those layers of lies that had been plastered on her consciousness. Family, God, Money, Success, Marriage-all she had to do to strip those plastered slogans from her was to derobe and screw them off” (161).

This “anti-social tendency, the wicked persona, the self-hater, the social–rebel” is, in Jungian terms, Marguerite’s “shadow” (Pratt 101). However, instead of celebrating her sexuality and her newly-acquired freedom so as to further develop herself, the young woman reveals her 93

entrapment in the prevalent mentality, since she still seeks reassurance and protection from

the men in her life; the little girl’s need to make her father happy for her is still there (153);

she searches for love in her affairs and personal fulfillment through others (162); apparently, she justifies her “shadowy” behavior as an attempt to find the eligible husband who will redeem her. In her insightful essay “Spinning Among Fields: Jung, Frye, Levi-Strauss,”

Annis V. Pratt comments on female preconditioning and asserts that due to their identification as male extensions or creations of male imagination, women are denied their right to be analyzed as creators and searchers themselves (98). Such a venture seems unthinkable for Marguerite’s traditional background so she has to explain herself and her actions, before finally conforming to the traditional female role; therefore, she proves Pratt’s brilliant argument that: “Women’s shadows are socially conformist, incorporating women’s self-loathing for their deviations from social norms, specifically the norms of femininity. […]

Their shadows are swollen with self-administered opprobrium for rebelling against what society wants them to be” (103).

Consequently, longing to finish her wandering and obtain security, Marguerite relies on a

marriage to Alberto Morosini, who condescendingly promises to make “a positive human

being out of her” (9) and share a common artistic journey and evolution. Like every

traditional fairy tale which serves patriarchy, the prince will save the troubled princess since he offers love, devotion and redemption, and absolves her in a god-like manner (9). In spite

of his initial promises, though, this prince never delivers, preoccupied with his own career;

engrossed in his own pursuits, he gradually annihilates all feeling inside her. The

“anesthetized” and withdrawn Marguerite bitterly admits her personal inactivity as opposed

to her husband’s achievements. As she sarcastically adds: “She saw it as his success story.

They could make a movie” (9-10). 94

“Mad” Marguerite adapts to the new conditions as wife of a famous poet and mother, a

housewife with suppressed artistic needs; instead of the Pygmalion she had been craving for

to dissolve her “foolish romantic ideas” as she says, she feels constrained (179), patronized

(183) and helpless (180). Paraphrasing Sylvia Brinton Perera’s argumentation (141), in this

way Marguerite herself mutilates, depotentiates, silences herself and is enraged trying to compress her soul into the collective model, just as our Western world grandmothers deformed their bodies with corsets. Contrary to the granddaughter’s attitude, Marguerite’s own grandmother Umbertina, refused to constrain her girth and follow the contemporary ideal of female elegance, thus proving her own strong will.

On the whole, this total lack of emotional support for contemporary women is what Nancy

Chodorow contrasts to the traditional ideal of family as an emotional refuge (36). It is

precisely these feelings of passivity and reservation in women that often breed depression.

Hidden behind her pleasing façade, Marguerite chooses to fool herself, living in a make-

believe world, but her feelings of revolt towards her husband and what he represents are

expressed as destructive fantasies; once, she fantasizes that she sees her husband dead of a

heart attack; on another occasion Alberto dies of poisoning, a crime committed by his wife; in

this manner, she releases all the negative and suffocating emotions that overwhelm her in

Alberto’s presence; in her poisoning fantasy, her reasons for killing Alberto eloquently

express her state of mind: “she killed her husband because he had promised her a creative life

and hadn’t kept his word; because he still spoke poor English; because he spent summers at

the sea without swimming or walking on the beach; because he drew the blinds on sun and

light” (190).

95

IX. The Third Generation Interest in Ethnic Origins

Lost in the maze of self-identification, Marguerite, even as a child, mystifies the assertive figure of her grandmother (150), who, regardless of her humble origins, managed to build an

empire. In dire need to define herself, as far as her ethnicity and gender is concerned, and her

own position in the world, Marguerite intends to retrace her family’s, and in particular her

grandmother’s,19 past, through her return to Italy. Mirroring the author’s own life choices,

Marguerite’s gesture as a young woman represents the third generation’s wish to return to

their roots just like Davidson’s and Lloyd’s heroines in Chapters 3 and 4, respectively. As

Edvige Giunta highlights in Writing with an Accent, the sensitive heroine is the only one of her family who feels the need to connect with the Old World culture and language, to discover her past, so as to complete the puzzle of her identity (46). For her parents, as was previously noted in Carla’s case, Americanization equals progress, personal success; all bonds with Italianitá have to be severed since they are humiliating and they obstruct assimilation (150). Sensitive Marguerite, looking for “belongingness,” is the only one left “to wonder about the people in the shadows” (150). As Jeffrey Weeks comments: “Identity is about belonging, about what you have in common with some people and what differentiates you from others. At its most basic it gives you a sense of personal location, the stable core to your individuality” (88).

Far from the heroine’s identity quest, the years go by with a distracted Marguerite

connecting personal fulfillment with family life and wifehood, neglecting the familial past. It

is her sessions with Dr. Verdile that reveal that her ethnic and gender questions have

remained unresolved. In particular, the dream with which Barolini introduces Marguerite is

all-telling: in it, the heroine is the only foreign student in the classroom when the teacher

assigns them their permanent places in class; she has to write an essay on a topic about

something “low, animal, shameful, not nice” that she cannot remember exactly. Her agony 96 springs from the fact that she does not have enough ink to finish the essay and she feels at a disadvantage because of her foreignness; her stress in defining the topic of the essay which is written on the board and she cannot see clearly, gives insights into her critical emotional state. Her diverse choices of the mysterious word-topic, which range from German “gross,”

Italian “grossolano,” and French “grossesse” conclude with the English “grocery,” and illustrate her cosmopolitanism, as well as her clarity of mind to interpret her dream.20 With the analyst’s guidance, she ends up with the English “grocery” as the main topic of her essay in the dream, since this word is associated with her grandmother, given the latter’s occupation.

As the leading role of the grandmother in the dream attests, Barolini’s heroine centers her quest for identity around the focal point of the grandmother. On a par with Davidson’s and

Lloyd’s narrators, her grandmother is perceived as the only tangible link with an unknown collective past. In fact, using the dream as her springboard, Marguerite bases herself on

Umbertina and the values she represents to identify her parents’, as well as her own, stance, vis-à-vis their ethnic identity. As Marguerite examines the family background, the diverse personalities and their perceptions as regards their ethnic identity, Umbertina is prominent, since she personifies primitive strength, while Marguerite herself is haunted by weakness and lack of determination. As the young woman realizes her father’s confusion, she cannot but notice his feelings of guilt and entrapment between two worlds and cultures. On the other hand, her mother’s refusal to face reality (19) is contrasted with Marguerite’s disorientation and lack of self assertion, “the vagueness she has been floundering in” (18) while “trying to fit myself into abstractions, trying to live everyone else’s idea of what my life should be”

(19).

Interestingly enough, although she meant to have her psychoanalytic sessions in English, which she considers her mother tongue, she ends up talking to Dr. Verdile in Italian, a fact 97

that surprises even herself (16). Quite unexpectedly, Italian “sprouts in her mouth like a rose”

(16) as Maria Mazziotti Gillan states in her poem “Patterson School 18, Patterson New

Jersey”; unfortunately, Marguerite, preoccupied with her problems, fails to see the connection

between the use of Italian and her identity quest; instead, she mistakes the use of Italian in the

sessions as signifying her rejection of her mother (16). Marguerite’s intimate link to her

ancestral language is beautifully and even more intensely reflected in Julia Kristeva’s

thoughts on her own maternal language, Bulgarian, when she writes: “It is not me. It is this

maternal memory, this warm and still speaking cadaver, a body within my body, that

resonates with infrasonic vibrations and data, stifled loves and flagrant conflicts” (Strangers

245). Clearly, the use of her foremothers’ language in psychoanalysis signifies Marguerite’s connection with her personal and collective history, both literally and metaphorically: the language that she did not speak, and which separated her from communicating with her grandmother, whom she had always admired (7), also brings Marguerite closer to her true self; in Anthony D. Smith’s phrasing “by rediscovering that [shared, unique], culture we

‘rediscover’ ourselves, the ‘authentic self”’ (16-17).

In her middle-age crisis, restless Marguerite deems inadequate the material security and social status provided by her famous husband; it is not anymore “the summit of her aspirations,” as she was taught in her childhood (12); she longs to resume control of her life, to love and be loved, to resemble Umbertina, who always succeeded in her goals. In this frame of mind, Castagna, the birthplace of dynamic Amazons like her grandmother, is equated with a unique chora that will drastically help the heroine in her identity quest. As

Marguerite confesses: “I’ve always suspected it was my grandmother Umbertina who brought me to Italy in the first place. But I’ve never taken the time to go see where she came from” (…) “I always thought I wanted to get back to her elementary kind of existence…her 98 kind of primitive strength. I’ve always felt that my life was wasted on abstract ideas rather than being rooted in reality” (18).

Not accidentally, Barolini creates a heroine who is predestined never to reach her own personal chora of transformation. Raised to remain on the sidelines of action, like most women of her generation, Marguerite lacks the concentration and determination that constitute the prerequisites for this journey of self-exploration; as a rule in her life, the middle-aged heroine chooses the role of spectator and not of performer in her life. In

Barolini’s words: “She liked to be a spectator, an observer. That way she could put a frame around the parts she liked and discard the parts that didn’t come out well, the ugly parts. She could see something in sequence, see it whole and understand it” (10). Confirming Nancy

Chodorow’s views, in The Reproduction of Mothering that traditional upbringing recreates women whose life acquires meaning only through their relations with others (51), Marguerite feels “annulled,” invisible when people do not pay attention to her needs or do not consider her in a favorable light (11). To this end, Marguerite employs a “uniform,” that is her diverse roles in life that make her recognizable: “These were the buttons and stripes of her uniform and still no one saw her. She could no more exist alone than does a painting without viewers, or the Grand Canyon without tourists” (11). Following the feminist dictates of the seventies,

Barolini’s heroine could go on with her self-search, become autonomous emotionally and literally, explore her roots, “realize an identity” (Barolini, Chiaroscuro 109). Marguerite’s traditional upbringing, women trained to be a male appendage, constitutes her weakness. She cannot rejoice in her independence, because, as Helen Barolini puts it, to achieve that “a buildup of one’s inner core-that personal sense and confidence in one’s very identity” is required (Chiaroscuro 109). Absorbed in her passionate love affair with the young Italian artist, Massimo, as well as her daily routines, the middle-aged heroine keeps postponing the return to Castagna; this way, she fails to connect herself with her dynamic grandmother and, 99 thus, make up for the superficial relationship with her mother; ultimately, she misses the chance to claim her clan’s past and her hunger for a niche in the world remains unsatisfied. In the end, pregnant Marguerite, used by young and ambitious Massimo, dies, or commits suicide, still perplexed about her identity.

On the whole, the Italian-American heroine might not be a winner in this fierce battle within herself, but she is definitely a fighter; Marguerite’s gain, every woman’s gain, is, in the end, her legacy. The author chooses to overturn Marguerite’s grim image and shattered fantasies with a hopeful end. Ironically enough, Marguerite is the mother of two winners,

Weezy and Tina; she, therefore, multiplies feminine power by two and intensifies the woman’s voice in the future generations. Her daughters manage to resolve their identity riddle and justify their mother’s struggle, because they manage to find their calling and also the power within themselves. In the end, Marguerite’s daughters comprehend ethnic space and their identity in their true colors and dimensions: a space of exploration and empowerment. So, Marguerite’s lonely voice announcing change, female collective power and continuity, appears united with Maria Mazziotti Gillan’s, when the latter writes in her poem “Petals of Silence”:

Someday, perhaps my daughter will read this poem,

See her reflection in its glass,

As she sits alone, in the clarity of early morning,

With the sound of the crickets and her ghosts

And the place inside herself

That nothing, nothing can shatter. (21-26)

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X. Concluding the Circle: Tina and the End of a Long (Female) Journey

In his original theoretical approach to Italian-American literature Buried Caesars, Robert

Viscusi underscores the crucial role of “return” for Italian-American writing, for the latter’s

themes and development. Viscusi poetically regards nostos in the following words: “An

American future revisits an Italian past that was itself once the future” (142). Through Tina’s

journey to Calabria, Barolini reenacts Viscusi’s nostos, discussing the ethnic woman’s quest

for identity. With Tina’s subsequent return to the arena of life, her studies and America,

Barolini brings the female search for individuation in full circle, with the feats of yet another

Umbertina, almost a century after the family’s immigration to America. As a result, Tina

epitomizes the young ethnic woman who manages to overcome the hurdles and explore the

potentialities of ethnic space, courageously and creatively. Marguerite’s fatal car accident

signifies the permanence of the separation from the mother, and officially inaugurates Tina’s

harsh journey towards maturity and solitary adulthood. It is the youngest heroine’s turn, now, to define herself and her niche.

In her mourning, Tina is lucid enough to realize the tremendous impact her mother’s life

has had on her: the epitome of taste and style that she looked up to; the restlessness and

constant dissatisfaction that kept the whole family on their toes, moving them back and forth

between Europe and America; Marguerite’s death drive that probably resulted in her end.

What insightful Tina is certain about, however, is her wish to feel the serenity and completion

that her mother was deprived of, and succeed in discovering her mission in life. As Tina

confesses to her boyfriend: “You know me, I want a lot-most of all I don’t want to end up

like my mother. I don’t want to live thinking of what I might have done or what I might have

been” (295). To the reader’s mind, however, what Tina initially seems to share with her

mother are the same feelings of dislocation. 101

With her entire life spent in the two continents and worlds, Tina admits her perplexity as

far as her “belongingness” is concerned: “I’ve never understood where I belong. It tears my

whole life apart each time-I mean I go through this absolute trauma of trying to decide here or there: Italian like my father or American like poor Mom” (298). Based on her parents’

social status, that is her father’s aristocratic origins and fame and her mother’s New World

wealth, Tina admits her privileged position in this world, enjoying the best of both worlds:

experiencing the American one as a hippie, and the Italian one as a sybarite (323). It is in her

encounter with the American tourists of Southern Italian descent, however, that the heroine

outpours her feelings on the persistent parochialism that still haunts Italy: Tina emphasizes

her father’s Northern lineage, while denying any relation to her mother’s Southern family;

her preference for the presumed aristocracy of Veneto, as opposed to the so called “vulgarity”

of the South, is obvious. Moreover, Tina’s choice seems to be generated by class interest and

the negative stereotyping of the South. To highlight further the young woman’s contempt for

whatever she deems low class, Barolini refers to Tina’s constant efforts to distinguish her

origin from Italian-Americans whom she sees negatively. To Tina’s mind, she is part-Italian

and part-American, not Italian-American. The prejudice of illiteracy and lack of

sophistication that have always accompanied the Southern Italian immigrants, as well as the

notoriety of Italian Americans in the seventies with Mario Puzzo’s Mafia explorations,

clearly explain Tina’s unwillingness to be connected with her maternal ethnic group (315).

Tina’s rejection of her maternal roots gradually alters, following the dramatic changes in

her life: it is the pain of separation from her lost mother, as well as her need to be encouraged

to go on, by connecting herself with the unknown ancestral hearth that influences Tina’s

decision to visit Castagna (306). As Tina goes through her mother’s possessions, she

remembers the story behind Umbertina’s tin heart and Marguerite’s incomplete mission, to

visit Calabria where the Longobardi family came from. Developing her mother’s perception, 102

the wiser daughter can discern the patriarchal trap of marriage that subordinates women to an

inferior status. Instead, the powerful figure of Umbertina is the one she wants to emulate, the

successful, self-made woman who left behind an empire, when she died. As Tina admits:

I don’t want to be financially and emotionally dependent on marriage. My

mother was more interesting than anyone I knew, yet in the eyes of the world

she was no one except her husband’s wife and her children’s parent. She

wasn’t strong enough to be herself. Only old Umbertina seems to have done

what she had to do in life. The family women are like lost souls-only there to

provide life-systems for the men and children. (358)

Her admiration for the solitary figure of the Southern great-grandmother is what alters her prefabricated notion of her Calabrian origins: drawing a parallel between her Venetian roots and the WASP stability and inertia, Tina is fascinated by the courage of her Calabrian side and sets out to explore that background (359). Like Cora in Chapter 1, Tina discovers that ethnic space can be synonymous to endurance, strength and inspiration. As a result, she appears to identify her trip to Calabria with her quest for self-representation, placing her hopes for self-transformation in her Calabrian discoveries. In this sense, Tina shares similar aspirations with the heroines in The Priest Fainted and No Pictures in My Grave, who visit

Greece and Sicily, respectively, seeking inspiration and female role models. All three of them

seem to reverberate Homi Bhabha’s words on the journey towards self-definition and the

return to the homeland: “Remembering is never a quiet act of introspection or retrospection.

It is a painful re-membering, a putting together of the dismembered past to make sense of the

trauma of the present” (The Location 63). Tina’s journey to Calabria is critical in the

consideration of her ethnic identity and her balance between two diverging cultural

backgrounds. Following Mariolina Graziosi, “Tina’s spatial voyage turns into an inner voyage which permits her to assimilate the two cultures without being a prisoner in either” 103

(211). Edvige Giunta regards Tina’s façade as a tourist, a term Barolini21 herself uses, as a necessary stage for Tina, in the process of reclaiming their cultural heritage (Writing with an

Accent 47). Besides a similar tourist persona was adopted by numerous early Italian-

American women writers. The author herself refers to her personal return to her ancestors’ birthplace, as well as the shock that ensued, in the following words: “I had to make the long journey to Italy, to see where and what I came from, to gain an ultimate understanding and acceptance of being American with particular shadings of Italianità. To say that that was at odds with the dominant American culture is an understatement. It is the essence of lifelong psychological conflict” (Becoming 269).

On her way to Calabria, afraid that her boyfriend, Jason’s, presence might distract her or restrict her personal development, Tina abandons him, preferring to be accompanied by an older Italian man, who promises to assist her reach her destination (379). Whereas Tina initially appears to have learnt from her mother’s mistakes, and the impediments placed by a male presence, at this stage, she cannot escape the all-powerful male powers. Resembling her mother even now, Tina entrusts her evolution to the older man Ferruccio, just as her mother had done with her father, expecting Alberto to support her artistic wanderings. Tina is not yet sufficiently mature or strong to proceed on her solitary journey of self-definition, but she needs to be aided by a more self-confident male.

The arrival in Calabria turns out to be a disappointing experience for the young heroine:

Tina is not prepared for the austerity and nudity of the Calabrian landscape, as Barolini highlights: “Brullo was the word for Calabria: burnt like a crème brulee, nude, ravaged, scorched. Worse than a lunar landscape, for that is a natural phenomenon, and what Tina saw was a land despoiled by men and showing its scars” (380). Far from the mysterious hometown, source of Umbertina’s native intelligence that the young heroine expected to discover in her literary fantasies, Castagna presents itself in the magnitude of its shabbiness 104 and deprivation, the parameters that drove her great-grandmother away, a century before.

Without basic infrastructure, like restaurants, shops, telephone connections, Castagna slowly disappears as its inhabitants vanish either emigrating or dying. What is more, Tina’s exasperation at the site of the village is accentuated, since she realizes that her most important goal is not feasible: being imparted with her great-grandmother’s courage and finding the inspiration to continue. Although Tina has located Umbertina’s birthplace, her mission remains incomplete and the heroine must first ponder over the intricacies of her ethnic background, before attaining the strength and resilience she admires. Tina’s disillusionment suffuses the text, when she admits:

She had wanted to come to Castagna, stand on the same ground and breathe

the same air as old Umbertina, who had made a success of her life and had

been a strong woman. Some voice was always in her head saying, If only I

could be Umbertina, I’d be alright; everything would go together; I’d know

my place. Why couldn’t she take a road, as Umbertina had, and follow it, not

looking back? What was she doing there with Ferruccio anyway? Where was

her place in the world? (387)

Frustrated with her constant restlessness, Tina is afraid that her trip to Calabria is again pointless, like her constant traversing of the ocean separating her two homelands. In Tina’s despair, the author projects her own thoughts concerning the visit to Calabria, when Barolini confesses: “I knew that going to Calabria would only confirm forever and again the purifying power of money and the lure of America which provided it, would only confirm distance and estrangement between cultures” (Becoming 270).

Nonetheless, it is precisely this palindrome movement between the two worlds that, in the end, reveals Tina’s place in the world: “a sense of cultural ‘belonging,’ a connection to her past, and a key to her future” (Giunta, Writing 51). Shocked by the reality of the Calabrian 105

sight though she is, Tina can comprehend the Odyssey of her people in the States, their

tradition, aspirations and limitations. Through her life in America as a budding scholar, Tina

will devote time contemplating her collective past, her experiences in Italy, her expectations

and future possibilities. Inevitably, Tina’s reconfiguration of her identity seems to underline

the verity of Homi Bhabha’s reflections on the revelatory perspective of ethnic space, since it

“may open the way to conceptualizing an international culture, based not on the exoticism of

multiculturalism or the diversity of cultures, but on the inscription and articulation of

culture’s hybridity” (The Location 38). In a year devoted to her personal exploration, Tina will achieve what her mother failed to do. She will trace her great grandmother’s power inside her, in other words, she will reach a balance; paraphrasing Bhabha, through the exploration of the Third space, she will discover the other of herself (The Location 39). When

a more mature Tina comes across Jason, again, in Central Park, she is endowed with a clarity

of mind and serenity that guide her footsteps. As Tina answers Jason’s questions about her

Calabrian journey and finding her grandmother, she can now distinguish reality from family

lore, mystification from personal struggle. In Tina’s phrasing: “No, I didn’t find her there.

Only over here have I begun to be in touch properly. Lately I’m beginning to feel her

strength-it’s like she’s helping me. Or maybe they’re just my own projections” (412).

Further to prove the change in times on diverse levels, Tina’s power contrasted to

Marguerite’s fragility and the evolution in women’s thinking that accompanies the sixties and

early seventies, Barolini creates a scene between the grandparents and Tina: they exchange

views on marriage and her ethnic identity and the reader cannot but recall a similar scene of a

young Marguerite, and her own questions on gender and ethnic identity. As expected, Tina’s

grandparents are opinionated and they remain unchangeable over the passage of time: Carla

hopes Tina will marry well, though now she cannot force her into marriage. Tina is portrayed

as more assertive than Marguerite, retorting to her grandmother Carla and succinctly 106

presenting her beliefs about a woman’s career, marriage and personal life, in the following

terms: “Such ideas-how can you do well by marrying if you haven’t got your own personal

life together first? No one’s rushing into marriage these days. It’s much better to concentrate

on one’s work and have other interests” (399). The grandfather too, fully assimilated in the

American lifestyle, still opposes Tina’s interest in her Italian heritage: to his mind, Italy has

nothing to offer the world civilization compared with America, the materialist paradise.

While she takes time to realize and mourn her two great losses, her mother and the love of

her life, Tina dedicates her energy and time to Dante and her academic work; she now begins

to discover the satisfaction that emanates from personal development. Through the triple

symbol of the Underworld,22 both as a journey to Calabria, as a study of Dante and as her

personal Purgatorium (Giunta, Writing 50), Tina reaches the end of the road. At the end of

her studies, the end of a different, scholarly journey this time, Tina realizes the mistakes she

has made, the importance of being determined and focusing on one’s goals.23 In Barolini’s words: “Tina recognized that her focus on her work was not all pure devotion but also the

fear of facing the outside world-thus the reversal of Umbertina’s aggressive assault on the

world of her day, which she made produce for her” (407). Carmen Scarpati comments on

Tina’s mission to find her place in the world, through trial and error, realizing that, “place

without purpose is of no importance to the individual; place earned through self sacrifice and

personal achievement allows for spiritual growth and satisfaction” (362). The discovery of

the personal powers within her, makes Tina a more mature, decisive and empowered woman,

ready to deal with the difficulties of a life with the man she had loved all along.24

The denouement of Barolini’s novel has an optimistic note, and concludes a circle: the

symbol of the rosemary Umbertina planted in her home reappears, to pay homage to tradition,

as well as female power and persistence. It took four generations of women and numerous

trips back and forth, but the Longobardi women finally discovered their powers and role in 107 life. Exuding assertion and self-reliance, Tina plants rosemary in Jason’s Cape Cod home, with the conviction that her own personal chora of transformation lies only within herself, symbolically grafting ethnicity onto the “heart” of WASPness. In remembrance of the immigrant great-grandmother and the home tradition, Tina concludes her own, as well as her mother’s, wandering course in the world, finally confirming Nelda’s saying, that where rosemary grows, the women in the house are its strength.

108

Notes

1 Umbertina has also been characterized as a Kunstleroman, based on Marguerite’s artistic meanderings but also given Tina’s chapter and her evolution from artist to academic scholar.

2 After the publication of Mario Puzzo’s The Godfather, and especially its cinematic production, Italian-

Americans were once again treated with scorn, derision and even racism.

3 Among many other distinctions, Barolini has received the 2008 Italian Literary Prize, Premio Acerbi for the

Italian edition of the novel Umbertina, the 2006 Eugene Walter Short Story Award, the 2003 Woman of the

Year Award in Literature from Italian Welfare league, the 2003 Sons of Italy Literature Award, the 2001 Ars et

Literas Award from the American Italian Cultural Roundtable, and 2000 Lifetime Achievement Award from the

Society for the Study of Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (see the site dedicated to the author http://helenbarolini.com/, visited on 29/12/08)

4 For more information check Barolini’s personal webpage.

5 See Barolini’s Melus interview.

6 The three generations of women, primitive Umbertina, assimilated Carla and confused Marguerite, fit the three categories of immigrants that Fred Gardaphé refers to, when exploring the identity quest in the novels of third generation Italian-Americans. In Gardaphé’s words: “This identity quest is the key to reading their narratives of third generation Italian-American writers, for as their grandparents were economic and political immigrants, and their parents social immigrants, they themselves are cultural immigrants” (Italian Signs 121).

7 See Mary Jo Bona “Celebrating Helen Barolini and Umbertina.”

8 In her interview with Dorothée Von Huene Greeneberg, the author emphasises that the most challenging part for the creation of Umbertina was the research she conducted on the first generation immigrants, both in Italy as well as the States.

9 See Barolini’s Melus interview.

10 For a concise account of Italian immigration, among others see L’immigrazione negli Stati Uniti by Stefano

Luconi and Matteo Pretelli.

11 Mary Ann Mannino characterizes Umbertina as “a celebration of American capitalism with its roots in the traditional liberal political agenda” (131). 109

12 In her inspired article “From Sacred to Secular in 'Umbertina' and 'A Piece of Earth,'” Carol Bonomo Albright examines the new value system adopted by the immigrants in the New World and the repercussions that follow the corruption of religious values and traditional ideals (Melus Summer 1995).

13 On the Italian-American shifting of “their sense of allegiance,” see Stefano Luconi “From the Village to the

United States: Nationalism and Ethnic Identity among Italian-Americans.”

14 In her old age, after the death of her husband Serafino, Umbertina projects her husband’s fame as the head of the business, whereas she was the one pulling all the strings; she also ponders over her inferior status as a widow

(134), a woman without a husband.

15 Especially for Southern Italians, the good family name was, and to an extent still is, one of the prevalent ideals controlling their lives.

16 The famous Italian-American artist of the Beat generation, Diane Di Prima shares her own experience of assimilation, referring to her parents’ rejection of Italian as a language not to be spoken by their Americanized children: “My parents were not all sure about the value of Italianità. As a family, we kept the foods, the large festival gatherings with all the cousins, the songs; but we children were forbidden the language. And in most ways, my brothers and I were pushed into being white, as my parents understood that term. I was forbidden to speak the language, but I heard it all around me. My parents spoke Italian to each other when they didn’t want us kids to understand what they were saying. So Italian was and still is for me the language of secrets. And it was the language of the old. For a while as a youngster I thought that when people got very old they forgot

English altogether and began spontaneously to speak Italian. I had no reason to think otherwise” (25).

17 See Helen Barolini’s interview in Melus.

18 Edvige Giunta explores the omnipresence of the Persephone and Demeter myth in Italian-American literature in her interesting article “Persephone’s Daughters.” For Giunta, Persephone’s influence on Italian-American women is easily explained, since: “Persephone is, after all, a mythical traveller, a young woman how, willingly or not, adjusts to shuttling back and forth between two worlds. She understands the experience of living between different cultures, languages, identities” (769).

19 In an enlightening article, William Boelhower elaborates on the return to the grandmother and claims that the grandmother incarnates the symbolic order of the gift connecting the immigrants with their country of origin

(“(Ri)evocando) la Nonna” 64). 110

20 As Edvige Giunta enunciates: “By opening the novel with Marguerite’s need to remember her maternal grandmother, the author articulates the central concern of Umbertina to pull together the threads of the stories of women immigrants and weave them into a narrative tapestry, one that will ‘last forever,’ like Umbertina’s

‘coperta matrimoniale’” (Writing 39).

21 See “Becoming a Literary Person out of Context.”

22 Connecting Tina’s voyages between the two worlds, as well as her origins in Southern Italy, Alison D.

Goeller envisions Tina as the Persephone who unites the two sides, which appear to be “connected by a bridge of understanding and love” (82).

23 For Graziosi, the trip to Castagna was left to fate, while the return trip is based on choice and vocation (212).

24 Following Edvige Giunta’s argumentation: “Tina will come to understand that she must travel the geography of memory to map out a history that incorporates the past but she must also not allow that past to stifle her”

(Writing 49).

PART II

PERSEPHONE RETURNS HOME: A GREEK- AMERICAN AND AN ITALIAN AMERICAN NOVEL OF THE NINETIES

111

Chapter 3

Mythic Wanderings in Catherine Temma Davidson’s The Priest Fainted (1998)

“The friend of wisdom is also a friend of myth” Aristotle I know very well what is, provided that nobody asks me; but if I am asked and try to explain, I am baffled St Augustine

The second section of this thesis discusses the consideration of ethnic space in two novels of

the nineties, Catherine Temma Davidson’s The Priest Fainted (1998) and Susan Caperna

Lloyd’s No Pictures In My Grave (1992). As both first person female narrators return to their

ancestral land, they are on a journey towards self-realization, resorting to the ethnic cultural

archive, as their extensive references to myth, ritual and ethnic cuisine reveal. However,

through their confessions and reactions, the heroines see their adventures in the Old World as a means for their self-confirmation: they are constantly projected as American citizens of

ethnic origin who approach the Old World imbued with a neo-colonial mentality. Both novels

end with the heroines triumphing and successfully completing the journey to self-discovery;

as a result they both manage to disorient the readers by falsely projecting the simplicity and

superficiality of the quests of identity.

I. Davidson’s Debut in the World of Fiction

Catherine Temma Davidson, as a young artist of Greek origin on her mother’s side,

received her baptism of fire into the American letters in 1996, with the publication of her

award-winning1 first poetic collection Inheriting the Ocean. Inspired by Greece, her family’s experience of immigration and her maternal grandmother, Catherine Temma Davidson was introduced as a talented young poet who captures, in her work, the light and colours of the

Greek landscape. Two years later, Davidson’s first venture into novel writing, entitled The

Priest Fainted (1998), was praised by the reviewer Lisa Kahaleole Hall as “a rich exploration 112

of the power of storytelling-especially mythology and history-in the life of an unnamed

young, Greek-American woman.” Further positive commentary, by reviewer Lisa Shea from

the New York Times, underlined Davidson’s ability to “deftly combine the mythic and the

mundane.” Endowed with lyricism and imaginative playfulness, The Priest Fainted, a semi-

autobiographical ethnic Bildungsroman that depicts a young woman’s adventures in her

ancestors’ land, marked Davidson’s grand entrance into the field of fiction with numerous

distinctions.2

II. “Every woman needs a story, and perhaps this is how the story should go”3

In The Priest Fainted, the narrator, a twenty-one -year-old American woman of Jewish and

Greek origin, who remains unnamed throughout the novel, weaves together the stories of three generations of women of Greek ancestry. Her mother’s own sojourn in Greece, as well as her grandmother’s difficulties as a displaced immigrant in America, are combined in the novel alongside with the heroine’s own adventures. Thus, Davidson comes to create a female family saga that unfolds from the beginning of the twentieth century till the early eighties.

During the year she spends in Greece, living, working and eventually learning to assert herself, the young woman acquires a realistic understanding of the Greek homeland. At the end of her travels, her stance as regards the ethnic homeland appears to be freed from the nostalgic mystification that often accompanies the immigrant perception,4 but also lacks the

stereotyping that frequently characterizes the later generations of immigrants. Her

experiences as a young American of Greek ancestry provide her with insights into the

restrictions imposed on the ethnic woman on both sides of the Atlantic. In the final pages of

the novel, the reader discovers a transformed young woman; wiser, as well as released from

the shackles of self-depreciation that metaphorically chained her, the young narrator learns to

assert herself after a heart-breaking love affair. Most importantly, however, the end of her 113

time in Greece, following a whole year of contact with her maternal ethnic culture, signifies the heroine’s re-envisioning of her identity as a dual cultural entity uniting the best of the two

worlds: American self-assertion and independence, combined with Greek resilience, wisdom

and mystique. Fascinated by the new horizon of possibilities, the young woman declares her

optimism for the female lot, and inaugurates a new era in her relationship with her mother.

III. Beyond Myth and Quest

Through her travels in Greece, the young narrator “tests” her previous knowledge of her

grandmother’s country of origin, comparing and contrasting fiction, family lore and

stereotyping with her own experiences of the home country. The plethora of ancient Greek

myths and recipes that were bestowed upon the young Californian of both Greek and Jewish

ancestry are initially presented as elucidatory signs; their role is to assist her in multifarious

ways to resolve her gender and identity dilemmas. As the plot unfolds, the narrator’s journey

towards self-affirmation proves to be intrinsically related to mythology, since the altered myths follow the heroine’s changing perception of the motherland and its women: from the

classic myths and the idealistic and theoretical image of Greece the young woman had before

her arrival, as the locus of nymphs, muses and goddesses, to the reality of oppression and

seclusion that, nevertheless, seems to trigger female inner strength and solidarity. Myths of

the patriarchal paradigm are rewritten to reflect the young woman’s feminist credos and her

enthusiasm for female bonding. Simultaneously, ethnic recipes are recorded and analyzed to

shed light on the effaced female story echoing the Kristevan approach to female knowledge

as corporeal. Ultimately, mythology and culinary tradition, as well as fragmented family

anecdotes and the heroine’s personal adventures, are all entwined. Furthermore, they are

utilized in the examination of the past and present female status of the woman of Greek origin

in both countries, Greece and the States, with a special focus on the women of the narrator’s 114

family. It is this year-long process of reflection on the female status that eventually awards

the heroine her sense of belongingness as a young woman of ethnic origin, however

problematic this might seem. At the end of her year in Greece, from her privileged position as

an “inbetweener,” the young woman carves her niche between the two worlds. From this

position, she selects those cultural attributes that do not oppose and hinder her beliefs as a

feminist, but instead favor and promote her personal goals of self-fulfillment. Echoing

outdated identity theories, the narrator expresses her firm belief in a creative, though fully

controlled combination of the diverse bittersweet cultural attributes to concoct her “own

identity dish,” her imam baildi.

In the pages that follow, I examine thoroughly the ingredients Davidson selected for her

post-feminist “ethnic recipe” as well as the broader context that fuelled these decisions: the

ever fascinating medium of myth, with its psychoanalytic accompaniments, the recent popularity of ethnic cuisine, snapshots from well-known Greek sites, the problematics of

ethnic identity, extensive use of the intriguing, though already discredited, theory of

revisionist mythmaking. Armed with a humorous approach to the re-written myth,

Davidson’s female Bildungsroman flirts with travel writing; the colorful and fast-paced story, however, seems to address a readership with scant knowledge of either feminism or Greek mythology. I suggest that the emphasis placed on female sexuality that permeates and

“spices” up the plot, and in particular the happy resolution in the denouement of The Priest

Fainted, provide a rather limited view of feminist issues. Based on the antipode to revisionist

mythmaking, as well as a fulcrum of postmodern theories, I intend to prove that Davidson’s

light-hearted approach can easily lead readers into misjudging the complexity of the process

of self-definition, as well as the sobriety of feminist ventures. At the novel’s coda, the

heroine’s final sense of relief, as well as her peace of mind, oversimplify the lifelong, often

painful, process of self-identification that many ethnic women experience. 115

IV. Davidson and the Travelogue

The young heroine’s quest for gender and ethnic identity is initiated with the exploration of

the spatial setting in the unknown home country she only knows in theory, that is, through

books or family stories. She sees Athens and Delphi with her family on her first visit, as a

teenager, describing it in the derogatory terms of a biased outsider: “the edge of Europe, the back alley, faintly seed and litter strewn” (26). As if to counterbalance her prejudice, the young narrator admits her detachment from her ethnic background. Following her confession, her notion of “being Greek” was based on her contact with “boring old cousins,” whose stereotypical image of low-class breadwinners in the States she seemed to detest (27). Later, as a young sophisticated adult, a transformed and thrilled narrator explores Crete and Poros under the auspices of a language program she attended on her second visit. With clear

influences from the travelogue genre, the presentation and history of some of the best-known

tourist attractions help create an escapist mood in the reader. The narrator’s allusions to

literary artists, inspired by the Greek landscape, whether Greek or American, reveal her educational background, as they highlight and condense some of the noteworthy literary influences in the manner of a tourist-guide. Moreover, the narrator’s literary references, in their attempt to underline the inspiration Greece has engendered, foreground the author’s pre- fabricated, merely theoretical image of the home country, a positive one this time. Hence, for the heroine, Crete is associated with a taste for Nikos Kazantzakis’s artistry, at the time the narrator’s favorite author (47). The image of Poros is influenced by Henry Miller’s descriptions in The Colossus of Maroussi (1941), a book that has become the narrator’s

“Constitution” (49). The beguiled young heroine embraces these writings on Greece and

naively exclaims: “I want to journey with Miller forever, starting in Greece to remake the

world. With Miller, or Kazantzakis” (49). 116

Hailed as one of the most popular travel books of all times on Greece, Henry Miller’s The

Colossus of Maroussi (1941), based on the year Miller spent in Greece, in 1939, is a most enchanting account, vibrant with color, light, history. It is no wonder that the narrator selects

The Colossus as her “Bible.” Miller’s book, “oscillating between travelogue and character study,” alludes to the quasi-mythical figure of the corpulent literary man George Katsimbalis, the Greek whom Miller befriends and is fascinated by. Before going to Greece, Miller, through a friend’s narrations, believes Greece to be “a world of light such as I had never dreamed of and never hoped to see” (8); through Lawrence Durrell’s letters Miller visualizes a place where “the historical and the mythological were so artfully blended” (8). Eventually,

Greece for Miller proved to be an unforgettable experience: at the end of his travels in pre-

Second World War Greece, Miller considered his life-changing days in Greece and the catalytic role of people like Katsimbalis and George Seferis, the Nobel Prize winner poet.

Through Miller’s poetic words, his fervent adoration for everything Greek is evident:

The Greek earth opens before me like the Book of Revelation. I never knew

the earth contains so much; I had walked blindfolded, with faltering, hesitant

steps; I was proud and arrogant, content to live the false restricted life of the

city man. The light of Greece opened my eyes, penetrated my pores, expanded

my whole being. I came home to the world, having found the true center and

the real meaning of revolution. (248)

Miller’s descriptions, blending poetry and prose, profess an almost mystic experience, and also recall Daphne Athas’s portrayal of Greece in Chapter 1 as an omnipotent site of personal transformation. In Davidson’s novel, the young heroine arrives in Greece craving to encounter this mythical country, and share Miller’s experiences. In this sense, the young woman’s readings enhance the dominant preconception of Greece as a country which is part of the mystifying Orient; following Edward Said’s remarks, the Orient is stereotypically 117 regarded as the home of magic, mythology but also fatalism, rigidity and narrow-mindedness

(Orientalism 70), elements that are all included in Davidson’s descriptions of Greece but not

Athas’s.

Counter-balancing Miller’s romanticized perception of Greece, Nicholas Gage and his travel book Hellas: A Portrait of Greece (1970, 1987) is an influential travel book that the narrator could have read and referred to. Less enthusiastic, more critical, even biased against

Greeks and their mentality (23, 26, 28, 30) Nicholas Gage, journalist and author, is regarded as one of the most significant figures in Greek-American circles. Written in the seventies and then re-issued in the late eighties, Gage’s Hellas is popular in Greek-American circles, given the author’s hyphenated identity, and the publicity he received with his novel Eleni5 (1984).

Nonetheless, on reading Davidson and Gage, the coincidence of ideas and approach to

Greece is noteworthy. Although Davidson’s narrator does not mention Gage’s travelogue, the introductory paragraph of Hellas: A Portrait of Greece, amazingly appears to reverberate in the first pages of The Priest Fainted. The source of inspiration is practically the same: the aridity of the earth is contrasted with the fecundity of the spirit throughout Greek history, a point also raised in Chapter 5 of Stratis Haviaras’ When the Tree Sings. For Nicholas Gage:

“It all started with the land. The red, unpromising soil was sown with stones, but it brought forth the gods, the heroes, and the philosophers, the literature, the architecture, and the art”

(5). On a similar note, Davidson’s narrator, fascinated by the harsh beauty of the Greek landscape, creates alluring images and states: “Imagine a country built on dead rocks. The rocks are dead because they have already been lifted from the ground, shaped, and reworked into temples, houses, and streets. They have been columns where men breathed together in small groups deciding the fate of civilizations” (3). Both Gage and Davidson clearly attempt to shatter the troubled image of the contemporary Greek state, by illuminating the spiritual wonders produced throughout the long history of its civilization. 118

Irrespective of the direct and indirect male influences from the travelogue, the author is determined not to stray from the paths of feminism, just like Helen Barolini’s Tina in Chapter

2. Consequently, when Miller proves to be too daring an influence, with emphatic comments

on Greek female sexuality, Davidson hastens to distance herself from the American author,

and states: “When Miller describes the erotic flanks of Greek women, made more powerful

by the weight of the burdens they carry, I skim” (49).6 Nevertheless, to the feminist reader’s

surprise, the young narrator does not quote any of the female travel writers7 who celebrate the Greek heritage; what is more, Davidson does not appear to be directly influenced by any of them. Patricia Storace’s Dinner with Persephone (1996), published just two years before

Davidson’s novel, receives no mention from the author of The Priest Fainted. The lack of any

reference to Storace’s book is surprising, since the latter was welcomed with flattering

remarks, including the characterization as the best travel book on Greece since The Colossus.

Through the description of a year she spent in Greece, Patricia Storace, like Davidson, reveals her poetic flair in descriptions that touch the reader, as well as justify the popularity of the book.8 Unlike Davidson, however, Storace manages to present herself as a detached

and more objective narrator, since she recounts her experiences in the land she has no

emotional or genealogical attachments to.9

V. Myth and the Resolution of Identity Dilemmas

Herbert Gans defines the concept of symbolic ethnicity as “characterized by a nostalgic

allegiance to the culture of the immigrant generation or that of the old country: a love for and

pride in a tradition that can be felt without having to be incorporated in everyday behavior”

(qtd. in Nagel 154). As noted in the foregoing, the narrator’s explorations of the Greek

landscape aim to strengthen her previous vague connection with the ancestral land and its

culture. For the young woman, this constitutes an elementary relation that the narrator 119

initially presents as simply revolving around her love for Greek mythology and food, pointing to Gans’s “symbolic ethnicity.” Nonetheless, the heroine’s own life course seems to contradict the already intensely disputed approach that Gans suggests. Thus, the young woman negates this symbolic representation of identity when she opts to discover her

“Greekness”, to be enlightened on her ethnic background, learn the language, discover its geography, study its tradition. Moreover, the narrator comfortably relies on her American citizenship when she feels restrained by the Greek mentality as far as women are concerned.

Criticizing Davidson in her essay “Bi- or Mono- Culturalism”, Theodora Tsimpouki rightly disagrees with the narrator’s consideration of an ethnicity “invoked at will” (26), and the heroine’s counterbalancing of her dual identity through reason and compromise, as the novel’s ending further suggests. Reminiscent of more recent theoretical approaches of scholars like David Hollinger and Judith Butler, Tsimpouki correctly accentuates the critical role of the temporal, social and historical framework in the process of one’s ethnic identification, as well as the latter’s grounding in experience. As Stuart Hall so aptly put it,

“we should think, instead, of identity as a ‘production,’ which is never complete, always in process, and always constituted within, not outside, representation” (“Cultural Identity” 222).

In particular, the intense interest in myth demonstrated by the heroine in this identity quest is justified, since it is one of the elements of the home tradition that, being resistant to the passage of time, continues to “lie at the heart of the ethnie” (Banks 130). William G. Doty enunciates the significance and the anchoring role of myth. Following Doty’s definition myths are: “Primal, foundational accounts, primary stories of a culture, the stories that shape and expose its most important framing images and self-conceptions, its “roots”. [...] Myths and rituals promise continuity with what is radically essential to “our life” to human-ness as it is defined in the culture” (543). The narrator’s preoccupation with mythic narratives, and their re-appropriation on the part of the young woman through her act of rewriting them, 120

should consequently be considered as another attempt to unite herself with her cultural past

and restore her sense of “ethnic belongingness”; through her stay in her country of origin, the

physical and spiritual journey to Greece, the narrator forges the bonds with the previously

distant homeland. Ultimately, this newly developed relationship with her ethnic culture

qualifies the young heroine for what Manning Nash refers to as “the pedigree, allowing to

identify with heroic times, great deeds, and a genealogy to the beginning of things human,

cultural, and spiritual” (14).

Davidson’s rewriting of mythology as a means for the heroine to encapsulate the untold

female story, to discover the gamut of possibilities for female development, and, finally, to

inspire her female readers, are all plausible, given the essence and the didactic element of

myth. Richard Kearney asserts that myth’s lack of an internal core allows for the plasticity of

its interpretation, according to the existing historical context (69). The temporal setting of the

unnamed heroine’s adventures is the early eighties, a period when Greek women

enthusiastically as well as massively participated in the feminist movement. The feminist

repercussions the narrator senses in Greece, but also her own entrance into womanhood,

result in the creation of new, strong female protagonists for the Greek myths; these figures

conform to feminist dictates and project healthy feminist ideals of empowerment and

defiance. The subsequent use of recreated myths as beacons in the heroine’s quest is

plausible, given that one of the most important characteristics of myth for Mircea Eliade is

“bringing to light the most hidden modalities of being” (12). For the Romanian scholar, the aim of mythic narratives is to foreground dormant images that humans bear within them, so as to benefit from “their pristine purity and assimilate their message” (19). Thus, Davidson’s incorporation of compelling mythic heroines in her novel inevitably aims at contributing to the initiation of the female readership to the essential female role, since myth is certainly “the 121

carrier of spiritual force as well as of the divine under the cloak of superhuman protagonists

who call for the mortals’ emulation” (Bettelheim 26).

VI. Myth and Psychoanalysis

While Davidson’s novel constitutes a changing canvas, to which a host of re-formed myths

are constantly added, the young woman’s stay in Greece, with her ordeals and heartaches, is

equated to a heroic quest, lending itself to a psychoanalytic approach. For Theodora

Tsimpouki, it is precisely the heroine’s act of myth rewriting, that is, her “promoting ‘a

mythology of the self,’ which becomes ‘empowering and sustaining,”’ (Tsimpouki,

“Gendered” 250) that renders her status heroic. Nevertheless, and interestingly, in this

autobiographical novel, Davidson’s heroine remains nameless. Although this technique is

often employed in female ethnic novels (Gatzouras 139), stressing the universality of a woman’s journey to self-definition, the tenuous status of the young woman’s ethnic identity is also clear. Caught between two worlds and languages, the narrator omits the stability and fixity of a name, since, as was previously suggested, her identity is constantly in flux, a protean substance that succumbs to the diverse forces acting upon it, “perpetually constituted in the turbulent interweaving of memory, language and history” (Chambers 117, my emphasis added). Furthermore, the narrator’s series of peripeteie, her own rite of passage, is often paralleled to Persephone’s Descent into the Underworld by the author herself. In this manner, even her namelessness appears to be justified viewed through the anthropological prism. The young woman is simply a girl, a Kore, just like Persephone before her separation from the mother. As the scholar Bruce Lincoln highlights prior to initiation, the young woman is nameless, since she is given a name only after she has been initiated, a common practice in the rituals of diverse peoples (230). 122

Moreover, among the multitude of scholars who have examined myth from a

psychoanalytic perspective, Erich Neumann, based on the Amor and Psyche myth and following Jung’s teachings, contends that myths with female protagonists graphically depict the processes of female maturation; he, thus, affirms that “myth is always the unconscious representation of such crucial life situations” (Amor and Psyche 65). For the young narrator,

as for many American-born children of Greek immigrants who arrived in the States between

1890 and 1925, their mental image of the motherland is surrounded by an aura of mystery,

fragmented family stories and stories of a glorious antiquity (Chock 350). For some, Greece

is “imagined” as a shadowy mystical topos. Like a new Persephone, the young narrator enters

the Greek terra incognita, away from motherly Demeter, left behind in the States. Unlike the

Kore in the myth, she has decided to embark on this trip willingly; in an attempt to discover

her family background, she decides to explore the home country and gain experiences as a

young adult. In Davidson’s case, the choice of the Persephone myth of “self-transformation”

(Gagné 18) will illuminate a difficult period in a woman’s life, as well as her relationship

with her mother and mother country. Kore’s Katabasis into the Underworld for Neumann,

and this symbolism of darkness, reveal a psychic depression (Amor 27), an emotional trial in

the case of the young narrator entering womanhood and adulthood.

Not accidentally, Davidson gives precedence to the figure of Hades in her story, a self-

absorbed, Greek American basketball player. Influenced by Greek mythology, and to the

reader’s surprise, Davidson endows Hades with attributes resembling the figure of Narcissus

(98). Davidson’s approach echoes Hélène Cixous’s words on male/female love, arguing that

“he needs to love himself. But she launches forth, she seeks love” (“Sorties” 235). Initially,

the young self-conscious woman depends on the male sexual touch of this self-centered man

to define herself. As she admits: “I only feel myself when someone else tells me I am there.

When someone touches me I become visible. My bones settle down and my skin assembles 123 itself” (31). Unsure of herself and her beauty, she needs, as Naomi Wolf asserts “the official seal of approval that men’s bodies possess in our culture” (93). As a result, she unavoidably imprisons herself in the love affair, at the beck and call of the faithless man. Her attachment to this dark, but handsome, Underworld God signifies her admittance into maturity, since

Laurie Brands Gagné considers the sensual awakening as the beginning of one’s spiritual journey (2). Furthermore, in her stimulating book The Uses of Darkness: Women’s

Underworld Journeys, Ancient and Modern, Gagné regards female underworld journeys in the western literary tradition as monumental passionate experiences that approximate death experiences. For the young Kore of the novels, this katabasis into the darkness of passion becomes “a catharsis of one’s rage and wretchedness” (Gagné 5), an outlet for the frustration of desire.

In fact, the narrator-Persephone’s sexuality, and its vital role for female maturation and self-representation, are constantly underscored, even to the detriment of other aspects of female personality. Following Tsimpouki’s analysis, the respective sojourns in Greece of both the narrator and her mother are considered catalytic for the development of their sexuality, and, in turn, their self-representation (“Gendered” 252). Away from the watchful protective gaze of the ethnic surroundings, whether male or female, the two young women can experiment with the more assertive sexual behaviors they have observed in the New

World. This way, they deviate from the norm in the Greece of the Fifties and early Eighties respectively, where women are still raised to await male initiative and demonstrate restraint.

Consequently, Tsimpouki continues, Davidson’s heroines, from their posts as

“inbetweeners,” are the only ones who can work towards self-completion, while the local women will have to make do with the esoteric female empowerment and mystique in their harem-like confines. 124

On a parallel with the Hades-Persephone story and sexual encounters, Davidson examines

the Demeter-Persephone fall-out, the “essential female tragedy” in Adrienne Rich’s words

(237). Davidson’s title choice, “Demeter and Persephone,”10 places emphasis on the

narrator’s intention to sketch the mother-daughter bond, and the perennial friction between

every mother and daughter, as the latter approaches maturity; to highlight the relation

between the mythical archetypes and real life, the author examines two pairs and their

Demeter-Persephone11 connections: Daphne and her mother, the narrator and her own

mother. According to her narrator’s view, the well-known myth reveals the painful

separation, often with a clash, between mother and daughter, as the latter reaches adulthood

and craves to flee from the motherly attention. Under the false illusion that she is strong

enough to survive on her own, the daughter drastically differentiates her destiny from that of

her mother’s, whom, for the moment, she rejects as a weak and unreliable advisor. Adrienne

Rich defines this feeling and attitude as “matrophobia,” which she further explains as:

A womanly splitting of the self, in the desire to become purged once and for all of

our mothers’ bondage, to become individuated and free. The mother stands for

the victim in ourselves, the unfree woman, the martyr. Our personalities seem

dangerously to blur and overlap with our mothers’; and, in a desperate attempt to

know where mother ends and daughter begins, we perform radical surgery. (236)

Davidson’s narrator distances herself from a mother she considers to be too strict and limiting for her quest for personal exploration and development. The young woman is unable to see beyond the older woman’s role as a mother and, thus, she fails to appreciate her for her

strength, and the battles she had to fight. Blinded by her urgings, she senses only the

motherly authority confronting her, and she, therefore, cannot benefit from her wisdom and

courage. Through her year spent in Greece, however, following her mother’s footsteps

almost of thirty years before, the narrator has access to aspects of her mother’s past from her 125

life as a single woman; using this knowledge, along with her personal experiences in love,

she manages to attain a deeper understanding of the women in her family.

In her “dark” hours of soul searching, the young woman draws on her inner resources, and finds recourse in the unearthing of the stories of the women in her family; these she interprets through the wisdom of the Old country mythical figures, the likes of Athena, Atalanta and

Artemis. For Carl Jung, myths, along with fairy tales, are typical expressions of archetypes, that is, “universal images that have existed since the remotest times” (5). Following the

Jungian perspective, especially as far as women are concerned, many feminist psychoanalysts view goddesses as the embodiment of these powerful inner forces, that can

influence solely, or in combination, the lives of women12 (Bolen 4, 26). Thus, the narrator

satisfies her need for wisdom and inspiration, by identifying familiar figures in her life with

archetypal mythical images: like a new Medea, deprived of her magic powers as village

healer, the narrator’s grandmother withers in the New World and gradually vanishes; like a

new Persephone, Daphne, and the narrator in the end, learn to cherish their mothers through

their separation from her; like a new intrepid Athena, the narrator’s mother arrives in her full

armour, her new world dynamic persona, to discover Greece. As Vicky Gatzouras pinpoints, in her chapter on The Priest Fainted and family relations, these “re-mythings” provide the narrator with the enlightenment to comprehend and accept her mother’s story, as well as her own (161). Naturally, ascertaining the presence of myth and female mythic figures in her current life as well as in her foremothers’ lives, the author further forges the bond between this young narrator and her ethnic culture since “the individual no longer exists in not so splendid isolation but now exists in affinity with the collective” (Adams 32). 13

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VII. Mother as in Motherland

Highlighting once more the prominence of the mother-daughter bond, the narrator predictably focuses on her mother’s ethnicity; as a result, she retraces the female lineage that connects her to Greece and its culture. On the whole, through her literary, culinary and mythological references, the narrator discovers her ethnic identity, privileging her Greekness, but not Jewishness, her father’s background. Consequently, the Greek ethnic element is constantly in the limelight, while the father’s Jewishness is only briefly mentioned.

The heroine’s flashback to her parents’ lives, affair and marriage, explains the estrangement from her father’s Jewish background. Although both her parents were passionate about their respective religions in their childhood (217), the narrator reports her father’s disillusionment with Judaism and his subsequent atheism, after witnessing the devastating consequences of the Second World War; the narrator’s father’s refusal to enter his own father’s business challenged the patriarchal authority; simultaneously, the young man’s decision to become a doctor perhaps also resulted in his alienation from his family

(166). The narrator is explicit about her parents’ ex-communication from their churches,

Jewish and Greek Orthodox, and the major blow their marriage is to their status as full members of their respective communities. The young heroine eloquently re-captures a scene from her mother’s childhood, when marriage outside the community was categorically condemned by the aunts, as an imprudent action: “They know a girl who has just come from

Greece who is marrying someone outside the community, and they enjoy their own outrage, passing it between them, kneading it over and over again” (10).

Following Terry Dehay’s characterization of minority mothers as “repositories of the recessive culture” (30), “Greekness” survives in the Los Angeles family in fragments carefully picked by the mother, who practises a sort of “cultural selectivity.” Consequently, the home culture is experienced through the maternal grandfather who comes to live with the 127

family, tends his garden and utters Greek words to the grandchildren, like ta lemonia “the

lemons” the “strange” music “with rhythms more ragged and mournful” (257), Easter and

Christmas celebrations, the Greek myths and incantations against the evil eye, visits to the

home country, and ultimately Greek recipes. In Davidson’s words, which reflect her afore-

mentioned views on symbolic ethnicity, the mother “has made a choice, has kept what she

has wanted from her mother’s past and discarded what tasted too sour or cost too much”

(219). However, as if confirming Iain Chambers’s allegations, the narrator’s mother, through

her attitude, appears to have inherited a sense of identity that is “not destroyed but taken

apart, opened up to questioning, rewriting and re-routing” (24). This way, far from the sense

of a symbolic or a selective ethnicity, the heroine’s mother inevitably underlines the

dynamic, constantly reformed character of identity.

Undoubtedly, the narrator’s mother is both an insider and an outsider in the two worlds she

inhabits, as her own story reveals. First viewed as an immigrant daughter, the narrator’s

mother constantly tastes her “in-betweenness,” since she was born and educated in the New

World but was raised the Old World way, fully aware of the “old rules” (52). She received the village “codes” from her mother: “not to pass salt hand from hand, how to cure the evil eye, how to make meals out of weeds, how to kiss a priest (on his hand), what was acceptable for women (nothing), what was acceptable for men (everything)” (52). James Clifford reveals that even though Diaspora women are found “between patriarchies, ambiguous pasts, and futures” they acquire survival skills in their “painful difficulty in mediating discrepant worlds” (314). In this “quest for belongingness,” immigrant women often follow Linda

Degh’s thinking and come to consider that the “European variant is the negative while the

American is the positive print of the same picture” (57). Inevitably, the narrator’s mother’s revolt from the female marginalization in the Old World country results in her initial rejection of her ethnicity as far as this obstructs her from living a complete and independent 128

life. Thus, her only option is initially to “repress” or “avoid” (Fischer 195-196) her ethnicity,

so as not to be in the same disadvantaged position her mother was, due to her sex.

Gradually, the passage of time, her mother’s death and the creation of her own family,

make the narrator’s mother more receptive to the home culture influences, with a special

emphasis on food and festivals. Alan Kraut recognizes the significance of food for the

retention of ethnic distinctiveness, in the children and grandchildren of immigrants (106). He considers the bonding that accompanies the culinary and gastronomic experiences of ethnic people of different generations. In Kraut’s own terms “kitchens provided an opportunity for sociability, a place to maintain identity in the face of many pressures to abandon it” (101). In the narrator’s mother’s case, however, the ethnic cuisine appears to be a site of exclusive female activity and is, hence, embraced by the feminist narrator for its crucial role in the mother-daughter relationship, as well as female unity. Cooking is projected as a legacy and the passport to a world of different, ineffable female knowledge. In Davidson’s own words:

“Recipes are passed hand to hand, mother to daughter. Girls helping their mothers prepare simple meals, acquire an unspoken knowledge in their palms and fingers” (4). As the young woman progressively appreciates ethnic cooking for its inspiring potential, she selects it as one of the cultural elements of the home culture she wants in her life. In this sense, the narrator follows her mother’s example of “cultural selectivity,” as is graphically described in the adjustments made to the traditional Easter magiritsa dish, to fit the American rules of hygiene (225).

VIII. The Priest Fainted and Revisionist Mythmaking

Besides the adjustments to ethnic cooking, the narrator focuses on myths whose re-writing

originated by the feminist scholars of the seventies and eighties, as they reacted to the

haunting and restrictive presence of old male myths (Lefkowitz 9). Following feminist 129

dictates, the “patriarchal myth-makers/legitimators,” in Mary Daly’s term, take advantage of the inherent potential of myth, to mold conscience and to dictate roles to women, “the power to name and define” (Kelly in Cameron 147); men have used mythology to their own advantage for centuries cunningly placing female rivalry and superficiality at its myth core, as Alicia Ostriker highlights:

There we find the conquering gods and heroes, the deities of pure thought and

spirituality so superior to Mother Nature; there we find the sexually wicked

Venus, Circe, Pandora, Helen, Medea, Eve, and the virtuously passive

Iphigenia, Alcestis, Mary, Cinderella. It is thanks to myth we believe that

woman must be either “angel or “monster.” (71)

Feminist scholars saw in these tactics a cunning strategy through which male mythmakers

ensured that the fruits of female co-operation and bonding would never be borne, the female

voice would never be raised united against them. For feminists, women’s entrapment in the

prison of stereotypes doomed every opportunity for female creativity, self-exploration and

nourishment.

As she retraces female history in The Priest Fainted, Davidson, just like Lloyd in Chapter

4, considers the tremendous losses women suffered with the advent of Christianity. As

Davidson’s narrator states, the destruction of the temples of the goddesses was just the

beginning; the worst in women’s every day lives was yet to come:

Paul added his own embellishments: Women should hide their power, cover

their heads in church, stand behind their husbands, keep their mouths shut. As

Paul laced women tightly into one plain dress, the goddess slunk away,

disappeared. Nymphs turned into saints, itching under the collar. The Virgin

became the only mother. Priests put on skirts, and women shut the door on

their longings. (216) 130

Davidson’s narrative stresses how the Judeo Christian tradition annihilates and entraps the

female presence in what has been called the Madonna/whore dichotomy:14 those women who

refuse to identify with the image of the docile, sweet Mother of Jesus, cannot but be

corrupted. As feminist theoreticians inevitably underline, this all powerful portrayal of

women ends up equating dynamic women with sinfulness.15 It consumes all female initiative

and activity and places women on the margins, as miasmic creatures, tracing their evil nature back to Eve. In the novel, the narrator’s experience with the priest who blames women, their lack of respect and their dress code in church, for the terrible nuclear accident in Chernobyl

(219), is included as a reminder that old ways still prevail; for the clergymen of the Orthodox

Church, women are still condemned as the source of all evil. Subsequently, the male dominating Jewish, and later Christian tradition, revering a single, male God, as well as the dead end of the Virgin Mary’s meekness, both underline the inflexibility of the Judeo

Christian tradition.16 Thus, Greek myths, with their depiction of a host of female figures and

a variety of roles and relationships, with the likes of Antigone, Medea or the Amazons, are

far more accessible to re-view and re-write, from the feminist perspective.

Davidson distinguishes between male and female history and regards men’s relation to the

historical past as superficial and trivial: “they remember but they do not know” (3). Most

significantly, she views women’s position in classical antiquity critically; she focuses on the

great majority of women of the classical Athenian city state who are excluded, left with two

possible occupations: either housewives or courtesans (3). With women secluded or

mortified, history constitutes a male affair, “his-story,” since the glorious ethnic past is

basically a concatenation of male wars, male politics, and male feats. In Davidson’s words:

“If you are a man born into this tribe, you might be able to find yourself in the stories of the

past, in heroes and glories and the idea that through you and you alone your family’s name will pass on. What if you are a woman? You have no interest in sifting through dust” (3-4). 131

Unable to feel any connection to a historical past where they are not represented, women for

Davidson should feel blessed for this outcome.17 In her idealistic view of history, Davidson’s

narrator enthusiastically endorses the feminist perception of history; along with Lloyd’s

narrator in the chapter that follows, Davidson’s heroine aspires to immerse herself in

feminine history by establishing her own lineage of foremothers.

In defiance of the male rules, the female story, “her-story,” as Davidson quickly retorts,

survives, irrespective of all those years of seclusion; it is vibrant, alive and kicking; it

patiently awaits to be explored and appreciated by another woman who will identify her

foremothers’ stories as part of her own: “Your grandmothers and your great-grandmothers

gave up their names to their husbands, went inside their houses, and were never heard of

again. If you wanted to trace the story of their lives and find yourself in them, you could not

look in books or history. You would have to start with secret clues. You would have to start

with imam” (4). In accordance with the feminist ideology of the seventies and eighties, that

Barolini’s Marguerite and Tina in Chapter 2 also support, Davidson celebrates female unity expressed through a chain of resilient women, a sequence of female figures empowered and united through common experiences. Julia Kristeva characterizes female knowledge as corporeal (“About Chinese Women” 140), an attribute that also underwrites Davidson’s argument; for the narrator, the female treasures of the past lie deep beneath the falsely shiny veneer of male myths, in the secrets of recipes, “in the palms and fingers,” “history in your body” (4). In reaction to the effacement they suffered at the hands of patriarchy, feminist theorists resort to the creation of their own ancestry. It is this secret female arsenal,

Davidson’s narrator claims, which must be recovered; once explored and exploited, it will replenish the lives of all women. However, as was previously noted in relation to the narrator’s privileged position as far as the expression of her sexuality was concerned, the author’s consideration of Greek women’s position seems to be one of compromise and 132

symbolism. While Greek women are denied by patriarchy, as well as the narrator herself, the

liberty to be independent agents, the narrator settles for an “esoteric” and “symbolic”

defiance of the patriarchal order (Tsimpouki, “Bi- or Mono-Culturalism” 23); on the contrary,

the narrator and her mother are the ones who relish the opportunity to combine the positive

aspects of both worlds: freedom allowed to the women in the Western world, and the spiritual

nourishment traditionally attributed to the women in the Orient.

Opting for a romanticized approach to feminist issues, in the introductory chapter entitled

“Imam Baildi,” which translates in English as “the priest fainted,” the narrator explains why

she uses this particular eggplant dish as the title of the novel. According to her family version

of the traditional dish, the vegetable mixture consists of eggplants and zucchinis fried and mixed in a rich paste of garlic, carrots, parsley and tomatoes. This dish constitutes, for the narrator, “the secret clue” from which women can locate their own history and their wisdom,

passed from one generation of women to another, “hand to hand” just as the recipes (4). A

multitude of diverse ingredients are mixed and cooked together, creatively to produce a most

satisfying result. The outcome is offered as a moral to women: power lies in unity and a

common course. Hypothesizing on the translation of imam baildi as the priest fainted, the

narrator discovers, once again, female inspiration and continuity, hidden behind “the bitter

and sweet pleasure” of the concoction (5). This taste, and most importantly “the power of

everything behind the dish,” perhaps made the hermit who ate it faint and fall from his rock,

revealing to him, in his tumble, “a glimpse of new life to come” (5). So subversive are the

power of the dish and, most importantly, the impetus of its makers, that it leads to the fainting

of the church heads, and their symbolic dethronement into a reality of bittersweet “female”

tastes, a new, alternative taste of life. From Davidson’s female utopia, it is now time to view

her feminist proposition critically.

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IX. The Priest Fainted and Its Postmodern Context

Many were the enthralled supporters of the practice of revisionist mythmaking, in its prime

in the seventies, since it was deemed of tantamount importance for female conditioning, and

for the enhancement of female pride, at a time of passionate action against patriarchy. Thus,

important works of the past on the revised myth and fairy tale are now considered classic.

Recognizing the indispensable role of a female critical mind for women’s self-definition, as

Rachel Blau DuPlessis declares (220), a multitude of other feminist works in diverse domains

has established such a tradition.18 Athas’s fascination with myth, philosophy, psychoanalysis

and their significance for Cora’s evolution in Chapter 1, certainly reflects the creative impetus and originality that imbued women’s writings at the time. Barolini’s heroines in

Chapter 2, through the fragile image of Marguerite, and the emerging dynamism of Tina, hint at the overarching theoretical context; nevertheless, Barolini, through Tina’s resolutions and life choices, rushes to stress her realistic views and endorse a practical female battle, away from theoretical considerations, romantic though they may seem.

As if in agreement with Barolini’s heroine Tina, a number of scholars criticized, doubted

and even categorically rejected this technique, often considering it as one-sided, sterile, even dangerous.19 In an interesting study of the use of myth and fairy tale in contemporary women’s fiction, Susan Sellers examines the diverse views surrounding feminist rewriting, opting for a renewed focus on irony, and “clever twists,” as well as thought-provoking comments and new areas of reflection (29). Focusing on the theological repercussions of feminist mythmaking, Pamela Anderson, among others, correctly warns against the creation of a matriarchal theology. In her view, the establishment of matriarchal mythical formations, similar to the ones generated by Davidson, obliterates crucial lessons from the female history of oppression. Instead, it leads to another series of male-female confrontations. In Anderson’s phrasing: “The danger lies in a matriarchal theology which would maintain sharp oppositions, 134

only reversing the sexism in a new entrenched conflict” (12). Overturning the situation would

definitely not be fruitful for women, since it would limit women’s horizons and be

monolithic, as Riane Eisler rightly affirms (105). Alice Echols condemns this “self-affirming

pride” as limiting women to specific cultural assumptions (qtd. in Alcoff 413). Following

Joan W. Scott’s views, what the situation calls for is a more productive approach to female

self-expression. In Scott’s words: “We need theory that will enable us to articulate alternative

ways of thinking about (and thus acting upon) gender without either simply reversing the old

hierarchies or confirming them. And we need theory that will be useful and relevant for

political practice” (134).

Irrespective of the opposing voices, more than twenty years later works like The Priest

Fainted and No Pictures in My Grave, examined in Chapter 4, continue to explore once again

the medium of myth for the ethnic woman’s identification process. For Lillian Doherty, the

variety of works and styles–ranging from the poetry of Margaret Atwood to the TV series

Zena, Warrior Princess–prove that women’s claim to their own tradition is still of interest to

many women and perhaps even men (qtd. in Zajko 36). At this point, one cannot but address

some questions: how can such a loving approach to feminism be permitted by the male status

quo? Is patriarchy admitting its defeat and surrendering to a new era of matriarchy? To what

extent do such works really assist the evolving face of the feminist movement?

Foregrounding the life stories of the “wretched of the earth,” of all the segregated and

oppressed groups, women, minorities and homosexuals definitely constitutes one of the

characteristics of postmodern artistic production, fiction in particular (Weedon 186). In a

society where the majority being silenced by a privileged minority was the canon and norm,

until recently, being at last able to express oneself and be heard seems positive at first sight.

However, it is precisely there that the danger lurks: in his well-known work Mythologies,

Roland Barthes examines, under the label of myth, the modern visual and textual arsenal 135

employed by the status quo to perpetuate the illusion of the felicity of the masses. In the

postmodern era, the hegemonic tendency to condescendingly “embrace” diverse groups and

their stories, lulls the latter to sleep; it pacifies them, convincing them that inequalities belong

in the past, since now even the oppressed are entitled to be heard. This minor privilege, so widespread today, is nothing but a diversion, a smokescreen. As Barthes so aptly puts it:

“One immunizes the contents of the collective imagination by means of a small inoculation of acknowledged evil; one thus protects it against the risk of a generalized subversion”

(Mythologies 150). Relieved by their feat to express the struggles and pains of their

ancestors, drugged by the joy of this victory, the oppressed may surrender their weapons and

they may re-consider the reasons for fighting against their oppressors. William C. Dowling,

discussing Fredric Jameson’s The Political Unconscious, refers to the Marxist scholar’s warning as regards excluded literatures; there, he states that “criticism must be alert to the ways a hegemonic ideology ceaselessly co-opts or reabsorbs or universalizes such oppositional voices, thus perpetuating the illusion that there is only a single genuine culture”

(129, my emphasis added). The hegemonic embrace of inclusion, far from a gesture promoting democracy and equality, should trigger the skepticism of the parties recently welcomed.

In the new revised myths, women thrive on their dynamic existence, remember their

foremothers, shape the world. In their writings, ethnic women declare their equal

opportunities, sing their heritage, and demand respect. In both instances, women risk being

dazzled by what Barthes views as the illusory character of myth, its depoliticizing power. As

the French scholar states: “Myth does not deny things, on the contrary, its function is to talk

about them; simply, it purifies them, it makes them innocent, it gives them a natural and

eternal justification, it gives them a clarity which is not that of an explanation but that of a

statement or fact” (Mythologies 143). The danger with the multiplied feminist ethnic works, 136

like The Priest Fainted, lies in the intoxicating taste of freedom of expression, which could

result in the final obliteration of all female struggles.20 Deceived into believing that they are

now makers of their own fates, women are tempted to squander their energy, theorizing,

lecturing and re-writing, but not acting. In such an unfortunate case, they will have ultimately

turned into “mythologists,” in Barthes’s words, but, alas, without realizing that myth is

nothing but “a general metalanguage which is trained to celebrate things, and no longer to act them” (Mythologies 144). This is precisely Lynne Segal’s21 point, when she emphasizes the

feminist disorientation from activism, declaring:

Primarily concerned with ways of displacing or subverting the negation of

subordination of the “feminine” in language, or the silencing of women’s

voices in culture, the focus of identities, their affirmation and negations has

directed attention away from questions of redistributive justice and social

restructuring, which were once central to socialist feminism that current

which is now so often excised from feminist texts, abridged into the

retrospectively constructed “equality” paradigm. (216, my emphasis added)

On the other hand, the publication of The Priest Fainted in 1998 needs to be seen in the

light of the particular temporal setting and the market conditions that shape its reception. The

commercial impact of the novel should always be considered, since, as Fred Botting claims,

quoting Marshall McLuhan, “Literature becomes increasingly subject to economic criteria:

‘as a consumer commodity’ it is ‘an inevitable development of an age of industrial mass production’” (216). The Priest’s year of publication is certainly a memorable year for the

tourist industry in Greece and anything Greek worldwide. In September of the same year,

Greece was officially selected as the country to host the next Olympic Games in the year

2004. Greeks were overjoyed at the prospect of the Olympic Games “returning home,” as the advertising campaign slogan put it. Nonetheless, the world market was simultaneously in dire 137

need of up-to-date literature of diverse genres, concerning the tiny Mediterranean country.

Under such conditions, a humorous novel, suffused with travel images and folklore, spicy

stories related to the country’s mythology and a young, beautiful woman’s search for her

roots, could not but have met an enthusiastic reception.

X. Happily Ever After?

In The Priest Fainted, the young woman’s initiation into her ethnic heritage, as well as womanhood, is successfully concluded at the end of the story. Throughout the novel, the reader witnesses the gradual strengthening of the narrator’s confidence to swim in the deep, open

Greek waters. To express the young heroine’s pains to come to terms with herself and the unfamiliar surroundings of her foremothers’ country, Davidson resorts to a series of

“baptismal” scenes that allude to the tradition stamped by Kate Chopin’s The Awakening,22 among other works. In The Priest Fainted, the narrator is portrayed as she enters, both literally and metaphorically, the deep waters of her ethnic and female identity, with which she is still uncomfortable. Davidson displays this same love for the water, the sea, the ocean, as a symbol of transition between the Old and the New World, alluding to Irini Spanidou’s God’s Snake,23 in her first published poetic work Inheriting the Ocean.24 As it was also noted in Chapter 1 and chora, Mircea Eliade stresses the crucial role of water for one’s esoteric transformation. In the same frame of mind, Erich Neumann characterizes this water as “the primordial womb of life, from which in innumerable myths life is born” (Origins 47). In The Priest, on the narrator’s second visit, the young woman admits about her female companions that: “The two girls swim out confidently, deep into the bay. I am in strange water and hang close to the shore, feeling foolish, unable to let myself float blindly” (45). At the beginning of her third visit, the year she spent in Greece, she still has some way to go before she gains confidence: “I push out into the distance, but I am afraid to let myself go where I cannot see the bottom” (102). After some 138 heartache and a lot of soul-searching, in the final days of her sojourn, she manages to utter: “I am no longer afraid to go into the deep and can swim without being able to see the bottom. I am no longer afraid of drowning” (255). The last pages of The Priest Fainted present a narrator more experienced, confident, and peaceful. On her last day, by the seashore, she confesses: “I want to move quickly down the coast, feel the water part with the force of my body, cover distance” (256).

The end of the narrator’s journey in Greece signifies, for the author, her narrator’s reconciliation with her mother, her ancestors’ home country and herself. Through the discovery of the homeland, with the aid of myth and recipes and after a year spent away from motherly

Demeter, the young Kore now appears, once and for all stronger, not afraid of drowning in the unknown waters of adulthood and ethnicity. The narrator’s overwhelming optimism triggers the readers’ misgivings, when the latter realize how certain and tranquil the narrator appears to be. Does the process of self-definition ever end? Can there be a “happily ever after” at the end of Davidson’s story?

In Davidson’s novel, where mother and daughter co-operate and cook together, far from the author’s certainty about the end of her ordeals, the narrator’s alleviation should be considered as a temporary relief, as a “glimpse of wholeness” in Gagné’s words, as the scene of unity between Demeter and Persephone suggests (41). Following Gagné’s train of thought, there can only be glimpses of wholeness; as the pattern of the myth has it, Persephone is coerced to withdraw to the Underworld and emerge again on Earth; sunshine and gloom in the weather, as well as human relations, recur in the cycle of life, forever entwined. This constant shift and fluidity also applies to the narrator’s feeling of “Greekness.” According to Iain Chambers, migrancy “calls for a dwelling in language, in histories, in identities that are constantly subject to mutation. Always in transit, the promise of a homecoming-completing the story, domesticating the detour becomes an impossibility” (5). There is a sense of momentary relief, 139 the feeling that characterizes the end of the journey without however excluding the possibility of other new destinations and pains.

In this frame of mind, Davidson’s rewriting of myth from a feminist perspective can again only offer a “glimpse of wholeness,” a momentary satisfaction. While such an approach briefly enhances female pride and generates young women’s enthusiasm, unfortunately, it could hinder further female creativity and development, if it remains there and there alone. At the end of the novel and Davidson’s story, the overriding feeling for both narrator and reader cannot be but bittersweet, or in other words, imam baildi, just as the title.

140

Notes

1 Academy of American Poets and Dorothy Daniels Award from PEN.

2 Stephen Crane Award 1998, New York Times Notable Book of the Year, listed in the Los Angeles Times Best

Fiction section.

3 Quote from the novel.

4 See Introduction.

5 Eleni is a semi-autobiographical, semi-biographical novel, based on the investigation Gage conducted concerning his mother’s execution by the guerilla warriors in the Greek Civil War.

6 For a feminist analysis and critique of Miller’s approach to sex see Kate Millett’ Sexual Politics, (1970).

7 Indicatively, see Daphne Athas’s Greece by Prejudice.

8 Dinner with Persephone was a New York Times Notable Book, another similarity with The Priest Fainted.

9 The topics of Storace’s work, ranging from twentieth century literary production to stand-up comedy, and from the evil eye to the Macedonian issue, render it an all-inclusive, well-phrased guide.

10 This classical ancient Greek myth can also be traced in Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber, where the brilliant British novelist re-writes the famous Charles Perrault fairy tale Bluebeard with notable influences from the Demeter-Persephone myth. In the beginning of The Bloody Chamber, the young bride, the only child of a dynamic mother, recalls her separation from her mother on her wedding day and her move into the gothic castle-

Underworld, her shadowy husband’s ancestral residence. This focus on the mother-daughter bond constitutes a development created by Carter and a clear differentiation from the famous fairy tale. In the end, the young woman is saved by her mother and not her brothers, as in the Perrault version, thus echoing Demeter’s struggle to rescue her daughter.

11 Generally, the Demeter-Persephone myth appears to be a very popular theme of research in the voluminous myth bibliography. The approaches are numerous and variable. Sir James Frazer, in his monumental work The

Golden Bough, views Persephone as the personification of the old corn and Demeter as mother Earth (476).

Robert Graves adopts a similar perspective with Persephone, Demeter and Hecate; the three female figures represent the Great Goddess in her three forms, Maiden, Nymph and Crone in the agricultural culture of those early years, which respectively correspond to the three phases of corn cultivation: the green corn, the ripe ear and the harvested corn (93). Irrespective of the interpretation of the ritual, all the approaches come together on the strong bond between mother and daughter, their unity, since they reflect each other in a previous or later age.

This intimate female link considers the male as the Other, who, being alien and a predator violently destroys the 141

“primordial relationship” (Neumann, The Great Mother 306-307). As Jung asserts, the sole goal of the ritual is to celebrate the end of the individual’s isolation and the “restoration of its wholeness” (188).

12 This way Hera is seen as the archetypal wife, fiery and jealous, insecure and powerless out of wedlock; on the antipode, Aphrodite becomes the archetypal mistress, passionate, sensuous and unstoppable. Jungian psychoanalysts view features of the goddesses in the personality of every woman, qualities triggered or neutralised depending on the situational setting. See Goddesses in Everywoman, A New Psychology of Women by Jean Shinoda Bolen.

13 “Myths both convince the believer of their relevance and lead him or her to become part of them, when they are seen as part of oneself, when one recognizes how the personal mythostory is fused with the cultural or archetypal. Or perhaps more acutely, when one dis-covers the presence of mythemes within one’s own story or within the lives of those around us” (Doty 542).

14 Commenting on the biblical woman’s status Julia Kristeva states: “Divided from man, made of that very thing which is lacking in him, the biblical woman will be a wife, daughter or sister or all of them at once, but she will rarely have a name. Her function is to assure procreation–the propagation of the race. But she has no direct relation with the law of the community and its political and religious unity: God generally speaks only to men”

(“About Chinese Women” 140).

15 Marilyn French, in her attempt to explain female sexuality in the Scriptures, asserts: “Hebrew history shows the same progression we have seen elsewhere: powerful women give way to sexual women, who overcome their pollution by using their powers for male sanctioned ends” (191).

16 Tracing man’s origin from God and women’s from man, Luce Irigaray pinpoints the female inability to create, due to women’s lack of identity. As Irigaray notes about women: “they will be able to criticize their condition, complain, reject themselves or one another, but not establish a new era of History or of culture” (“The Other”

312).

17 This female absence from male stories and total lack of interest in men’s activities should be a reason to rejoice, according to Hélène Cixous, since women’s erasure from his-story constitutes a source of female empowerment and creative impetus (“The Laugh of the Medusa” 357).

18 The list of feminist poets inspired by Greek mythology is indeed extensive. Among them the name of Olga

Broumas, and her work Beginning with O (1977), naturally stand out, given her Greek-American identity. As far as rewritten myth and fiction are concerned, the names of Angela Carter and Margaret Atwood constitute simply the top of the list. 142

19 Also consult Susan Sellers Myth and Fairy Tale in Contemporary Women’s Fiction.

20 Rajagopalan Radhakrishnan, on the problematics of feminist historiography, affirms: “The difficult task that faces the revisionist perspectivity of feminist historiography is that of tapping on the one hand into the Utopian radicality of post-structuralist difference and alterity, and, on the other, historicizing or semanticizing this very radicality by way of a here-and-now and a short-term program of affirmative transformation. Without this practical and historical dimension, the feminist intervention will find itself marginalized within the ‘contentless’ romanticism of the perennial revolution, whereas without the theoretical component, it will remain trapped within the logic of identity and its corollaries. If feminist historiography intends to inaugurate what I call ‘axial temporality,’ and the ‘politics of heterogeneity,’ it has to deal with the benefactions and the perils of pos- structuralist thought” (193).

21 On the same topic, see also Magali Cornier Michael Feminism and the Postmodern Impulse Post World War

II Fiction and Gender at the Crossroads of Knowledge: Feminist Anthropology in the Postmodern era, edited and with an introduction by Micaela di Leonardo.

22 In the nineteenth century American literary masterpiece, the heroine Edna Pontellier has her first physical and spiritual awakening in the water, in her first successful attempt to swim alone.

23 On the same theme of the heroine’s empowerment in the water, the Greek-American author Irini Spanidou ends her 1986 Bildungsroman God’s Snake; her teenage heroine, proud of her progress and recounting her feats, enthusiastically exclaims at the end of the novel: “Every day from then on, I swam farther and farther out-farther than anyone else swam-out to the deep where the water held Euripus’ haunted soul. I was exhilarated. I was swimming in Euripus’ proud spirit. I was swimming out where the waters, reaching back beyond memory, drenched in history, were immortal” (232).

24 See especially the poems “Across the Water,” “Paxos Bay,” “Swimming,” “On Grand Island.”

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Chapter 4

Italian-American Persephone in a Sicilian Setting: Susan Caperna Lloyd’s No Pictures

in My Grave (1992)

I. Mytho-Folkloric Wanderings à la Italian-Americana

On a parallel with Catherine Temma Davidson’s semi-autobiographical explorations of myth in her mother’s country of origin, examined in detail in the previous chapter, Susan

Caperna Lloyd with her spiritual memoir No Pictures in My Grave, reveals her personal

travels and adventures with her minute account of return to Italy, her father’s home country;

however, instead of his hometown on the outskirts of Rome, she visits Sicily, longing to be

inspired and empowered by the latter’s mythical and folkloric traditions. Though the author is

technically not connected with Sicily, fascinated by the island’s long and tumultuous history,

and, notably, its hospitable and enigmatic people, she develops a special affection for it. This

fascination with Sicily is all the more justified, given the Sicilian cultural legacy, since Susan

Caperna Lloyd, author, photographer and filmmaker, has repeatedly demonstrated her keen

interest in folklore and mythology, through her research and art work, in diverse cultural

settings. In fact, it is her award winning documentary film entitled Processione: A Sicilian

Easter,1 a 28 minute videotape recording Trapani’s Good Friday ritual that constitutes the

basis of her spiritual memoir No Pictures in My Grave. Candid in her views, from the beginning of her memoir, the author considers her visits to Sicily, as well as her field work in

Sicilian traditions during Easter time, catalytic to the resolution of her personal struggles for self-definition, just like Davidson’s narrator.

II. No Pictures in My Grave

In No Pictures in My Grave, Lloyd’s narrator depicts her quest for gender and ethnic

identity in Sicily, during her two sojourns2 there, one with her family and one alone; the 144

heroine’s series of adventures are deployed simultaneously with her participation in the

traditional Good Friday processions (misteri), held in the ancient Sicilian town of Trapani.

During her two stays for the Easter festivities, the author searches in the ruins for traces of the

Goddess and the Demeter/Persephone cults. In need of spiritual guidance, in her attempt to

disentangle her often contradictory roles as artist, mother and wife, Susan, as a first-person

narrator, examines the available female mythological role models: the Madonna, as a

representative of Christian faith, and the pagan icons of Demeter and Persephone, as well as

the obscure Goddess of the pre-historical era. In her attempt to specify the ideal female role

to emulate, Lloyd, as the narrator, observes the real women surrounding her and the roles

they have chosen to take: her grandmother, the kitchen recluse; her mother, the rebellious

wife; and, finally, the plethora of contemporary Sicilian women she meets in her travels. For

the author, the encounter with Clara, a dynamic and emancipated Sicilian, proves to be

crucial. Clara who combines harmoniously the roles of entrepreneur, well-educated woman, mother and lover is the most inspiring local woman. Along with Clara, the bread-baking women of San Biago, who embody the female icons of a matriarchal era, satisfy the narrator’s search for powerful female figures, and drastically, as well as instantly, change her view of herself and her mission in life. Susan’s personal voyage towards self-definition, and her agony, are terminated at the memoir’s denouement; in this manner, the end of the woman’s second stay in Sicily reveals a triumphant narrator, who manages to overcome the limitations imposed on her by the Sicilian milieu: she becomes an initiate to the misteri, the only foreigner and a woman, to carry the grieving Madonna’s heavy statue next to Sicilian men. Relishing her accomplishment to transform herself from a spectator into a participant in the ritual that has long interested her, the heroine declares that she has now become the empowered Goddess she has long been looking for.

145

III. In the Arms of Postmodern Late-Capitalism

Viewed as an exploration of the ethnic woman’s hazardous journey towards self-

representation, No Pictures in My Grave constitutes an interesting account of the late

twentieth century bewilderment women of ethnic origin experience in the big cities of the

Western world. In accordance with postmodern artistic conventions, Susan Caperna Lloyd, in

the role of the depressed Persephone, permeates her work with the ethnic woman’s longing

for belongingness, spirituality, and strength. To this end, special emphasis is placed on the

pivotal role of the ethnic, mythological and folkloric repository for the contemporary

woman’s enlightenment, guidance, and her self-identification; this parameter, initially

encountered and discussed in Chapter 3, will be carefully examined in the ensuing pages of

the present chapter, following the heroine’s wanderings and illuminating the overall

postmodern context. In particular, taking No Pictures in My Grave as a case study, I aim to

discuss the leading role of nostalgia and “escape,” offered to the depressed individual,

through the colorful and popular media of myth, fairytale and ritual. Based on prominent

contemporary theories, I focus on the return to myth and ethnicity and their popularity in the

late capitalist era.

I consider the heroine’s reconfiguration of her own identity to be rooted in a fickle embrace of ethnicity, depending on the occasion: whether as an American tourist, or as a descendant of Italian women, the heroine somehow manages to satisfy her craving for self- confirmation at the end of her two sojourns. In its postmodern version, the author’s search into Sicilian folklore ends like a fairy tale, with the now relieved and proud heroine triumphing, like Davidson’s narrator; Susan’s epiphany and her inclusion in the Sicilian ritual, signify the realization of the author’s feminist aspirations; the young woman now

seems satisfied, through her symbolic achievements, momentary acceptance and self-

confidence. While female creative energy is restricted to celebrating and not acting, Lloyd’s 146

readers, lured by illustrious, though petty victories, are tempted to misconceive the essentials

of feminist struggle and history.

IV. Voicing the Female Ethnic Self

Notwithstanding its weak points, Lloyd’s memoir should initially be considered on the

basis of the diverse topics it touches upon and the conditions that favored its birth.

Indubitably, with No Pictures Lloyd chooses to touch diverse topics like the postmodern

ethnic woman’s agony of self-definition, with special emphasis on the Sicilian woman’s

position, the local mythology, history and tradition; hence, it constitutes a positive addition to

the ethnic works of literature in general, produced in the second half of the twentieth century.

Postmodern critics have repeatedly expressed their appreciation for the manifold importance

of diverse ethnic works, adding to the multivocality and variety of the contemporary literary

canon. Michael M. J. Fischer, among others, views ethnic literary writings as enriching the

pluralistic multicultural society (197); at the same time, Gillian Bottomley pays attention to

the symbolic encouragement and ethnic pride instigated in populations whose morale has

been seriously damaged in the not so very distant past (57). In 1992, a time when Italian-

American scholarship was still struggling hard to establish itself, the eminent scholar Fred L.

Gardaphé introduced Lloyd’s memoir to his readers, with the following words: “This

autobiographical travel story is woven with myth and history, all told in a deceptively simple

style that informs as it entertains, enchants as it depicts contemporary Sicilian small town life

and its relationship to its pagan past” (Dagoes 130). Bringing to the forefront the trials and

tribulations of a third generation Italian-American woman, Lloyd manages to unite her voice with the other ethnic women’s testimonies that come to deepen and broaden the world literature. 147

Clearly, the influences of the travelogue on Lloyd’s memoir, a point Gardaphé also makes,

reveal yet again the dominant role of the home country and the necessity of “return”, whether

literal or metaphorical, for third generation writers of ethnic descent: in this manner, the likes

of Lloyd and Davidson turn to the Old World with a renewed interest and appreciation, which

they transmit to their readership. As a result, Lloyd and Davidson provide thought-provoking

contemporary ethnic works on the themes of the distant and unknown motherland, as well as

ethnic identity. Not only do they regard the motherland as a physical and geographical entity

one needs to explore and value, but, most importantly, they see it as a sociohistorical and

cultural pool that is constantly revisited for enlightenment. In the late capitalist postmodern

era, characterized by ideological confusion, self-identification, though deemed central, proves

to be elusive; novels and memoirs, like the ones examined in the chapters 3 and 4, emphasize

their authors’ connection with their respective ancestral lands as empowering and inspiring.

Nonetheless, given the authors’ gender, their self-representation is all the more

encumbered. As a result, their efforts to piece together family and collective story are

enriched, and often shaped, by their gender preoccupations and feminist beliefs. Thus,

Davidson’s narrator is presented in a crucial period in her life, while she attempts the leap

from girlhood to full womanhood; at the same time, Lloyd, as Susan the narrator of the

spiritual memoir, tries to adjust herself to the new roles of young mother of two, wife and artist. Both ethnic authors retrace feminist history and remind us of the victories feminist

battles have brought about; they also refer to the real boundaries women still need to

overcome.

In this voyage towards self-definition, Lloyd’s fascination with tradition and the collective

past proves that the appeal of myth and folklore is still intense, stubbornly resisting the frantic

and consumerist lifestyle. To Davidson’ Greek mythology, Lloyd adds Sicilian folklore, and

a taste for Sicilian history and archeology, all re-considered and re-viewed, intriguingly open 148

to question and discussion. Edvige Giunta recognizes the positive qualities behind Lloyd’s

postmodern technique of bricolage, as far as mythology and religion in Sicilian culture are

concerned. As the Sicilian-American scholar affirms, Lloyd’s technique aptly denotes the

distinctive and “anti-authoritarian quality” of Sicilian Catholicism (“A Song from the Ghetto”

219). Based on Gramsci’s3 approach to folklore as a challenge to hegemonic culture

(Birnbaum 14), the troubled young woman in No Pictures looks for guidance, and the

example of the powerful Demeter figures to emulate; this way she hopes to enhance her female determination and resolve her personal dilemmas. Steven Tyler affirms the overall

wisdom and the power of transformation that the folklore initiate enjoys, as a result of his

adventures in this magic realm; for the scholar, wanderings similar to those of Susan’s should

be viewed as: “a journey apart into strange lands with occult practices-into the heart of

darkness-where fragments of the fantastic whirl about in the vortex of the quester’s disoriented consciousness” (126).

V. Persephone Lost in the Darkness of Self-Definition

The author’s intentions to pay homage to folklore and ancestors, metonymically

represented by the grandmother, are inevitably reflected in the memoir’s cover and its

original title. With a view to informing her readership on her choice of title, the author

includes a letter to her grandmother4 in the first pages of the book; this epistolary confession

should be seen as a symbolic plea to the collective past, the tradition which the narrator

wishes to relate to. In her letter to grandmother Carolina, the young woman firstly admits her

need to be protected by her deceased grandmother, lamenting the missed chance to add her

picture to the grandmother’s coffin; following an Italian custom, the deceased would protect the living whose photos were added to the coffin of the departed. However, the end of

Susan’s letter differentiates her expectations from those of previous generations: she hopes 149 that all her loved ones left behind, after her own death, will be strong enough to continue on their own. Their empowerment, stemming from her hard-won personal development, seems to be the ultimate reason for Susan’s quest.

Hence, the heroine’s wanderings in Sicily are initiated with the rituals dedicated to the

Madonna in Marsala and Trapani, Sicily. In their first encounter with Susan, readers follow the distracted woman who, engrossed in the processions, reflects on the female position as well as her own place in the group of powerful female figures throughout history. As expected, Susan reveals her readings in feminism and mythology when she immediately establishes a theoretical connection with the female figures, both mythological and real. As she watches Madonna’s frantic search for her dead son in the Good Friday ritual, the young woman connects the Marsala Christian ritual first with the familiar face of her grandmother and later with Demeter’s search for her kidnapped daughter Persephone (2). Admittedly, this pairing of the grandmother figure with the mainstream Sicilian tradition is a symbolic action, through which Susan re-appropriates a culture from which her ancestors were severed, once they emigrated to America. Consequently, the heroine mystifies the familiar figure of the grandmother, and is filled with gender and ethnic pride. Eventually, Susan is vindicated for the years of marginal ethnic existence that women like herself are likely to have experienced, ever since their childhood. The heroine’s connection with her grandmother and her home culture entitles her to Robert Cantwell’s “social prestige,” whereby “by identifying with the folk we incorporate that prestige at the same time that we enact the sense of our own marginality” (239).

The narrator’s emphasis on the dark Mediterranean Madonna, and the resemblance she notes between her and the passionate, earthy character of the pre-Christian Demeter, should not go unnoticed. The Western icon of the Catholic Virgin Mary Susan was brought up to revere in the States, centers around a delicate, blonde Virgin Mary, whose main personality 150

features are lack of dynamism, docility and passivity. Allowing her feminist credos to

surface, the narrator condemns the Catholic Priesthood for the obliteration of almost all traces

of the previous matriarchal worship; the new profile5 of the submissive, sweet, immaculate

Mother of God the narrator is accustomed to, bears few faint traces of its pagan predecessors, vestiges that are traceable in but a few folkloric rituals. The heroine’s words, therefore, saturate the text with feminist categorical condemnations against the prototypical female figures that the Christian church imposed on women, throughout the ages. According to

Marina Warner, even the fervent worshipping of the Virgin Mother of Jesus in specific areas, should by no means be considered accidental: it both helps establish and maintain female submissiveness and male omnipotence (Alone 191). Intrigued to learn more and “to

understand the long-suffering nature of Italian women’s lives” (6), the narrator, as a feminist

artist, and a descendant of Italian women, is determined to conduct her research in the

universe of Italian women that she senses will help her understand her own role.

Clearly, through her quest in Sicily and her attempt to qualify as an active participant in the

folkloric processions, the narrator wants to become “one of the crowd,” or, in Gerard

Delanty’s terms “a member of this tribe” (124). As Delanty explains, since in the vastness

and anonymity of urban space, people are deprived of the emotional bonding and security,

they attempt to compensate for this loss by creating “temporary networks or tribes” (124). In

her examination of the possibilities available in her “tribe,” the bewildered Susan considers

existing female roles, both in the procession and also in real life. Her attempt to see herself as

one of the grieving women following the Madonna’s ceto (‘statue in the procession’) proves

to be fruitless. She realizes that she cannot share their constant grieving feelings since her

age, her experience, education, and rational mind prevent her from imprisoning herself in a

constant state of mourning. As a young mother, only momentarily can Susan taste Demeter’s

pain of separation when she watches her nine-year-old son, Sky, leave her side to become an 151

active participant in the procession (17). As the narrator confesses: “Now it was I who was

the Madonna, watching my son leave me in this initiation rite he had been invited to join. I

felt like Demeter watching Persephone disappear. But, like the goddess and the Madonna, I

realized I had to let him go. The procession was offering him a step toward independence from me” (17). Able to rationalize her fear and pain of separation, Susan, abiding by the

Western ideal of independence and self-realization, calms herself down, favoring her son’s balanced upbringing and personal development. On the whole, the overarching feeling of suffocation related to the traditional role assigned to Mary and the world, as depicted in

Christianity, are two of the most important reasons that force the narrator to deny her devotion to the conventional Madonna,6 later in the memoir. For her Catholicism is “a world

of fear, of hell and death” (57). The absence of a charismatic female spiritual beacon within

the official Roman Catholic religion, along with the lack of common ground between herself and the devout followers, intensifies Susan’s loneliness; she now feels further impeded by the load of her solitary quest (21).

When the Christian religion fails her, Susan, like Davidson’s narrator, seeks help in the

mythological goddesses; she therefore turns to Madonna’s pagan predecessors, the Greek

Pantheon and the obscure Goddess of prehistoric times. On a parallel with Davidson’s unnamed narrator, Susan resorts to the mythological treasury of her ancestors’ cult for wisdom, only to be once again disappointed by their passivity. The roles of the female figures of the Classic Greek Pantheon instigate feelings of inadequacy in her, similar to the ones she has for the Virgin Mary. Susan stresses their helplessness and their decorative role, since all of them were “beautiful, no doubt, but they didn’t do much” (35). In the hope of retracing the stolen powers of the matriarchal religion, the young woman decides to resort to archeology; consequently, she looks into the Sicilian paintings of the prehistoric religious figure of the

Goddess (42), la dea, painted on the walls of the Levanzo cave (35). 7 152

Projecting her psychoanalytic feminist readings, Caperna Lloyd seems to embrace the teachings of Sylvia Brinton Perera who, among other feminist scholars, argues for the importance of the contemporary woman’s connection with the Goddess.8 According to

Brinton Perera, for contemporary women the union with the all powerful spirit of the

Goddess is a prerequisite, if the goal of wholeness is to be fulfilled (140). When Susan expresses her fear of the dark caves, an inherent fear to explore the unknown, the dark side of oneself, she simultaneously points to the psychoanalytic dimension of her outing to the

Sicilian cave, “her pilgrimage,” as she calls it (38). That is why Susan feels happy to be with her family on this outing to a small island in the Egadi island chain. However, the images of animals and men “probably dancing” (41), the obscure figures of women, and the red image of the Goddess, do not constitute satisfactory evidence for Susan. The guide’s vague answer to her questions and his lack of additional information leave the young woman perplexed. In this process of self-definition that Susan has undertaken, “into the crooked lanes of her own spiritual labyrinth,” following Joseph Campbell (101), fear and pain are the constant companions. According to Jungian psychoanalysis, the painful pressures exerted on any one who attempts this voyage to wholeness are indeed immense, but inevitable (21). However, since achieving self-completion is a complicated and long process, the few traces of the goddess that Susan and her family discover in the Levanzo cave are not very helpful for

Susan’s research. Not captured on film, by an absent-minded Susan who forgets to load the camera, the goddess proves to be elusive, both metaphorically and literally, as the author admits (45).

Unfortunately, the family visit to the Levanzo cave signifies the end of Susan’s first sojourn in Sicily; at this point, Susan cannot hide her disappointment as “there was so much left to find” (87). Since Susan’s initial research into the sites and folklore of Sicily is not sufficiently enlightening for her, the heroine’s quest for meaning in her life continues. Her 153

disillusionment with the still inconclusive Sicilian search is clear and the narrator’s return to

the States signifies a full-blown depression. Back in Oregon, Susan misses Sicily, its history

and its folklore-laden surroundings. For Slavoj Zižek the hypocrisy and superficiality of human relations and feelings are among the most significant factors leading to the postmodern psychic malady. In Zižek’s terms, the reasons behind this generalized state of psychic illness are: “thwarted ‘existential fulfillment’; non- authentic interpersonal relations; the lack of love and confidence; the reified conditions of modern labor and the moral conflict provoked by the demands of an alienated environment, which force the individual to renounce his true Self and wear masks” (9). The heroine’s readjustment to her old ways and lifestyle, big city life and the immensity of space, serve as a reminder of the anchorless existence of the postmodern individual in the chaotic urban environment. As a result, the heroine’s arrival back in the New World unearths and restages feelings of loss and bewilderment, similar to the ones her ancestors had in their transitory movement between the two worlds.9 The fragmentation and indifference the Susan experiences in her New World

surroundings, as opposed to the familiarity and warmth of Sicily, accentuate the awkward

feeling of homelessness for the heroine; in this sense Susan’s come back to her everyday life

in the big city seems to be approximating her foremothers’ shock when they relocated in the

West at the beginning of the twentieth century (Featherstone 102). 10

Following the Western world dictates and rational mentality, Susan seeks medical help for her numerous psychosomatic symptoms. Yet, in her attempt to pinpoint the causes of her psychological state, Susan admits that what she misses in the States is ritual11 and the

emotional outlet that this offers (88). Terry Eagleton identifies the declining significance of

religion as another contributing factor to the postmodern limbo people like the heroine

experience; as the British Marxist scholar explains, postmodern culture does not prove to be

very successful in playing a role traditionally assigned to religion, that is, suffusing the 154

mundane and secular with spirituality (After Theory 99). Susan, expressing the late twentieth

century embrace of roots and tradition, “ritual performances, bodily practices and

commemorative ceremonies” (Featherstone 95), seems to crave the warmth of the communal

feeling; she longs for the sense of belongingness, which connects participants in the same

ritual, what Bauman so aptly calls “the love of one’s own, the sticking to one’s kind” (79). At

this moment of crisis, the heroine also recognizes the rites as part of her “religious and

cultural heritage” (Feathestone 91), albeit as part of her being. That is why the encounter with

the powerful Goddess of the pre-patriarchal era that defies death, as well as her discovery of a

number of powerful women, become such central issues for her. In the description of her

emotional state, Susan stresses her inability to cope with the load of her multiple tasks. Under

the pressures of her everyday life, the heroine, through her questions, epitomizes the

confusion of postmodern women: though feminist victories have reassured them of a

multitude of rights, they still need to adjust themselves to their conflicting roles, and find

meaning, as well as sustenance, in their lives. In her state of confusion, Susan admits: “Where

did I belong? Women of my generation wanted to be everything to everyone-to achieve yet to

nurture; to think freely, yet to honor one’s parents; to be a wife, yet to be independent. These

pressures seemed enormous. In more hopeful moments, I knew I was going through a

transformation. But most of the time I felt hopelessly lost” (90).

Her friends, deprived of Susan’s esoteric wanderings, cannot empathize with her, and, as

Susan confesses, they feel her love for Sicily stems from her probable conversion to a cult

(88). While Susan struggles to juggle her conflicting roles as mother, wife and artist, through her travels in Italy, she also attempts to understand and come to terms with her father’s and grandmother’s Old World traditions, where a woman’s role was defined from her cradle. The lack of understanding Susan’s friends display, often noted in people who have always been firmly rooted in one place, is to be expected (Kristeva, Strangers to Ourselves 17). In reality, 155 it is difficult to understand Susan’s dilemmas, when you have never tasted the oscillation between two worlds and identities. Eagleton rightly considers such a reaction, on the part of hegemonic culture participants, as arrogance since, as he claims, it is anchored in the assured mainstream status of their background (The Idea of Culture 46).

Nonetheless, Susan’s physical and emotional trials and the time span of two years between the two processions, appear to be necessary phases in the young Persephone’s initiation rite.

According to Erich Neumann, “rebirth can occur through sleep in the nocturnal cave, through a descent to the underworld realm of the spirits and ancestors, through a journey over the night sea, or through a stupor induced by whatever means–but in every case, renewal is possible only through the death of the old personality” (The Great Mother 292). In her second stay in Sicily, however, the heroine travels from the States alone to the Italian island, a fact whose boldness dissatisfies all her Sicilian friends; it inadvertently also places emphasis on the solitary character of self-definition. In the first processione description included in the memoir, the heroine is, as all young initiates usually are, escorted and introduced to folkloric activity by her male Sicilian friend, Carlo and his friends, who are porters of the statues in the ceremony. In this case, Lloyd follows the ritual as a mere observer from a distance, because further preparation is necessary for her full participation, a development to be expected at the end of her second visit.

VI. Inspiration Found: Between Myth and Reality

It is during Susan’s second, and final, trip to Sicily, when her wish for female role models, religious and real, is finally granted, starting with the Black Madonna12 at Tindari. Placed on a temple originally dedicated to the Anatolian Goddess Cybele, the Black Madonna seems collectively to represent the diverse mythological and religious figures of the past, “Attis and

Cybele, both Demeter and Persephone” (139).13 Hence, to Susan’s eyes, the imposing statue 156

unites all those attributes that she has been seeking all along: self-confidence, dignity, as well

as the female strength and wisdom that transcend eras and religions. All those admirable

traits that Susan has been craving for are transmitted instantly, and effortlessly, by the

Madonna’s mere presence. Following Susan’s comments on the Black Madonna: “she was

not sorrowing or distraught. Nor was she sweet or demure. She just was [sic], exuding power

and self-assurance” (139). It is the discovery of this different Madonna that enables Susan to

feel incorporated in the long concatenation of female figures; however, while the young

woman places immigrant women and her grandmother in this female lineage, she notes the

gradual decline in these women’s inner vitality: for Susan, patriarchal authority first, and,

more recently, immigration to a brand New World, cunningly deprived women of their roots

and powers.

Subsequently, from the mythological and spiritual female paradigm, Susan proceeds with the examination of women in her background, both present and past, guided by her wish to find beacons in her quest. To this end, she tests those women’s moulds to see if her figure, her needs, mentality and temperament, fit. As Kelly Oliver argues, “through our encounters with others and their differences, we become other to ourselves and, in the process, we

become ourselves” (177, my emphasis added). This examination of female roles and

lifestyles, that is, the oppressed grandmother in the kitchen, followed by the emancipated

mother, fighting for “a room of one’s own,” as well as the independent free-agent, Clara,

cherishing a freedom won hard by her predecessors, serve at the same time as a schematized

presentation of the historical evolution of feminist struggles, over the years: firstly, the phase

of total seclusion and submission, that women like grandmother Carolina experienced for

centuries; later, the passionate years of activism and battles for equality and independence

that women like Susan’s mother had to fight in the last century as a part of the feminist

movement; and, finally, the last stage that Susan experiences, labeled as “post-feminism”; 157

when the fruit of the female struggles can be cherished, at least in theory, and women take the

time to reflect on the past and theoretical issues, and to plan for the future.

As the focus shifts to the analysis of the grandmother’s role, Lloyd displays the same

attitude of “cultural selectivity” that was encountered in Davidson’s novel and her narrator’s

mother. On the one hand, in agreement with numerous other ethnic artists, Lloyd approaches

the image of the beloved grandmother with affection; to her mind, the grandmother in the

kitchen metonymically underlines the significance of the family within Italian culture;

inevitably, the Italian culinary tradition as a factor of family unity, emanating from the

affable grandmother figure in the kitchen, is once more identified as another positive

ingredient of her ancestral cultural heritage. Reacting like a Western world feminist artist, however, Susan rejects the female seclusion in the kitchen that her grandmother Carolina constantly experienced. Contrary to Davidson’s empowerment of women through the common culinary tradition and their role as nurturers of their families, Susan opts for a more detached role: afraid of suffocating within the boundaries placed around the traditional Italian

housewife, she resists; she, thus, denies her participation in the meal preparation and, while she enthusiastically embraces the warmth of family life offered at the dinner table, she prefers a third solution. As Susan confesses: “Ever since, I had had an aversion to this ‘woman’s work’; I didn’t always provide my own family with fantastic, homemade meals. But I still hungered for the food and stories, and often, with my family, I would drop by my parents’ house ten miles away to eat and recapture the past” (11). Through her confessions, Susan provides the readership with glimpses of her own personal philosophy; therefore, the heroine appears to be interested in trading the female post in the kitchen with the traditional male role of taster and visitor, lest she be forever trapped. Through this oversimplified consideration of the male and female roles, the readership can misinterpret the heroine’s conduct, not as a 158

battle for female independence and self-representation, but as a longing for personal

superiority and recognition.

Based on the Jungian statement that asserts that “every mother contains her daughter in

herself and every daughter her mother” (Jung 188), Susan examines her mother’s positive

example of conjugal balance. Like the unnamed narrator in The Priest Fainted, Susan

explains her own upbringing and indirectly attributes to her mother’s free spirit, her own

strong will and determination for her roles in her new family. The author clearly

acknowledges, to her mother’s credit, the latter’s “ongoing struggle for independence from a

tradition-minded Italian husband” (33). Susan’s parents’ frictions exemplify the “confused

situation of Italian-Americans today” that Richard Gambino identifies as “the dilemma of

reconciling the psychological sovereignty of his people with the aspirations and demands of

being American” (35). For Susan, her mother stands out as a role model, a permanent source

of inspiration because “She was a creative and conscientious wife and mother, […] she had

sought and found a bigger world, beyond the humdrum of domestic life, to explore. And she

had opened this world up to us kids” (31-32). Still, at a late age, her mother remains as active and adventurous as always, following her daughter on her trips and facing up to challenges

(32). The narrator is envious of her mother’s achievements and her fighting spirit that have,

to her mind, transformed the family relationships. With a low profile co-operative partner,

who appears to be understanding of his wife’s needs and artistic ambitions, Susan is

privileged to start where her mother left off. Reflecting the feminist anxieties of the late

nineties, the narrator aspires to find new peaks to conquer.

What Susan, as the young Persephone, is most envious of, as far as her mother is

concerned, is, surprisingly, her mature age and wisdom. In the Sicilian setting, Susan’s

mother, a Demeter figure, is privileged with the freedom to go about as she pleases, since she

is beyond the procreative age, and thus she is no longer considered a threat to local mores.14 159

It is precisely her young age that keeps Susan-Persephone restrained in her limited role within

Sicilian society. The Sicilian culture rejects the notion of an independent woman and any

straying outdoors is inevitably equated with sexual promiscuity. In fact, Susan constantly

depicts herself as the naïve young American whose artistic interests put her at risk of being

seduced in the Sicilian wilderness by a shady local Pluto figure. She twice trusts the wrong

Pluto and manages to make a rather close escape (60, 130), proving, through her example, the

dangers that lurk for women in their journey to self-affirmation: they can be easily

sidetracked and trapped into the Shady Kingdom of Pluto; lured by men, they might forget

the goal of self-definition.15

Susan’s second, and final, stay in Sicily provides her with more opportunities to probe

deeper into the lives of Sicilian women and their status within their family. Susan’s last

sojourn in Sicily, indeed, is equated with her return to the pre-emancipation period, when the

heroine decides not to provoke the mores of her Sicilian friends and stays with a local family.

The author, clear about her feelings for the Sicilian woman’s confinement, condenses them in

the chapter’s title “In the Harem.”16 Not accidentally, the time spent with Patrizia and her

female relatives makes all the previous alarming depression symptoms disappear. The

heroine enjoys the warmth of the family, and, at first, cherishes this newly found sisterhood, exchanging secrets, putting on new clothes. Gradually, however, this soothing female community for the Persephone yearning for sisterly bonding proves to be suffocating. In the harem-like Amoroso home, Susan notices the family frowns when she bends the curfew; and, contrary to her role as anthropologist and objective researcher, she denounces cultural relativism and condemns the “make-believe” world that these women live in. To Susan’s mind, Sicilian women are socially conditioned, since they are raised in “pink surroundings,” on both a literal and metaphorical level. Placed in their own pinkish dollhouses, women like

Patrizia grow up instructed to be fairy tale princesses: ornamental, inert and naïve, totally 160

unprepared for the difficult, even chaotic, lives they may lead in the future. Secretly envious

of their peace of mind, based on their insouciance, Susan cannot help but wonder how these

women will react in times of crisis: “With mothers who rarely express their own feelings,

would these girls realize how restricted their lives were? (96). From Susan’s emancipated

woman’s point of view, the Sicilian women’s “Harem” an insult to women’s progress in the

field of feminism and is immediately rejected. Unavoidably, for Susan, the only role these

women can take up in the Madonna processions can be the one of grieving mothers, a place

Susan has already turned down, given her temperament and feminist background.

Nevertheless, to Susan’s surprise, the women of the Amoroso home do express their sexual desires and feelings of mockery; the object of their derision is their husbands, to whom they sing ribald songs.17 Susan does not seem to be able to detect the motive behind this

unconventional female behavior, though, since she wonders: “how could ladies fond of dolls

and blessed virgins be so bold? Was this what they really did inside? What was most

surprising was that within this display of their sexuality, I detected a tone of derision directed

at their men” (97). Following contemporary anthropological researchers, the Sicilian

women’s boldness that shatters all rules of female Sicilian propriety could be a remnant of

the primitive strength and resilience of the Goddess, whose sketch Susan saw in the Levanzo

cave. Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum, paraphrasing Linda Barwick, identifies the songs sung by

women on diverse occasions of their every day lives, as the carriers of vernacular wisdom

and subversive ideas (49).

Susan’s bewilderment with the Amoroso women is soon forgotten when, towards the end

of her quest, the young narrator finally encounters flesh and blood examples of female energy

and independence. For the author, the rare balance between the diverse female roles and the

need for independence are found in the figure of Clara who proves the continuity of female

defiance against the suffocating Sicilian surroundings and the ornamental role model imposed 161

by patriarchy. In Susan’s words: “She was like Persephone, the one in the myth, who

obviously got ‘out’” (86). Clara’s image, as a Ph.D. holder, a businesswoman, mother of two

and a lover, attracts Susan’s interest. Susan is impressed by Clara’s example that she admires

as she thinks Clara plays an important role in Sicilian women’s socialization and

emancipation, running a restaurant they can frequent. Clara’s dynamic participation in the

processions, carrying the ceto next to the other men, and her disregard of the Sicilian norm, are worthy of the author’s admiration. For all these reasons Clara is identified as Susan’s role model, of what all postmodern women are indirectly urged to become.

The author’s spiritual wanderings are concluded with the thrilling final discovery of the

bread-baking women of San Biago. There, with the paintings of the grain Goddess Demeter

that the young woman discovers in San Biago, Susan is pleased to note that the matriarchal

tradition indeed survives through the ages. As the author states: “through their recipes, the

‘bread ladies’ of San Biago were maintaining a link with their foremothers of the ancient

past. They offered an interesting counterpoint to Clara, who was creating a new recipe for the

women of the future” (173). In confirmation of Lloyd’s enthusiasm, Birnbaum attests that the

flora themes that the women of San Biago use, do point directly to the pre-Christian tree of

life, a definite symbol of the Goddess, later replaced by the Christian Madonna (146). A content and encouraged Susan, happy with the exceptional female role models she has discovered, can now actively participate in the processions; re-considering herself as a self- confident and strong-willed woman, she can finally go back to her Western World reality.

VII. A Price to Pay: The Commodification of Identity

Naturally, the excessively optimistic ending of the memoir, resembling Davidson’s, and

the epiphany the heroine appears to experience with her research into Sicilian folklore and

mythology, raise certain questions. The reader, reaching the final page of No Pictures in My 162

Grave, wonders whether such elation on the part of the narrator-author is actually justified. Is such transformation feasible eventually? Admittedly, akin to Catherine Temma Davidson’s

1998 Greek-American novel and her humorous rewriting of patriarchal mythology, Lloyd’s memoir follows the previous trend of feminist literature revisionist mythmaking. Inevitably, the overall popularity of myth and folklore, and their central role in the contemporary cultural production in diverse fields, which also imbues Lloyd’s memoir, necessitates an overview of the postmodern framework that lovingly embraces ethnic tradition.

An increasing sensitivity and keen interest in the issue of ethnicity in the States is

definitely among the prominent characteristics of the second half of the twentieth century.

From the early seventies and the notorious Godfather to the early 2000s and My Big Fat

Greek Wedding and Brides, films with ethnic themes, once rejected as “picturesque” and

“unrefined” even “tacky,” gradually evolved, and turned into blockbusters. Best selling and

award winning novels like The Woman Warrior, The House on Mango Street, Middlesex and

Chorus of Mushrooms, to name but a few, illuminated the ethnic experience, and earned a

conspicuous place in university curricula all over the globe. Highlighting the booming

production of ethnic writing in particular, Yiorgos Anagnostou examines the “ethnic trend”

likening it to an act of revenge, on account of the previous silence of ethnics who now intend

“to make meaning about themselves and the communities they claim to represent”

(“Metaethnography” 386-387). Aiming at the exploration of their ethnic background, a host

of descendants of immigrants now turn to artistic creation, and the consumption of products

more or less related to their long lost homeland. But where does this “ethnic trend” stem from

and why?

As an American citizen and a big-city dweller, Caperna Lloyd’s protagonist appears to be

suffering from “cultural aridity” a widespread “malady” in post-industrial society; diagnosing

this contemporary illness, Fischer enumerates its symptoms as “surface homogenization,” 163

“the erosion of public enactments of tradition,” “the loss of ritual and historical rootedness”

(197). To counterbalance this emotional postmodern void, individuals are encouraged,

through late capitalist practices to resort to nostalgia,18 the feeling of loss, for people, objects

and experiences that the consumers miss or think they miss. As Susan Stewart rightly puts it:

“Nostalgia, like any form of narrative, is always ideological: the past it seeks has never

existed except as narrative, and, hence, always absent, the past continually threatens to

reproduce itself as a felt lack” (23). However, the mystification of specific periods in their

lifetime and history has the ulterior motive of generating the mass consumption of any

product even remotely related to those “long gone happy days,” before the severing of the ties with the homeland. To the ethnic’s mind, the contact with such products is desirable in an instinctive attempt to simulate and approximate the experience of such bliss. Commenting on nostalgia, the Italian-American scholar Maria Laurino pinpoints the comforting role attributed to it since, “nostalgia has become a form of faith in a secular age, a palliative to replace the glare of the future with hazy yesterdays” (34).

In search of those better times in the collective and familial past, “when life was purer,

plainer and/or richer,” especially for women, the narrator of No Pictures in My Grave, dissatisfied with her life in the Western world finds recourse in her ethnic background. In

Susan’s nostalgic perception, her paternal grandmother, Carolina, is identified as the epitome of female self-assertion and resilience; just like Umbertina, for Marguerite and Tina, in

Barolini’s novel in Chapter 2, grandmother Carolina serves as Susan’s connecting link to a collective past, where traditional values controlled people’s lives and the family was a warm and cozy haven. Replicating the stereotypical consideration of Italianità, Susan opts to focus on easily recognized notions for the readers since they constitute well marketed traits within the book, film and food industry: Italian machismo, family warmth, motherly care and, predictably, cooking. 164

Susan turns to her father’s country of origin at a time when the commodification of

ethnicity that has occurred in the last quarter of the twentieth century has been marked by a

massive marketing of the home country experience. “The return to the Roots” besides

becoming a catchy slogan, has evolved into a colossal industry that includes publications, the

food, film and tourist industry. The twenty-first century ethnic consumer has access to a

whole range of products and services, with the aim of resolving his identity dilemmas and

conclude his identity quest. As long as his purchasing power remains vigorous, the

consumer’s religious or existential anxieties can be alleviated, and the possibilities available

to him are infinite (Bauman 180). While the young woman satisfies her secular needs in the

abundant late capitalist New World, her affluence entitles her to an Old World venture, as

Europe is stereotypically laden with history and tradition. The narrator’s financial state

becomes her passport to the Sicilian rituals, where she attempts to resolve her existential

dilemmas by indulging herself with what could be labeled as the “Sicilian folklore

experience.” If we think of Susan’s movement along Henri Lefebvre’s well-known study The

Production of Space, Lloyd’s protagonist leaves America as “the space of consumption” for

Sicily the holiday destination, “the consumption of space” (352), demanding “qualitative

space” for as long as she stays in Sicily (353). Reversing her ancestors’ voyage, Susan’s

recurrent journeys to Italy are contrasted to their flee for survival, her cosmopolitanism in response to their migration. According to Terry Eagleton, both of these population movements emanate from the same economic conditions that characterize the postindustrial era; both are accompanied by similar feelings of restlessness and anxiety (The Idea of Culture

63), haunting migrants as well as cosmopolitans. At the sight of the Black Madonna at

Tindari, displaying her psychoanalytic knowledge, the narrator recognizes the importance of this trip back to the roots, since it triggers the exploration of her unconscious. As the heroine admits: “Ultimately, with this Madonna and my journey to Sicily, I seemed to look into the 165

uncharted world of my own soul” (141). For the narrator, the ability to explore and search into one’s roots and consciousness are what is most valued (146), in the end. In this sense,

Lloyd’s readership can erroneously equate home-country consumption with self-fulfillment; unfortunately, within the late-capitalist framework, the journey into the depths of one’s soul runs the risk of falling prey to materialistic interests, of becoming another commodity fashionably wrapped, accessible only to few.

VIII. From “Invoked” to “Exceptional” Identity: Standing out in a Crowd

Furthermore, Susan’s adventures in Sicily give interesting insights into the conceptualization of her ethnic background and the delineation of her own place among women in the two worlds. As the plot develops, Susan’s relation to her ethnic background is strengthened, since it moves from an epidermic and stereotypical consideration to a realistic, broader and richer view. As in The Priest Fainted, the heroine’s conduct as regards the locals

is gradually altered, ranging from a neocolonial haughtiness to understanding, sympathy and

even admiration, especially for Sicilian women. However, more emphatically than in

Davidson’s narrator, Lloyd’s protagonist seems motivated by her constant need to increase her self-confidence, through the admiration and esteem of others; the young woman constantly underlines her uniqueness, as an outstanding individual whose dual background allows her to anthologize both cultures. Thus, the readers witness the narrator’s recourse to her American tourist façade, when the Sicilian surroundings restrict her liberties and obstruct her self-affirmation; on the other hand, the young woman “endorses” her Italianità when discussing spirituality and female resilience, the cherished legacy that can render her a wiser woman. Clearly, Lloyd’s Susan, as if in unison with Davidson’s narrator, seems to accept and rely on the outdated, previously discussed conception of an “identity mix” “concocted” on occasion and adopted, at will, depending on the situation. 166

Susan’s first contact with grandmother Carolina’s relatives is elucidatory, as regards the

preconceived notions the heroine has of the Old World people and their supposed envy of the

immigrants. Once the encounter with her indifferent, distant relatives in Terracina proves to be disappointing, Susan wonders if they are still angry at her grandmother for immigrating. In

Susan’s phrasing: “The relatives had been distant and indifferent; I wondered if they weren’t still angry at Carolina for leaving Italy. I felt rejected” (16). The lack of enthusiasm on the part of the Italian relatives is immediately interpreted as narrow-mindedness and probable jealousy for Carolina’s better lot in the States. Susan never considers the possibility of oblivion and estrangement on the part of her distant relatives; instead, feeling ignored, and obviously on the defensive, the narrator projects the advantages of an American identity, hinting at a high-handed attitude towards her grandmother’s relations.

Moreover, it is this New World identity, and the liberties it allows, that the narrator often

underscores as her master key, opening the doors in a community that closely monitors

women and their movements. In fact, “Americanness,” her marital status and the mere

presence of her husband, are the factors that are catalytic for the young woman’s participation

in men’s outings and discussions, often to the detriment of her feminist sympathies and

beliefs. During their first extended visit, Susan, escorted by her husband is accepted by the

Sicilian males as her husband’s chattel. She can even participate in their exclusively male

dinners and feels comfortable enough to consider them as her family (7). As the baffled reader follows, Lloyd’s narrator, who conveniently falls back on her foreign identity in this

case, enjoys male acceptance; forgetting standard feminist teachings, at no time does the

heroine protest against the special treatment she receives, and the overall Sicilian female lot

she now begins to explore. As the heroine admits: “I was still the Americana to them, a woman being toured about by males like Carlo in a society where, I was fast discovering, a woman’s proper place was at home” (7).19 Happy with her “conquered” difference, the 167

narrator savors her special status within the local community and attributes it to her

nationality: “though I knew that being the Americana was what kept me from being excluded,

I was nonetheless pleased” (11).

While she scours through Sicilian tradition and history, and spends time with local women,

the narrator gradually alters her consideration of her ethnic background. Once the dazzled author unearths examples of female dynamism, she immediately embraces her connection with Italian spirituality and female resilience. Thus, the discovery of Clara and her consideration as the contemporary role model, given her success in both professional and personal arenas, finally answer Susan’s haunting questions. The San Biago bread-baking

ladies are portrayed as the tangible proof of the connection with the Goddess, while they

establish the concatenation of resilient women Susan has so intently sought. Following

Susan’s wording: “a feeling of solidarity with these women and their joyful rituals engulfed

me as up and down the rows of pane they went. They reminded me of Clara and the way she

sauntered with aplomb around her restaurant” (168).

Nevertheless, both of the heroine’s choices of beacons can be deemed problematic. If Clara

becomes the feminist role model, as a highly educated, successful and well-off entrepreneur,

then there is always the risk of enveloping feminism in haughty and elitist connotations, away from everyday working women and their struggles. In this case, emancipation, education and free-agency can be perceived as the privileges, or even luxuries, of those women who can

“afford” them. Choosing Clara as the woman to emulate, Susan also displays her longing for

an “exceptional identity” one that would fulfill her obvious need for self-affirmation; as the memoir’s triumphant ending attests, the heroine’s wish for a leading role constantly surfaces.

On the other hand, the emphasis on the San Biago ritual assuages Susan’s agony rapidly; in

this ritual, strictly enacted by women, Lloyd suddenly finds the answers to her existential

questions, satisfied in the symbolic representation of women’s power; pleased to have 168

discovered this culinary bond exuding to her mind, female power and continuity with the

foremothers, the narrator inadvertently shares the same romanticized thrill with Davidson’s

unnamed heroine of female empowerment through cooking, in The Priest Fainted. Content with the San Biago women and their symbolism, or Clara’s exceptional case, Susan, like

Davidson’s heroine, can now happily combine, at will, Western individualism and Eastern feminist mystique. Unfortunately, the reality of oppression in the lives of Sicilian women remains untouched, despite their celebrated bonding.

Grateful for the resilient women she has met, and sensing a metamorphosis that occurs

only within her (171), Susan senses the end of her journey, after all the progress she has

made. In the end, the heroine’s participation in the ceto, as the only foreign porter, following

Clara’s example, seems to be a good point to conclude her wanderings in a spectacular,

almost cinematic, fashion. Joseph Campbell states that the ritualistic ceremonies with the

specific roles assigned for each participant specify each person’s niche in the system of the

community (101). In turn, Susan’s wish to carry the ceto, and become “one of the boys”

reveal that, in reality, her wish is to stand out and share the freedom men are privileged with.

Rose Romano, in her critique of No Pictures in My Grave, highlights the author’s love for masculine roles, stating that the author “reminds us throughout the book that men go outside and do while women stay inside and don’t and like an American, the author considers outside and doing better than inside and not” (164). Undoubtedly exaggerated, her newly found ability to assert herself is presented as a revolutionary act. The importance of her feat to be one of the porteri is all the more important given her foreignness. Susan’s participation in the misteri concludes with the heroine’s presentation as a newly hatched chrysalis, after her episodic journey of self-transformation.

169

IX. In Place of a Conclusion

Satisfied with her personal accomplishment, to be next to men and receive credit for her boldness, Susan is content with a symbolic victory as well as a symbolic transformation. Like

Davidson’s novel, with her triumphant ending, the heroine in Lloyd’s memoir can render an oversimplified as well as misguided image of a most important existential and social problem: a woman’s quest for self-definition. On a final note, both late twentieth century works, the Greek-American The Priest Fainted and the Italian-American No Pictures in My

Grave, through their glossy and highly optimistic approach, inevitably underline the verity of

Sarah Coakley’s claims; not only does Coakley set the record and the goals straight, as far as the theoretical approaches to feminism are concerned, but she also rekindles the fire of activism. In Coakley’s words: “The safer test for sexism overcome is not so much the purity or balance of an official doctrinal formulation but the practical outworkings of the relationship between the sexes in society and Church” (68, my emphasis added).

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Notes

1 Following Gardaphé, “The film has won: the Blue Ribbon at the 1990 American Film Festival, the Bronze

Apple at the 1990 National Educational Film and Video Festival, and a top honour at the 1991 UCLA Film

Festival of Folklore and Popular Culture” (Gardaphé, Dagoes Read 131).

2 In reality, Susan visits Sicily three times. However, in the memoir, she discusses thoroughly her two later stays in Sicily.

3 See Prison Notebooks by Antonio Gramsci.

4 The centrality of the figure of the grandmother, as a vector of the Old World culture, is attested by numerous literary works of ethnic literature. In Italian-Americana, however, one of the most wonderful grandmother figures is definitely the one found in Tina De Rosa’s Paper Fish (1980).

5 Rosemary Radford Ruether, in her study Sexism and God–Talk, Toward a Feminist Theology (1993), disagrees with the categorical rejection of all female Biblical images. As she claims: “The Biblical religions are seen as solely patriarchal, existing only to affirm male superiority while paganism is seen as providing a feminist religion based on an ancient matriarchy. This view seems to me historically inaccurate and ideologically distorted. It inappropriately denies the possibility of positive resources in the Biblical tradition and overlooks the social reality of Goddess cults that made these cults vehicles of male power, but in a somewhat different way than in Hebrew society. One does not uncover the problematics or the positive resources of either

Christian or the pagan religion through this simplified dualism” (39).

6 Mary Cappello, in her memoir Night Bloom, reminisces on her own Italian-American childhood, expressing similar feelings of disappointment for the “rigid” Madonna figure: “That the Blessed Mother can’t cry, I always thought, was precisely the problem, or my problem with her statue. Her hurt remains as remote and as incurable

(by me) as my mother’s. The celebration is tainted because the real-life female followers of this woman lack significant power within the church. From a very young age I was aware of the nun’s diminished worth in the eyes of the church and in the eyes of their ‘brethren,’ the priests” (147).

7 Sylvia Brinton Perera reminds us of the plethora of myths that exist in relation to the descent of the goddess:

“Among them are the stories of the Japanese Izanami, the Greek Persephone-Kore, the Roman Psyche, and the fairy tale heroines who go to Mother Holda, Baba Yaga, or the gingerbread house witch. The oldest known myth that states this motif was written on clay tablets in the third millennium B.C. (though it is probably much older, reaching into preliterate times). It is usually known as ‘The Descent of Inanna,’ the Sumerian queen of heaven and earth” (137). 171

8 Enlightening her readership on the Goddess religion, Rosemary Radford Ruether explains: “Goddess religion represents a somewhat different movement, which may or may not be a lesbian separatist. But in either case the dominant divine symbol is the Great Mother, linking womanhood and Nature. Authentic humanity and the good earth reign under the sign of the Mother. Eden can be restored only by subordinating the male to the female. The horned God or male consort of the Goddess is not her equal much less her ‘father’, but her son- lover. Men, if they are accepted, must recognize their subordinate place in the female-centred world” (230).

9 In fact, ethnic women’s depression and despair, as a result of their displacement, is a frequent theme of exploration in diverse ethnic groups. In the Italian-American canon, Louise De Salvo’s Vertigo (1996) and

Crazy in the Kitchen (2005), Adria Bernardi’s In the Gathering Woods (2000) should be mentioned. In

Bernardi, attempting to rationalize her mental and emotional state the depressed heroine confesses: “If there was a reason. If I had a husband who treated me badly. If I had kids who didn’t care if we had real financial worries.

If one of us had health problems. There’s no reason. There’s no reason. I am so fortunate. There is a forest in my back yard. What is wrong with me that I can’t pick myself up? They’ve all had it with me” (189).

10 In her 2001 film, The Baggage, Lloyd, motivated by the death of her sister Shawn, explores depression and panic attacks tracing their roots to her ancestors’ migration from Italy, in the beginning of the twentieth century.

11 In the first chapter, a similar dissatisfaction with religion was expressed by Cora when in her open-air prison she cannot find water i.e. sustenance in the chapel.

12 On a parallel to Chicano literature, Gloria Anzaldúa in her inspiring Borderlands/La Frontera: The New

Mestiza (1987) singles out the Virgin of Guadalupe (La Virgen de Guadalupe) as “the single most potent religious, political and cultural image of the Chicano/mexicano” (30). Amalgamating races, opposing worlds, and cultures, the Virgin turns into “the symbol of ethnic identity and of the tolerance for ambiguity” (30).

13 The feminist anthropologist, Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum, in her book Black Madonnas (1993), underlines the incorporation of the Great Goddess figures and the black Madonnas as symbols utilized in contemporary Italian feminism (7).

14 In Blood of My Blood (2000), Richard Gambino highlights the importance of sexual energy for the peasants of the Mezzogiorno region. It was for them an all powerful force that “had to be governed-not repressed-by la famiglia” (185).

15 At the same time, as was previously mentioned in Chapter 3, Davidson’s young heroine is misguided from her personal identity quest when she entraps herself in the relationship with the Greek-American athlete.

16 For women in the Harem, see Demetra Vaka-Brown’s Haremlik (2005). 172

17 As Richard Gambino affirms: “Second-generation conflict and third-generation confusion have muffled the lyric quality of the old contadino sexuality. Today’s Italian-Americans cannot sing as freely the frankly sexual and sensuous songs traditional of their ancestors. For example, one of the most famous Sicilian folk songs is openly and humorously sexual” (186).

18 See, among others, Arjun Appadurai and John Frow’s studies.

19 In his attempt to explain the seclusion that women experience in the Mezzogiorno, Richard Gambino considers it as a residue of the Medieval times and justifies its intensification in the region because it maintains l’ordine della famiglia (‘the family order’)” (207).

PART III

ETHNIC “HISTORY” AND STORYTELLING

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Chapter 5

Reared by Myth and Folklore: Stratis Haviaras’ When the Tree Sings (1979)

Η γλώσσα ως μέσο συγγραφής είναι κατάρα. Πρέπει να ξεφορτωθείς τις εικόνες, τις ευκολίες, τις νεκρές μεταφορές, χωρίς να χάσεις νόημα και ζωντάνια. Σ. Χαβιαράς

Literature is the people’s concern Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari

In the two previous sections, I approached ethnic space as a site, often both literal and metaphorical, where the heroines resort to break away from the chains that harness them in meager and conventional lives. By submerging themselves in cultural “pools,” whether Greek or Italian, the enlightened women in the novels appear to appreciate ethnic space for its potential to guide them towards more meaningful lives. Ultimately, they seem to reconfigure their gender and ethnic identity, and return to the arena of life, rejuvenated and empowered.

In the current section, Stratis Haviaras’ When The Tree Sings (1979) and Tony Ardizzone’s

In The Garden of Papa Santuzzu (1999) are examined through stories narrated by the novels’

protagonists; thus, storytelling becomes a powerful narrative mode employed in turbulent

both intra and extradiegetic times. My discussion of the two novels considers storytelling, since both authors use it to explore the subaltern’s battles for survival and freedom in time of oppression. In this sense, based on post-structuralist and subaltern theories, I come to the

conclusion that both Haviaras and Ardizzone manage to depict, with their respective stories,

ethnic space as a site of defiance and subversion and elevate this enchanting entanglement of

lore and memory to the level of an “alternative” ethnic history.

I. Constructing Homes and Making up Stories: Stratis Haviaras

Stratis Haviaras, a native of Nea Kios, Argolida, Greece, was born in 1935. Haviaras

published three volumes of poetry in Greek, Η Κυρία με την Πυξίδα (The Lady with a

Compass) (1963), Βερολίνο (Berlin) (1965), and Η Νύχτα του Ξυλοπόδαρου (The Night of 174

the Stiltwalker) (1967), while making a living as a bricklayer. In 1967, “fearful of the military

dictatorship in Athens” (McCabe), the Greek poet chose to emigrate to the U.S. There, while

working at the Harvard University library, he completed his education with classes at

Harvard and Goddard College. In 1972, Haviaras became the curator of the Poetry Room at

Harvard, and later the editor of the two journals “Arion’s Dolphin” and “The Harvard

Review.” With his life forever marked by the war atrocities he had witnessed as a young

child during the Second World War, as well as the Civil War in Greece, Haviaras, after two

more poetry collections, Νεκροφάνεια (Apparent Death) (1972) and Crossing the River

Twice (1976), tried his artistic talent in the world of fiction. Thus, focusing on war and

deprivation through the eyes of a child, Haviaras wrote and published the novels When the

Tree Sings (1979) 1 and The Heroic Age (1984); both originally written in English, the books received warm praise in the U.S. In Greece, the novelist is mostly known for The Heroic Age

(1984), a novel that came to balance Nick Gage’s biased approach to the Greek Civil War, as expressed in his semi-autobiographical novel Eleni (1984), which recounted the author’s

mother’s execution by the guerilla warriors. Haviaras’ trilogy was completed in 2007 with his

latest novel, Porfyro kai Mavro Nima (Purple and Black Thread), “an admittedly, enchanting and episodic novel” (Papageorgiou), also initially written in English, but published solely in

Greece in translation. Transforming his traumatic war experiences into art, the author unravels, through his three novels, his personal losses2 in the Second World War and the

Civil War. Justifying the author’s recourse to fiction and the abandonment of poetry’s tight embrace, the reviewer, Bruce McCabe discussing When The Tree Sings, based on the

author’s personal testimony, explains that the author “realized that his traumatic childhood

experiences in Greece could be of literary value to him. They had to be developed in prose,

not poetry” (McCabe). An inspiring and tireless teacher, the Greek-American author has been 175

introducing budding authors to the secrets of his art through creative writing workshops in the

U.S. (Harvard University) as well as Greece (National Book Centre) since the year 2000.

II When the Tree Sings: From Boyhood to Adolescence in Greece of the Forties

“To call this extraordinary work a novel is somewhat like calling the Sistine ceiling a painting.” With these fervent words Elaine Kendall introduced Stratis Haviaras’ novel When

The Tree Sings to the Los Angeles Times readers. In this powerful first novel, the Greek-

American author unravels the life of an orphaned boy during war and occupation, in a small

town of a poor and arid country; even though the place is obviously the author’s hometown in

Greece during the Second World War and the Civil War that followed both temporal and

spatial settings remain unspecified. In his semi-autobiographical novel, Haviaras adopts the persona of a five-year old boy, and, resorting to practices that recall the literary tropes of the likes of Gabriel Garcia Marques or William Faulkner3 he exploits the canvas of small town

life and its people. In his endeavor to sketch the hero’s growth, alongside his country’s

occupation, its heroic resistance, its liberation and the tragic folly of civil war, Haviaras

produces a collage of diverse tales about the troubled natives. Nourished by the stories he is

told, the imaginative boy narrator becomes the protagonist in equally intense real life stories

which he, in turn, narrates: the executions at the promontory, the devilish informants like

Lekas, the incessant companionship of hunger, the love that blooms even under the shadow

of death, in the case of Aris and Lemonia, as well as the boy’s first romantic awakening for

the sickly Angelica. As the well-known Greek-American author, Harry Mark Petrakis, in his

review of the novel explains, “The scenes are loosely linked, episodes like old folk tales or

parables, illuminating aspects of village life through descriptions, conversations, and the

observations of a young boy who remains unnamed” (Petrakis). These contemporary tales of

life and death are frequently populated with elements from the world of local heritage, 176

nymphs, invincible powers, incredible valor. At the novel’s coda, the narrator’s initiation to

adolescence coincides with the liberation of the country and the Allies’ blatant interventions

in its politics, under the pretense of well-meant patronage. When the aridity, both real and

political, of the country he loves, makes living in the homeland impossible, Haviaras’ hero,

now a teenager, has no other option but to flee the country, following the example of others,

who seek a better future by knocking on the “golden doors” of America.

III. “Stories that helped us to forget our hunger”

In her discussion of Stratis Haviaras’ artistry and works, the reviewer, Mikela Hartoulari,

acknowledges the author’s overall use of ‘“traditional materials’ […] in a postmodern way,

succeeding not only in carrying the reader away, but also moving him deeply” (Hartoulari).

In fact, the innocence and political impartiality of the child used as first person narrator

amidst all the war horror, as well as the author’s refusal to name and specify the temporal and

spatial setting, enable strict ethnic boundaries and political affiliations to be broken, revealing

the universality of Haviaras’ theme: living under the constant shadow of death, as the novel’s

title suggests. Storytelling, constantly imbued with elements of fantasy, and its dual role, as

both entertaining and pedagogical, prove to be crucial for the child narrator to overcome the ordeals of occupation and civil strife. For the young hero, the stories, he either listens to or participates in, constitute his sole distraction, education and preparation for adulthood, as well as his way of dealing with a reality of utter terror. Thus, in the diverse tales that make up

When the Tree Sings, the other characters, like the lonely puppeteer Phlox, the courageous

Grandmother, heroic Aunt Liberty and the narrator’s Grandfather, season the novel with colorful stories that borrow elements from the rich ethnic background and conclude with

poignant morals about ancestral culture and value, such as family honor, patriotism, integrity and sacrifice. Through these stories, the author orchestrates a “polyphonic cultural reality” 177

(Kalogeras, “Magic Realism” 353), where the roles of folklore and magic realism, as

alleviating, constantly subversive and uncontrollable artistic powers, unpack a world of pride

and inner strength. This parallel universe of defiance and subversion, resilience and

humanity, found in the small-town dwellers and their tales, comes to initiate the reader of

When The Tree Sings to their own “alternative hegemony”; according to Antonio Gramsci,

this is identified as the ideological and political conditions that the subalterns need to change,

as the first step towards radical change of the status quo. Magali Cornier Michael depicts the postmodern novel “as a radical means of illustrating history as a culturally constructed narrative rather than a series of raw unbiased facts or events” (41). Using Michael’s argument as a stepping stone, my aim in the pages that follow is to focus on this intricate and original interweaving of legend and historic reality, and the ways in which, in this dreamy and episodic novel that recounts the boy’s story of development, the novelist brings to the fore unknown, yet so strangely familiar, pages of love, life and death. In this sense, I argue that, by obliterating nationalities and characterizations, Haviaras addresses the tormented, the defeated and hopeless of this Earth, as he records their diachronic and omnipresent story, their “alternative” history.

IV. Framing the Novel’s Publication

Initially published in New York in 1979, When the Tree Sings, the author’s first attempt in

fiction writing, must be viewed within its temporal setting: witnessing the repercussions of

the human rights movement within the postmodern and poststructuralist theoretical

framework, Stratis Haviaras, from the book stacks of a university as lively as Harvard,

sensed, since the late sixties and early seventies, the fermentations that gradually produced

the subaltern voices. In those two decades from the margins of literary production, writers of

ethnic descent were to transform the American, and later the global, literary canon forever. 178

Simultaneously, the publication year of the novel came at a turning point on the Greek

sociopolitical stage: a few years after the reconstitution of democracy, in the summer of 1974,

following the junta’s collapse, Greeks witnessed the end of a long period of political

fanaticism and controversy between communists and conservatives. The dispute, having culminated with the civil war after the Allies’ intervention, lingered above the Greek political

scene and manifested itself in leftist marginalization, exile, imprisonment and often torture.

However, in the late seventies, when Haviaras’ novel was published in the States, a new era

of national reconciliation was dawning between the two opposing political wings in Greece;

thus, the new social and political conditions in the home country inspired, even supported,

Haviaras’ attempt to touch on an issue as delicate as the Mountain Fighters,4 their role in

Greek resistance and liberation, as well as the brotherly bloodshed that followed.

Moreover, in this period of healing from the ills of communist hatred, the war stories of

terror and torture at the hands of the common foreign enemy, prevalent in Haviaras’ first

novel, admittedly alluded to the pre-civil war times of union and solidarity: the past unity that

transcended political fanaticism, since it highlighted the heroic defiance of the patriotic

warriors, regardless of political affiliation, and the stoic martyrdom of the people.

Nonetheless, the prominent role attributed to the Greek informers in Haviaras’ novel, as well

as the graphic description of the tortures at the hands of the enemy, that stubbornly remains

anonymous throughout the novel, inevitably recalled recent ills: the period of junta

censorship and internal espionage, as well as the sufferings of dissenters at the hands of the

dictatorial policemen, also graphically depicted in Athas’s Cora, in Chapter 1. In this manner,

Haviaras’ Bildungsroman of a young boy reaching adolescence, comprised its own important political message for the young Greek state, in its first years of reconstitution; with the young protagonist in the role of the “informer” this time, the author wisely pointed to the worst 179

enemy for Greeks, regardless of the external threats that appear through the ages, their own

“bad self” lurking at every historical turn.

V. “Every occasion is the right occasion and every story is worth listening to”

A. Initiation into Ethnic Culture: the Prologue

Interestingly, avoiding limitation within strict ethnic boundaries and characterizations, the author constantly refrains from naming his homeland; instead, he depicts the historic forces that have forever forged the character of his people and their outlook on life: aridity, famine, war and torture. Faithful to his credo, “I’m more interested in the human condition universally, not a particular place or country” (qtd. in McCabe), Haviaras sketches the universal human experience of war, occupation and deprivation, a pain that transcends names and borders. Thus, in his first period in the Prologue, the author focuses on the infertility of

the native land, an element that has, indeed, provided inspiration for numerous ethnic

novels.5 In her study, Topographies of Hellenism: Mapping the Homeland, the Greek-

American scholar, Artemis Leontis, highlights a relation of interdependence between literary

works and spaces, where the former “assign cultural identity to a territory” while the latter

“dictate the form modern texts may take” (6). In particular, the Greek-American author’s

reference to the location, indirectly justifies the local people’s choice to emigrate, and,

therefore, foreshadows the novel’s denouement, while alluding to the author’s personal life

story, the power behind the novel itself: “This land, a narrow strip between rocks and seas

can afford only so many of us. It has no trees, no water-only an illusion of trees and water.

The old springs are choked, desecrated with corpses of animals and men. We dig new wells

for water, but do not find it” (9).

Susan Stanford Friedman ponders over the connection between space and culture,

indicating the symbolic use of the former for the latter, since “space often functions as trope 180

for cultural location-for identity and knowledge as locationally [sic] as well as historically

produced” (137). In this sense, the rocky home country and the steep historical slopes the

nation has had to ascend, heavily influence the inhabitants’ identity, arming them with

patience, as well as resilience. To spite the multitude of diverse difficulties that they are

confronted with in their historical course, as the phrase “corpses of animals and men”

insinuates, the protagonists of this allegorical tale become stubborn and diligent. Haviaras’ reference to these two characteristics, of hard work and persistence, two of the central components of the famous Franklinian triptych of success, endows his compatriots with

“traditionally” American attributes: this way, the author breaks the chains of cultural stereotypes, while reasserting his intention to view humanity in relation to its commonalities under tragic circumstances, such as the ones that forever stamped both his life and his childhood. This powerful driving force is confirmed by the author himself, when he eloquently states: “I’m interested in that part of the human condition that bares the maximum emotional condition. That’s how I lived and still live. I can’t write about domestic issues. My insides drive me. I’m driven by my meditations on the forces that affected the human condition in my life” (qtd. in McCabe).

As his novel testifies, among the few powerful parameters that shape and form indigenous

lives, the author opts for folk culture as a source of sustenance and hope, the key that opens

the door to the universe of magic realism and all its possibilities. Thus, in sharp contrast to

their poor material conditions, and once their attempts prove to be futile, similar to

Ardizzone’s Sicilian heroes and heroines in Chapter 6, the people turn to their rich traditions for strength and enlightenment. The persona of Old Tryfos, whose ancient methods of using fresh leaves to trace water underground are tirelessly employed, underlines the importance of ritual and customs. The inclusion of archaic methods of finding water may be seen as a comment on the primitive technological means used in Greece; its indirect parallel with the 181

Native American tradition,6 however, also foregrounds the ethnic writer’s respect for and interest in the “preindustrial, precapitalist past” (Kalogeras, “Producing History” 228) and its subversive, mystical powers. On a par with Athas’s consideration of the Greek chora,

Haviaras, from the opening lines of his novel, underlines his belief in the revolutionary powers of the local soul and culture, and, as a result, prepares the reader for adventures and tales imbued with the spirit of magical realism. Maggie Ann Bowers, shedding light on the popularity of magical realism, underscores its defiant role against totalitarianism, “by attacking the stability of the definitions upon which the systems rely” (4), while she reminds of its ample usage to show “the perspective of the politically or culturally disempowered”

(33). Haviaras’ emphasis on ethnic folklore in the Prologue, reveals his intention to resort to magical realism as a vehicle for a better understanding of this different story of survival he is about to narrate. In this sense, the Greek-American author appears to confirm Bowers’ argumentation, that “[writers] employ the mode not only because they wish to repeat folkloric mythologies from their cultural community, but because they wish to promote a greater depth of understanding of the present circumstances in which the texts were written” (94).

In the last lines of this introductory tale, Haviaras concludes with two prominent characteristics of local mentality, obstinacy and ethnic pride. He further underlines the never ending struggle of these people since, at the end of a series of troubles, they still find themselves thirsty after drinking water of low quality. The indigenous people, consumed with ethnic pride, refuse to accept the bitter truth and continue to praise their resources, always minimizing the flaws of their homeland and accentuating the positive points. As the locals tellingly argue, referring to the water: “We don’t drink from it, yet we keep saying, ‘It’s good for washing clothes; it’s great for washing your hair. It really cleans your hair well and makes it silky’” (10). In this manner, the patriotic fervor that Haviaras projects as enthusing the 182

locals, cannot but stress and foreshadow their traumatic separation from a land they would never want to be distanced from.

B. The Arts and their Subversive Power

In his influential study on postmodernism, Andreas Huyssen examines the crucial role of

the past in artistic activity since, as Huyssen rightly stresses, “[r]ather than lamenting or

ignoring it, this split [between experiencing an event and remembering it] should be

understood as a powerful stimulant for cultural and artistic creativity” (3). Turning his

traumatic memories of orphanhood and human degradation into art, the author presents his

first person narrator, a young boy, as a reflection of his younger self. Through a first person

narration, Haviaras starts his storytelling and places his young hero in a Beckettian setting of

impasse and ineffable despair, conferring a dreamy quality on his narration:

I was sitting on the front stairs of an abandoned house, waiting. Someone had

lit a small fire to keep me warm after the sun went down. The flames were

keeping the stray dogs at bay. I did not know how close to the fire I should be.

[…] When the dogs came closer, sniffing and growling, I saw myself rising

from the steps, then holding still in mid-air. (1)

The first glimpse of the young narrator,7 sitting on the steps of an abandoned house, waiting,8 inevitably recalls Hannah Arendt’s commentary on the tragic fate of human nature: “Man is basically alone with his ‘revolt’ and his ‘clairvoyance’ that is, with his reasoning. Which makes him ridiculous because the gift of reason was bestowed upon him in a world ‘where everything is given and nothing ever explained’” (118). Evidently, through the atmosphere of desertion and silent agony the lonesome child experiences, Haviaras initiates his reader into the central theme of his literary pursuits: exile. As William Doreski rightly argues, based on

Haviaras’ confessions at a reading, the Greek-American novelist is interested in unfolding 183

rootlessness as an esoteric experience, on a parallel with the imprints of diverse experiences;

in this sense, for Haviaras, deracination as “a sense of internal exile, rather than of being

geographically distant from his origins, generates a powerful tension between the speaker’s

sense of self and the immensity of learning, experience, social and political realities that lie

upon him like many strata of bedrock” (Doreski). Indeed, as the succession of ensuing tales reveal, the young narrator’s lonely course to adolescence is imprinted and shaped by his intense experiences within the social and political conditions of his time, a voyage towards self-definition, ultimately deployed through the means of storytelling.

In this process of self-definition, “the immensity of learning” that the author stresses in his

personal confession, is of vital importance as the appearance and the roles of the old musician

and the puppeteer prove. The two men, relieving the child from his fears and loneliness, to

shatter the silence of the scene, divert the boy from his misery and introduce him to an

unknown world, that of folklore. Following the child’s train of thought, the eccentric and

highly creative character, Phlox, along with the old guitarist, employ a new language, one

that thrives on ambiguity and non-sequiturs, initially baffling the young listener. The

puppeteer’s advice to the sleepy child sitting in front of the fire to “sleep and grow down,”

instead of “sleep to grow up,” as the Greek motto has it, refers to the boy’s sense of

pragmatism, as well as his feeling of rootedness, his sense of belongingness in his homeland

and native culture, as the preposition “down” suggests. Pointing to values such as thriftiness,

gratitude and appreciation, but also aspiration and ambition, the two men, through mere confabulation, teach the boy to appreciate natural resources: “Kiss the water before drinking it, or you’ll lose it” […] “When there’s no water to drink there’s nothing of anything, and

you’re alone in the world, and unfinished” […] “Ah, this little bird drinks only by looking

upward, catching the raindrops as they fall” (12). Through conundrums like “When you’re

blind, you can see things without looking at them” and “And only when you’re hard of 184

hearing can you really listen” (13), the boy is shown the ills of superficiality and the benefits

of caution and spirituality, the importance of reaching beyond the façade, into the core of

matters. This “new language” that the two artists seem to speak, thriving on ambiguity and

obscurity, echoes Antonio Gramsci’s teachings on the need to utilize a new language, if the

rebellion from oppression is to be achieved (Adamson 151); freed from the fetters of the past

and the insidious practices of hegemony, whose marks remain indelible and potent in the old

language, this new language, ironic, elusive, and eccentric, is among the first and most

important steps towards freedom; as Walter L. Adamson states, elaborating on Gramsci’s

thoughts, “in order to break away from common sense, it may be necessary to learn a new

language, just as it is surely necessary for a subaltern class challenging an incumbent

hegemony to attempt to build a new common sense by attacking the assumptions embedded

in existing language” (151). While the two artists employ language unconventionally, they

seem to apply Jacques Derrida’s poststructuralist dictates as regards the “dream of

emancipation [from language]”, through their “resistance to [language]” (Writing 28). In this sense their linguistic exchanges become their initial, but significant, act of rebellion.

Moreover, Haviaras’ metonymic usage of the two artists, consoling the miserable boy, is

there to refer to their corresponding arts, music and traditional puppet theater; in this way, the

author underlines the strengthening role of ethnic heritage, especially in times of crisis, and

inevitably recalls Davidson’s and Lloyd’s recourse to ethnic culture, in times of spiritual

aridity, in Chapters 3 and 4. Awaiting better conditions in a period of national despair, the

boy, like the children in Gaetanu’s tale in Ardizzone’s novel which will be examined

thoroughly in Chapter 6, listens carefully to the two men’s strange exchanges; he gradually

becomes accustomed to their humor and ways, and is initiated into the rudiments of political

thinking, a crucial first step towards regaining freedom and independence. As a result, the

recourse to local folklore for the boy’s consolation and familiarization with the politics of 185 defiance clearly alludes to Gramsci’s well-known writings in his Prison Notebooks. In his study on Gramsci, Walter L. Adamson explains the utmost importance that the Italian philosopher placed on the creation of an “alternative hegemony,” that is the development of

“political strategies which undermine the consent of the present ruling class,” before a

“‘complete’ revolution” (170-171) can be instigated.

Thus, in this spirit of reactionary energy, Haviaras, by rendering Phlox a more talkative character, places special emphasis on the political role of the shadow puppet theatre,

Karaghiozes, with the young boy’s creative involvement in it. Through his initiation into the art of Karaghiozes, the traditional shadow puppet theatre that flourished in neighborhoods following the Greek Revolution and until the first half of the twentieth century, mocking and cauterizing the contemporary Greek reality, the boy is methodically and ably instructed in the field of politics, as well as sublime ethnic ideals. In his study on Karaghiozis, Yiannis

Kiourtsakis elaborates on the invaluable contribution of the traditional shadow puppet theatre to fields such as socialization and education, entertainment, sophistication and delight; for

Kiourtsakis, however, this kind of theatre should most importantly be identified as a

“depository of group memory,” safeguarding the cultural identity of the Greek world against all foreign cultural invasion (74). Applying Susan Ritchie’s commentary on folklore to

Karaghiozes, as a genuine reflection of folkloric wisdom and practice, it should be noted that traditional puppet theatre constantly and studiously reflects contemporary social and artistic needs, since it is noted for its “ventriloquist strategies of representation, where folklore presumes to speak on the behalf of some voiceless group or individual” (366). Phlox’s teachings to his novice, the narrator, as regards his political education, echo Kiourtsakis, since they both recall the glorious Greek heroic past, and also instruct the boy in a life of political activism, to protect, and in this case, liberate the home country. Tellingly, according to Phlox’s teachings to the boy, in a country where political stability is deemed an unknown 186

word, fast changing political conditions seem to be a reason for the constant appearance of

heroes. As the young narrator states: “Sometimes Phlox moved the wrong characters across

the screen, or put the wrong words in their mouths, naming heroes after their defeated

enemies, and the tyrants seemed to live forever. But why? So we can have new heroes all the

time. Here, let’s have another one right now” (14). While the boy is guided to make his own puppets, he is simultaneously introduced to independent political thought and judgment, urged to be an active citizen and dynamic agent, through the symbolic use of the shadow puppet stage. Little does the boy realize, that by producing new scripts with puppets from his everyday life, he himself becomes in turn the generator of history and folklore, since he contributes to the collective memory pool, well condensed in the art of Karaghiozes, following Kiourtsakis’s previous note. Nevertheless, among the shadow puppet theatre’s characteristics, the author seems to cherish its piquing critical tongue that reveals all ills. That is why Phlox constantly teaches the boy realistically to view, and courageously confront, reality. Thus, when the boy’s flashback gives him a romanticized and idealistic image of the past (16), Phlox is there to remind him that “This land is arid […] It has no trees, no water- only an illusion of trees and water” (17). The final lines of this tale conclude, given the political awareness-generating powers of Karaghiozes, in keeping the audience alert and awake, and unifying it, through the revelation of common vicissitudes that even the enemy army takes measures against it and forbids it, since it is considered dangerous for the status quo.9

C. Blending Legend and Reality: Greek Heroes and Heroines

Apart from the rich cultural milieu where the young narrator of When the Tree Sings is

nourished, his flesh and blood educators, his kin and friends, are larger than life characters,

themselves saturated in the inspiring waters of magical realism. As tellers of tales that 187

initially distract and console, entertain and instruct the boy, Haviaras’ adults involved in the

raising of the young narrator, through their stories of defiance, bravery, patience, death and

life, ultimately confirm Konrand Kostlin and Scott Shrake’s statement that “‘Homo narratans’

[…] saves his own life by telling stories” (266)

i. The Female Presence: the Likes of Antigone

Paying homage to the female presence in his childhood, Stratis Haviaras gives precedence to women’s political activism and subversive behavior, by highlighting their contribution,

whether direct or indirect, to national liberation. In the grim temporal framework of occupation and civil war that necessitates immense powers of inner strength, Haviaras, like

Athas in Chapter 1, subverts the social norms and liberates his female protagonists from the conventional barriers of their sex, and very often their age; he, thus, transforms older women like the Grandmother and Aunt Liberty, into epitomes of patriotism and self-sacrifice, examples to emulate.

In proof of his affection for his grandmother, who raised him with her stories after the loss

of his parents (Hartoulari), Haviaras gives a special role to the narrator’s Grandmother; like

numerous other ethnic writers,10 this simultaneous symbolic tribute to the ancestral past and

culture, can be placed alongside Barolini, Davidson, Lloyd, and Ardizzone’s writings,

depicting the loving grandmother figure. Contrary to the frequent stereotypical Italian-

American and Greek-American depiction of the Nonna and Yiayia, respectively, the

narrator’s grandmother is not the passive persona restricted to domestic female duties,

conservative, inert, well-meaning, often senile. In When the Tree Sings, the narrator’s

grandmother is sketched as a far-sighted, intelligent and eloquent woman, proud in her

defiance of the occupation army, consumed with patriotic fervor but also shrewdness, a

character worthy of inclusion in the pantheon of contemporary heroes. The author cleverly 188 introduces the extravagant persona of the old woman, through a series of childish questions the young boy, curiously and innocently, poses:

“Grandma, why do you have to kneel in order to pray?”

“Small gods are more lovable.”

“Grandma, why do your knees bleed when you kneel?”

“There was a time when stone used to be softer.”

“Grandma, are you afraid of the Devil’s ways?”

“Like the saints, devils were canonized by the church.”

“Grandma, why don’t you stare at the night sky like me?”

“Dried-up wells no longer bear stars.” (18)

With lyricism and ambiguity suffusing her answers, the old woman’s persona seems to share the linguistic idiom previously encountered in the old musician and Phlox, the puppeteer.

Opaque and elusive, baffling the young narrator with her answers, the old woman, resorting to this “Gramscian” language of defiance against all oppression, intends to intrigue the young boy’s critical thinking in her refusal to adjust and simplify the world for him. Michel

Foucault has poetically defined the desired role of language in fiction, with words that can be employed here to describe Haviaras’ artistry. Following Foucault: “It must no longer be a power that tirelessly produces images and makes them shine but, rather, a power that undoes them, that lessens their overload, that infuses them with an inner transparency that illuminates them little by little until they burst and scatter in the lightness of the unimaginable (“The

Thought” 153).

Following the loss of her daughter, presumably in a labor camp as punishment for her pleas to save her own husband (33), the Grandmother becomes the guardian of the child; her methods, strict and precise, show her determination to raise the boy properly, while alluding to ancient Spartan ideals. In this strict and disciplined persona of a Greek instructor, Haviaras 189 condenses the core principles of Spartan pedagogy concerning the upbringing of noble boys: strategic thinking, intelligence, resilience, and most importantly, valor. In her attempt to accentuate the boy’s intellectual capacities, the Grandmother, with augmented critical capacities considering her assumed status as an ignorant peasant woman, endowed with

Athena’s strategic mind, comments on the enemy’s moves: the confiscation of all resources to weaken indigenous moral and prevent resistance, the traitors that multiply as people start organizing the resistance, the unequal amount of blood shed with reprisals (20-21). The character of Grandmother, resilient and proud, and her teachings are inevitably reminiscent of the Gramscian subaltern theory as Peter Jackson reads it stressing that, “However powerful the elite become, their dominance will always be challenged by those in subordinate positions. Resistance may not always be active and open. Often it will be latent and largely symbolic” (53). As a result, by projecting her different view on the Occupation and the

Enemy, Grandmother attempts to liberate the boy from the “mentality of the subordinated”

(Crehan 100) since, following Kate Crehan’s readings on Gramsci, “the basic character of subaltern culture derives from ‘their being historically on the defensive’; the question of power is at the heart of his theorization of culture” (100). Raising defiant citizens is the only way to struggle for independence.

Furthermore, in acknowledgement of the political energy inherent in the shadow puppet theatre, the wise Grandmother supports and encourages the child’s artistic quests, especially when the boy stages their every day reality using, as his shadow puppets, the other villagers, good or evil. Moreover, to allow for the boy’s independent thinking and unbridled creativity, the grandmother refuses partnership to the shadow puppet theatre, since as she says, she prefers being in the audience (20). Her refusal to be in the limelight as a puppeteer, but stand off-stage, exemplifies her overall philosophy of life and attitude, whereby she considers herself a thinker by choice, and not an acting agent in the fight against the enemy. 190

Nonetheless, her radical action to set her house on fire, so as to sidetrack the enemy soldiers and allow the members of the resistance to escape from their hideout, prove that, when necessary, she is not afraid to sacrifice what she has, for the cause.

Grandmother’s low profile as a member of the resistance is compared and contrasted to her friend’s Aunt Liberty’s activism, as well as Capetan Andromache’s legendary feats in the mountains. In this way, as he unravels, through his storytelling, the eccentric behaviors of old women and questions the women’s expected reactions in times of crisis, Haviaras seems to confirm Susan Ritchie’s argumentation on folklore, in which she claims the latter “is well practiced in using its own representational strategies to bring the concerns of such subaltern persons or local groups into larger discursive evidence” (366). Clearly, placing his heroines within the series of heroic women in Greek history, like the fighter of the Greek Revolution in 1821 Laskarina Bouboulina and the proud women of Souli, the author utilizes all the female emotional potential for the welfare of the home country. Reflecting the feats of heroic women in the Second World War, like the legendary lonely female figures carrying ammunition on the Epirus Mountains, Haviaras comes up with two characters, Liberty and

Andromache, who prove to be exemplary for their patriotic stance and sense of moral duty.

Aunt Liberty’s mourning the deaths of her son and husband, results in her bold decision to take revenge when one night she enters the security station, armed with a household knife. In this manner, the heroine’s wifely and motherly affection are precisely the factors that, combined with her patriotic devotion, instigate her moment of heroism and sacrifice. On the other hand, Capetan Andromache becomes the leader of the mountain fighters when her husband, Capetan Perseus, dies. In line with her brave and restrained nature, instead of crying for her beloved, she stresses that his death should be an example to follow (57). Condemning sensitivity and emotion as a display of weakness, she declares: “And don’t expect me to weep for anyone or to have use for anyone else’s tears, unless we lose this war” (57). To emphasize 191

the connection with the rich historical past, when the widow is chosen to become the new

leader, Haviaras has her pick the name Andromache, after the wise and modest Homeric

heroine.

II. Take it Like a Greek: The Male Presence

Indubitably, Greek women are depicted as dynamic lionesses, whose glorious examples are

edifying for the young narrator, as well as inspiring for the author’s readers, as agents of

political activism. Simultaneously, altering the trend of ethnic literature whereby women are

usually depicted as the cultural archivists and storytellers, the author places men in the less

active role of taletellers and educators, subverting conventional role models; though less

radical in their deeds, men are equally admirable through their comportment of moderation

and impeccable ethos, as well as their enlightening storytelling, a central factor for the

continuous process of identity formation, according to Susan Stanford Friedman (153).

Among the most important male figures shaping the boy’s consciousness is that of the father, whose constant gaping absence forever marks the boy’s young life. In order to lessen the pain of loss and uncertainty that surrounds his father’s existence, the young boy generates a story about his death, a tale that not only explains his father’s disappearance, but also provides him with a heroic status. The German Folklorist W.F.H Nicolaisen sees behind the telling of stories, human intellectual survival as well as the constant need to reconfigure ourselves, since, as Cristina Bacchilega further explains, “the stories we tell produce and find us in the past, and enable us to live through the present’s uncertainties by projecting us into the future” (24). In confirmation of Nicolaisen and Bacchilega’s theorizing, the young boy fantasizes his father’s last night in the cell, their morning walk to the promontory on the dawn of his execution, his father’s unyielding and fearless march to death. Not only is the father not intimidated, but, to the boy’s eyes, he is even encouraging his son not to be afraid of the soldiers, as a loving and protective father even now (26-27). After the shots, the desperate 192

young boy attempts to keep him alive, but the father accepts the inevitable (28); it is only in his last minutes that, through the boy’s imagination, he momentarily appears to be weak, by uttering with a Jesus-like last hour agony “Don’t leave me yet” (28). Through the father’s portrayal as the courageous martyr for his country’s welfare, the boy reveals the catalytic

influence of the ancient Greek heroic ideals which his background has imparted to him, obviously through storytelling, as will later be shown. What seems to alleviate his ache for his father’s disappearance from his life is his courageous end, not the illusory hope of the father’s narrow escape: that could perhaps have endangered his morals, his honesty and patriotic fervor.

Nonetheless, to stress the agony of uncertainty and pain tormenting children at war, as well

as its absurdity, the author chooses to be vague about the father’s fate; he is, therefore, quick

to undermine the credibility of the child’s tale concerning his father, by coming up with a

different version of the story, when the boy describes to his grandfather the executions he

witnessed at the promontory, while claiming to be looking for his father:

“I took my ax and went to the grove, pretending to chop wood, so I could see

the prisoners when they were brought to the quarry.”

“How many this time?” asked Uncle Iasson.

“Two. But only one of them took the last sacraments and the blindfold. After

the enemy left, I looked into the ditch, and the same prisoner who had taken

communion still twitched and quivered in the water. But he wasn’t my father.”

(29)

Bewildering the reader with the brutal reality, when the boy describes the realistic nightmare

he is having, Haviaras aptly dissolves the boundaries between reality and fiction, fear and

truth, and reveals the indelible marks of war on the childish soul. 193

To make up for the absent father figure, the Grandfather takes up the role of male educator

of the child; connecting history and tradition with his family’s lot, and, in particular, the

boy’s father, the grandfather once more stresses the roughness of the land and the constant

sacrifice of the people that have and will be forever interlinked. Following the grandfather’s

teachings: “Beneath the scarred face of that rock there is a composite face of all your ancestors. These mountains, rocks and ravines, pines and olive trees, and scruffy shrubs will never change, disengage themselves, and repudiate their history. Trees with the rope marks of the hanged never grow fast enough to heal completely and a marked tree will be marked again” (28). In the grandfather’s poetic statements, the geography of this land is, as in the novel’s Prologue, again interconnected with the history of its people and the moral duty of every inhabitant that links him with his ancestors. The placing of the young boy in a circle of

brave figures accentuates his sense of identity, and possibly lessens his fear, by stressing the

inevitability of sacrifice, through its historical repetition. What is more, to the boy’s desperate

discovery “But he wasn’t my father” the grandfather retorts “Make no mistake. He too was

ours” (29). While the Grandfather renders the executed immortal, as an embodiment of virtue

and honor ad infinitum, he additionally foregrounds the ancestral lineage as the extended

family for the orphan boy, to highlight the comforting and enlightening embrace of tradition

and history. Thomas Hylland Eriksen convincingly underlines the feeling of security and

stability ethnicity provides, since: “[e]thnic identities, which embody a perceived continuity

with the past, may in this way function in a psychologically reassuring way for the individual

in times of upheaval” (68). Obviously, as the boy’s initiation into the realm of politics in the

novel continues to be deployed, thus providing food for thought as regards political

education, it verifies Maureen Whitebrook’s propositions concerning the intimate link

between political education and fiction, since “[n]arrative form has a distinctive characteristic 194

of potential benefit to political theory, that of its capacity for enabling reflection and

speculation” (43).

Finally, besides the stories that aim at the boy’s political education and relief from the trauma of loss, Haviaras includes narratives that prepare the young man for adolescence. This time it is the Grandfather’s turn to become the performer of a dying art. Therefore, the author

seems to be commenting on Walter Benjamin’s perceptive parallel between the gradual

fading of storytelling and the waning of wisdom.11 The old man’s stories are deeply

appreciated by the boy, since they are presumed to have the power to numb both physical as

well as emotional pains. As the boy brilliantly frames the tales: “We were on our way to the

hills to search for food and for news about my parents. Whenever we stopped to get rid of a

thorn and to rest, Uncle and I listened to Grandfather relate old stories that helped us to forget

our hunger” (59). Marie Laure Ryan, based on Paul Ricoeur and Peter Brooks’ writings on

the narrative, discusses the enlightening role of narrative in a person’s life, since it “enables

humans to deal with time, destiny, and mortality, to create and project identities; and to

situate themselves as embodied individuals in a world populated by similarly embodied

subjects” (3). Thus, the grandfather’s favorite story, at the time “he was young and

handsome,” in the novel entitled “Of Red Haired Women,” appears to be an attempt to deal

with numerous childish questions simultaneously, a “general guide” for life. It therefore

touches ideas as disparate as good manners and politeness, male sexuality, the passing of

time, the father’s obscure past, and the workman’s rights.

Starting with the way he dazzled a bandit with his good manners, the grandfather unfolds

his love story with an ethereal red haired female creature that he lost forever, to conclude

with the latter’s granddaughter’s love affair with the narrator’s father. In the grandfather’s

complicated tale, with constantly changing theme and protagonists, time could be no

exception. Trespassing on the boundaries between fantasy and reality, back in present time, 195

the author interrupts the narrator’s father’s story with an experience that approximates

hallucination: the three men, young boy, uncle and grandfather, while taking a walk in the

wilderness, meet a red-haired woman begging for food, whose presence challenges the

borders between reality and imagination for the reader. When the grandfather continues

narrating, the latter part of the story provides the young boy with further information on his

absent father’s occupation as a quarry worker and his love affair with his “special” lady.

Acknowledging this function of the tale, both Uncle and Grandfather attempt to draw the

boy’s attention to the socialist moral also included in the story, like Gaetanu’s tale in Chapter

6, and focus on the working conditions and the quarry workers’ struggles: “The quarry

workers, buried in the muck knee-high, remain unpaid, rusting but hardening like the rock

itself” (64). In this way, the tale tellers are reminiscent of the scholar, Gary Okihiro, who,

among others, comments on the potential of oral tradition for social alertness and change

(210), a point further explored in the Chapter that follows. Retorting to human exploitation

and degradation with the boy’s innocence and childish curiosity, Haviaras’ narrator is still too

young for such teachings; instead, intrigued, he wants to know how the couple passed their

night together, only to be reminded not to forget about the workers (64).

The obvious lack of coherence in the story, with the constant trespassing of temporal limits

and the shift in the protagonists, underlines the spontaneous character of storytelling, where

the old man’s reminiscences incorporate elements from the folkloric tradition, like bandits

and red-haired nymphs, blind old ladies and idyllic settings in the forests, as well as real life

problems, like work and pay. Underlining the passing of time as opposed to eternal ideals, the

plausible and the implausible, the real and the fantastic are fused in a multifaceted tale, with

diverse morals aimed at instilling positive values and ideals in the young listener. In this

sense, the grandfather’s incoherent tale seems to follow the “role” that Victoria Aarons rightly reminds us, as “storytelling serves as a means of establishing an ethical code, of 196

providing guidelines for living in a community, and of balancing personal morality with

communal necessity” (60).

D. Memory, Storytelling and History: the Personal and the Collective

All in all, in When the Tree Sings, Stratis Haviaras reveals a fragile and enchanting small

town universe, whose resilient inhabitants armed with patriotism and love for life, defy the occupying enemy, the adverse living conditions and fight for their lives. Endowed with a rich cultural background that sustains them and develops their critical thinking, boys like the narrator are initiated into political thinking. In Haviaras’ unconventional universe orphaned boys are nurtured by ingenious grandmothers, in the company of old ladies who, when necessary, rise to the level of heroism. Accompanied by fairy tale creatures, young boys are taught by their grandfathers to deal with their pain and remember their ancestors. Inevitably, the story of the lonesome boy in the difficult years of war and famine proves to be, like all minor literatures, political following Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s definition in Kafka:

Toward a Minor Literature since, “its cramped space forces each individual intrigue to

connect immediately to politics. The individual concern thus becomes all the more necessary,

indispensable, magnified, because a whole other story is vibrating within it” (17). Unearthing

his painful memories,12 Stratis Haviaras transubstantiates his own experiences into art and

manages to turn his personal story into a different “idiosyncratic” history, one that records

and reveals the often unnoticed brutal reality of pain and trauma of children at war. In this

sense, this Greek-American story comes to confirm Deleuze and Guattari again who, when

discussing minor literature, aptly note that, “literature finds itself positively charged with the

role and function of collective and even revolutionary enunciation” (17). Haviaras’ universe 197

of small town people who struggle to survive and sustain their identity through storytelling

and acts of defiance, symbolic or literal, reminds of what bell hooks’ has defined for African-

Americans as the space of marginality, a space of resistance, “a community of resistance.” In

bell hooks’ words: “this marginality […] [is] a central location for the production of a

counter-hegemonic discourse that is not just found in words but in habits of being and the

way one lives” (149). The pain and danger the young narrator experiences in such a space of

explosive energy is inevitable, since as hooks notes: “for me this space of radical openness is

a margin- a profound edge. Locating oneself there is difficult yet necessary. It is not a ‘safe’

place. One is always at risk. One needs a community of resistance” (149).

Furthermore, discussing the trends in the postmodern novel, Huyssen enthusiastically

underscores the current importance of memory, as opposed to the previous reign of history

since, to him it, “represents a welcome critique of compromised teleological notions of

history rather than simply anti-historical, relativistic, or subjective” (6). Thus, in the end,

Haviaras’ “alternative” history, delving into previously neglected aspects of humanity, is

laden with optimistic messages of survival and the victory of love and life, even away from

the homeland; in this respect, Haviaras seems to be in agreement with Huyssen’s

argumentation, when the latter considers this different approach to history as: “the

exploration of the no-places, the exclusions, the blind spots on the maps of the past which is

often invested with utopian energies very much oriented toward the future” (88). Such an

unconventional marriage between writing and history, deemed as true and original, is also

enthusiastically supported by Derrida as “freedom, break with the domain of empirical

history, a break whose aim is reconciliation with the hidden essence of the empirical, with

pure historicity” (Writing 13). Moreover, in his discussion of the Greek-American author’s

novel, Yiorgos Kalogeras comments on Haviaras’ embedded tales and his clear adoration for his ethnic cultural background characterizing the Greek-American author’s mosaic tale- 198 telling as “countermyth or counterhistory”. For Kalogeras this alternative history is the ethnic response to the norms and conventions of the pre-ethnic revival canonical works, where “the oral, the circumstantial, and the folkloric determine this history, which furthermore is recoverable only in fragments” (229).

In closing, the denouement of Haviaras’ novel concludes with the hero’s decision to emigrate, ending a story of pain and, inevitably, opening another one, that of immigration, xeniteia. Thus, the novel’s ending coincides with the unraveling of Ardizzone’s frame tale, in the chapter which ensues: a series of tales imbued with the same spirit of lore, love, human struggle and magic.

199

Notes

1 Nominated as the best novel of the year by the American Book Awards (McCabe).

2 See McCabe.

3 These are among Haviaras’ favorite authors by his own admission (Vivliodromio).

4For one of the few artistic voices discussing, through film, the civil war, see Pantelis Voulgaris’s Psichi Vathia

(2009).

5 See Chapter 5 on Catherine Temma Davidson’s The Priest Fainted relevant paragraph.

6 See Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony (1977).

7 The author’s use of a young boy as his narrator inevitably brings to mind Roland Barthes’ thoughts on his childhood, in his autobiography: “From the past, it is my childhood which fascinates me most; these images alone, upon inspection, fail to make me regret the time which has vanished. For it is not the irreversible I discover in my childhood, it is the irreducible: everything which is still in me, by fits and starts; in the child I read quite openly the dark underside of myself-boredom, vulnerability, disposition to despairs (in the plural fortunately), inward excitement, cut off (unfortunately) from all expression” (Roland Barthes 13).

8 For the curse and blessing of human loneliness, see also Hannah Arendt’s “French Existentialism” (115-120) in Hannah Arendt: Reflections on literature and Culture (2007).

9 For the role of Karaghiozes in the Second World War, see Kiourtsakis 271.

10 Considering the overall role of this resort to ancestors in the process of American identity formation, as well as the dangers inherent in such an action, Werner Sollors brilliantly contends: “Generational rhetoric confers, as we saw earlier a sense of kinship and community upon the descendant of heterogeneous ancestors. The metaphoric interpretation of all Americans as members of numbered generations subjugates powerful and potentially divisive myths of descent to the democratic rhetoric of consent. Generational language has served founding fathers and revolutionaries as a commonly building device, whereas it helps contemporary Americans wrap a cloak of ancestral and communal legitimacy around their individuality. At the same time it perpetuates one cultural moment, freezes the historical process into ahistorical conceptions and into metaphors of timeless identity as sameness” (Beyond Ethnicity 234).

11 In particular, Walter Benjamin states: “The art of storytelling is reaching its end because the epic side of truth, wisdom, is dying out. This, however, is a process that has been going on for a long time. And nothing would be more fatuous than to want to see it in merely ‘a symptom of decay,’ let alone a ‘modern’ symptom. It is, rather, 200

only a concomitant symptom of the secular productive forces of history, a concomitant that has quite gradually removed narrative from the realm of living speech and at the same time is making it possible to see a new beauty in what is vanishing” (“The Storyteller” 87).

12 “Living in a state of psychic unrest, in a Borderland, is what makes poets write and artists create. It is like a cactus needle embedded in the flesh. It worries itself deeper and deeper, and I keep aggravating it by poking at it. When it begins to fester I have to do something to put an end to the aggravation and to figure out why I have it. I get down into the place where it’s rooted in my skin and pluck away at it, playing it like a musical instrument- the fingers pressing, making the pain worse before it can get better. Then out it comes. No more discomfort, no more ambivalence. Until another needle pierces the skin. That’s what writing is for me, an endless cycle of making it worse, making it better, but always making meaning out of the experience whatever it may be” (Anzaldúa 73). 201

Chapter 6

Ethnic Fables of Social Justice: Tony Ardizzone’s In the Garden of Papa Santuzzu

You were always Irish, god In a church where I confessed To being Italian Elaine Romaine

Literature must become a cog and a screw of one single great social democratic machine Lenin

I. A Sicilian-American Author: Tony Ardizzone

A native of Chicago, of Sicilian ancestry, Tony Ardizzone indicated his idealistic nature

when, according to his personal webpage, from a young age he aspired to enter priesthood.

As his experience was enriched by his Catholic schooling, the teenager Ardizzone changed

his mind. Thus, his former Catholic idealism was transformed into social activism, with

political involvement at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which led to his

subsequent arrest, an event that delayed his receiving his degree for two years. Finding an

alternative outlet for his artistic talent, Ardizzone later completed an MFA in Creative

Writing in Ohio, and since then he has been teaching in Creative Writing Programs, in

diverse settings. In his prolific journey through the world of fiction, he has published three

novels to date: In The Name of the Father (1978), The Heart of the Order (1986) 1, and “his

most important novel to date,” according to Mary Jo Bona (By the Breath 31), In the Garden

of Papa Santuzzu (1999); Ardizzone’s upcoming title The Whale Chaser, was released in late

2010. Also an enthusiastic proponent of the short story, Ardizzone has published three collections: The Evening News: Stories (1986), Larabi’s Ox: Stories of Morocco (1992), and

Taking it Home: Stories from the Neighborhood (1996), in addition to editing four

anthologies of short stories. For its originality and creativity, Ardizzone’s work, in particular

his short stories, have received numerous awards and distinctions, and have been repeatedly

anthologized. 2

202

II. Magic, Sicily and Lamerica

In the colorful universe of In the Garden of Papa Santuzzu (1999), the Girgenti family history is presented through a frame narrative, a series of tales of the immigration story recounted by the protagonists to their New World children and grandchildren, producing “a eulogy for a lost culture,” as Sybil Steinberg, one of the author’s reviewers, observed.

Published in 1999, Ardizzone’s postmodern novel3 demonstrates the still prevailing influence

of classic literary works, like Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron4 or Geoffrey Chaucer’s

Canterbury Tales,5 to name but a few, in terms of structure. Reenacting the Sicilian custom of

storytelling around the winter fire, Ardizzone creates a pastiche of diverse, bittersweet,

immigrant experiences, each addition of a new log to the fire coinciding with the beginning

of a new tale; following medieval literary norms, Ardizzone has endowed the novel with

twelve first-person narrations, with participants crossing the dividing lines between stories.

Reflecting postmodern artistic conventions, however, the author focuses on the marginalized,

the oppressed, and the previously voiceless. Through his embedded stories, “stories [that] dig

deeper than pure folktales by delving into the conflicts that arise between self and family, old

country and new” (Gardaphé, Dagoes 68), the Sicilian-American author unravels the

unknown intricacies of the Sicilian immigration story. Thus, the reader becomes acquainted

with the first generation struggles for social equality, through Gaetanu and Rosa’s stories, the

bitter exploitation in Sicily and the rebels’ reactions, through Luigi and Cicina, the relocation

and survival of men like Salvatore and Gerlando, the persistence of folklore in Anna’s case.

Inevitably, these consecutive narrations by the novel’s heroes and heroines, “magical

homeland stories as preludes to immigrant realism” (Augenbraum)6 become links in a chain

of tough survival and painful memories, reflecting the different perspectives and life-courses

of the two generations of Sicilian men and women relocated in the urban setting of the New

World. 203

III. Italianità and Social Justice

In this final chapter, I intend to examine the two first chapters of Ardizzone’s 1999 novel,

in which the author delineates the dynamic, political involvement of two of his narrators: the

socialist Gaetanu Girgenti, who recalls the immigrant strikes and protests in the mill companies of early twentieth century America, and the socialist and feminist preoccupations of his wife, Teresa Pantaluna. Forced to abandon motherland and family due to the tragic living conditions, Gaetanu is the first-born son of the Girgenti family, burdened with the arduous task of relocating his entire family to the States. Implicating his hero in the turbulent

years of social activism at the beginning of the century, the Sicilian-American author also

succeeds in imbuing his tales with a militant flavor. Teresa’s tale, on the other hand, is

enlightening as far as the female immigration experience is concerned, a view she projects

initially under the guise of a man, and later through her impregnation as a woman. Through

Teresa’s working life, Ardizzone relishes the opportunity to flaunt the strict boundaries

imposed on all areas of activity for the Sicilian woman in the homeland, as well as in the new

country, at the beginning of the twentieth century. Through the couple’s personal narrations,

the Sicilian-American author sheds light on important pages in the Sicilian story in both

Worlds, thus adding a new and interesting page to the history of immigration to the U.S.

My reading of these two chapters is rooted in the author’s intriguing inclusion of rich and

colorful Sicilian folkloric elements in the novel, which in my opinion has been rightly

characterised as “a loving tribute to Sicilian American culture.”7 The author’s fervent

adoration of local colour, and, in particular, Sicilian oral tradition, language and imagery,

confirms Mary Jo Bona’s comment on Ardizzone that “no author has more fully celebrated

the folkloric community in the world of Italian Americans” (By The Breath 31). Thus,

Gaetanu resorts to Sicilian style storytelling when, as a participant in the Lawrence mill

strikes, he has to escort the strikers’ children to the trains that will distance them from the site 204 of the trouble. Interestingly, this tale for the children reflects the narrator’s socialist credos, in the same way as his life story that follows, revealing his tragic circumstances in Sicily, as well as his ordeals in the New World factories. On the other hand, Teresa filters her personal life story through local oral tradition, introducing a lyrical and dreamy quality to her narrative, one which can also be compared to Haviaras’ magic realism. My intention in the following pages is to examine Ardizzone’s recourse to the storytelling tradition and shed light on its widespread use in these first two chapters. My hypothesis presents the employment of storytelling by the author, as a means of bringing to the fore ethnic space as a sphere of subversive potential. In this way, the narrative appears to be interconnected with political activism, generated by it and, in turn, generating it. Thus, Gaetanu and Teresa’s narratives are closely examined and discussed in terms of the ways in which they reflect their assumed socio-historical framework, the early twenties, and the ways intradiegetic storytellers nurture reactionary activity in their implied audience. Simultaneously, using postcolonial theory, I aim to examine Ardizzone’s storytelling and overall recourse to folklore; in this respect, my readings are based on the teachings of Antonio Gramsci on the subversive quality inherent in folklore, theoretical points further elaborated on in postcolonial theories. To my mind, by portraying the crucial role of folklore in the ethnic persona’s troubled life in the past,

Ardizzone succeeds in highlighting the explosive potential of the ethnic space, and, remains loyal to his socialist affiliations, providing inspiration for new battles in the equally turbulent times of the present and future.

IV. Continuing the Tradition

Before embarking on a close reading, a brief overview of the American literary tradition, that has clearly influenced the author, molding his art, is necessary. To my mind, Ardizzone’s novel, and in particular the first two chapters should be examined against their background, 205 the influence of important Italian-American novels, such as Pietro Di Donato’s Christ in

Concrete (1939), Mari Tomasi’s Like Lesser Gods (1949), John Fante’s Wait Until Spring

Bandini (1938) and Jerre Mangione’s Mount Allegro (1943), among others. Categorizing in a specific genre works of diverse shadings of proletarian affiliation, interest and background, on the part of the authors, is immensely difficult. However, in this case I choose to follow

Michael Denning’s classification, according to which the aforementioned works belong to what the historian characterizes as “ghetto pastorals”: “tales of growing up in Little Italy, the

Lower East Side, Bronzeville, and Chinatown, written by plebeian men and women of these ethnic-working class neighborhoods” (230). Explicitly distinguishing the ghetto pastoral from proletarian literature, on account of the formers’ lack of “explicit ‘political’ content,”8 a characteristic of the latter, its “ethnic or racial accents,” and “the changing nature of the

‘working-class author’” (235), Denning places the genre between naturalism and the pastoral.

In this category, he rightly places important ethnic works depicting life in the tenement, novels by Anzia Yezierska, Michael Gold, Tillie Olsen, Henry Roth, and also works exploring the harshness of the ghetto, such as those by Richard Wright and Gwendolyn

Brooks, to name but a few.

Balancing prior influences of proletarian literature, tormenting working-class problems and colorful ethnic voices, Italian-American ghetto pastorals express the struggle for survival, the traumatic displacement between two worlds, the bitterness of inequality and discrimination.

Among them, there are two that I feel epitomize the genre and echo in Ardizzone’s work:

Christ in Concrete9 and Like Lesser Gods.

Di Donato’s 1939 novel Christ in Concrete, Book-of-the-Month Club selection in its year of publication, has been characterized as “the most searing and thorough representation of the emarginated human condition of being an immigrant” by the matriarch of Italian-American literature, Helen Barolini (“Pietro Di Donato” 1983). Di Donato’s tragic hero, Geremio the 206

builder, dies on Good Friday, crushed under tons of concrete, a sacrifice to the unquenchable

capitalistic gods of quick profit. It is now Geremio’s son’s turn to struggle for the family’s

survival and, like David, fight against the capitalist Goliath. The poetic and unconventional

hybrid writing in Di Donato’s work forcefully captures the grandeur of life and death in the

tenement. As discussed in the analysis that follows, Gaetanu’s feverish descriptions of the

frantic pace of work in the factories and the tragic work accident he describes allude to Di

Donato’s grim universe.

On the other hand, Mari Tomasi carefully sketches the seemingly idyllic life of rural

Vermont: the fragile Italian community of Granitetown in Like Lesser Gods adjusts itself to

the small American town, and gradually puts down roots. While Tomasi places emphasis on

the journey to self-identification of the second generation immigrants, death is constantly

hovering over the diligent stonecutters, who work under atrocious conditions. A similar

ominous air is also notable in Teresa’s accounts of her life in America, beside Gaetanu,

where the seemingly peaceful descriptions are imbued with the terror of social turbulence,

famine and the consequences of the First World War.

Admittedly, as a whole, Ardizzone’s novel provides a broader view of the Sicilian

immigration story, collective experience and the harsh road towards assimilation for two

generations of immigrants. However, his two first chapters on Gaetanu and Teresa are clearly

reminiscent of prominent ethnic ghetto pastorals, since, similar to their forerunners, the

couple’s accounts successfully combine proletarian agonies with the painful relocation of the

“greenhorn.”

V. Rosa: Setting the Scene

From the first line, the author immediately dispels all romanticized fantasies about his

storytelling, setting the scene in his opening paragraph. The first reference he makes concerns 207 the most prevalent aspect of Sicily, its people and the strong personalities they develop fighting against the natural elements:

Once there was a poor but honest man, un’ omu d’onuri, a man of honor, who

worked the whole day-day after day-in the unrelenting heat of the blazing sun,

scratching the pitiful dirt at his feet with a wooden hoe, coaxing the useless

dust first this way and then that way, like a mother combing her feverish

child’s thin, dulled hair, urging the earth to release something he and his

children and wife might eat, so that they might live to work beneath the

scorching sun another day, and not starve. (1)

In contrast to Haviaras and Davidson’s poetic descriptions of the rocky and arid Greek land,

Ardizzone appears to be more realistic and direct in his approach, immediately focusing on human indigence. Thus, contrary to its fairytale beginning with the word “once,” this narrative constitutes a story of pain and suffering, with hunger as the main protagonist.

According to Mary Jo Bona’s convincing argumentation, the theme of social justice is notable in all twelve narrations of Ardizzone’s novel, and is fuelled by the Grigenti family struggle for survival, which is, in turn, garnished with family love and abhorrence for both state and church (By the Breath 32). Thus, the first narrator, Rosa Dolci, Papa Santuzzu’s daughter in-law, launches a synopsis of the Grigenti family story of immigration for her implied audience, contemporary children; she immediately and graphically communicates the overwhelming feeling of suffocation and hunger that torment the poor Sicilians. Following

Ardizzone’s lyrical wording: “Imagine the slow and suffocating stranglehold of true starvation like a snake slowly coiling itself around your belly and ribs, squeezing all breath and vitality from you. Each day you grow more weak. In the shadow of your hut you squat and chew straw” (1). 208

Moreover, Rosa Dolci’s role in Ardizzone’s novel is not limited itself to the initial chapter

and first impressions: the author resorts to Rosa’s voice for the beginning and end of his

frame tale narrative, to conclude the circle. Rosa also “intervenes” and comments twice more,

with two short passages entitled Caesura. Ardizzone’s recourse to the loving figure of the

grandmother, on a par with Davidson, Lloyd and Barolini, underwrites Rosa as the ideal

matriarchal figure, the beacon of female wisdom, tradition and continuity, strengthening the

ethnic bond between the generations and keeping memory alive; thus, Rosa reminds her

young audience of two crucial factors in Sicilian culture: folklore and family. Referring to the

three forest witches that her heroes have to outwit before leaving for the States, Rosa

underlines the persistence of folklore, since witches never left the Sicilian family: “They

came along with us, see? We brought many of the old things–the old ways–along with us”

(21). Mary Jo Bona ably foregrounds the vital role of “oral storytelling traditions, proverbs, and aphorisms” in the lives of immigrant Italians and their role in safeguarding the latter in the hectic lives they were faced with, upon arrival in the bewildering New World (By The

Breath 15). While Rosa instructs the children how to treat the witches, i.e. folklore, she

allows them some freedom, “[h]ave a generous heart, give them anything they want” (21); however, she is firm about the centrality of the family, symbolized by the rope that every

Sicilian holds when she declares “but whatever you do, don’t ever let go of the rope!” (21).

On this note, placing the family in the center of his novel, Ardizzone embarks on the

narration of the Grigenti family story.

A. “Hunger is a harsh master”: Gaetanu Grigenti’s Struggle for Social Justice

I. “Proletarian” Storytelling and the Children Following Rosa’s introduction to the dark pages of Sicilian poverty, Ardizzone begins

narrating Gaetanu’s story, in order to reveal the history of Sicilian immigration and 209

participation in the socialist battles of the early twentieth century. Thus, through Gaetanu, the passionate worker and polemicist of squalor and exploitation, and a narrative that is both powerful and traumatic, Ardizzone projects his hero as the clarion of a world of equality, the constant dream of the oppressed. The story takes place during the Lawrence Massachusetts strike in the winter of 1912, when the strikers’ offspring are sent away before the outbreak of open fighting. Gaetanu’s responsibility for seeing the strikers’ children off on the train, to a safe haven away from the explosive strike site, becomes the hero’s opportunity for the children’s socialist “education,” since within the proletarian struggle, everyone is obliged to

sacrifice themselves for the common cause against social evil, the children are no exception.

Gaetanu’s farewell is transformed from an emotional moment of separation into a sermon

stamped with the ideas of socialism.

In this respect, in opposition to the children’s needs for affection and consolation, Gaetanu

displays a lack of emotion and considers the moment appropriate to enhance the children’s

social, political and, surprisingly, sexual education. Loyal to his socialist credos, but also

realistic, concerning the ongoing class war, the immigrant worker addresses the future

generations, aiming to transform them into tomorrow’s fighters in this world. A. P. Foulkes

stresses the critical role of language in the process of social integration and positioning

reminding that the children’s young age is a period that moulds their “modes of perception

and value systems which determine their own historicity” (38). Thus, Gaetanu utilizes the

children’s first hand experience of injustice, hinting at their personal exploitation by the

bosses and “owners” of this world. His passionate words directly outline the lack of all

principles and scruples, on the part of the capitalists: “What we are doing is no disgrace, at

least not to you or your poor parents. It’s a disgrace to the bosses and owners-may they suffer

forever in Hell- who starve and deform you. The worst thief is he who steals the playtime of

children” (23). Gaetanu’s arguments in favor of the children’s most “sacred” notions, 210

nutrition, development, the safety of the family environment, and most importantly, play, are

particularly successful: not only does the hero aim at kindling the socialist flame within them,

but he also assigns them a specific, as well as more difficult mission, that of propagating the

news about the strike. The imperative used by Gaetanu, underlines his fervent beliefs, as well

as the demands and expectations of the strikers from the children leaving them no option:

Tell everyone about the condition of the mills, the short pay, the high rents,

the water hoses and clubs used by the police. Describe the hot tears in your

mother’s eyes as she bid you good-bye. Tell them your stories my children, so

you become alive inside their hearts, and so that all the workers here may be

saved. (23)

It is through Gaetanu’s urgings that the children’s role evolves from a passive audience of

Rosa’s contemporary narration, into dynamic agents of social change and hope. Nonetheless,

contrary to Rosa Dolci’s audience, those listening to Gaetanu’s storytelling, the strikers’

children, are less fortunate, because they are raised in a social milieu where even the

underage have to fight constantly for what should be by right theirs. Walter B. Rideout

considers the corporate power of capitalism as a state of war (82) in itself; it is a war experienced as poverty and disease in the slums, considered as lives lost in industrial accidents, and the open fighting that breaks out in strikes. This war, presented in Gaetanu’s tale, ravages the lives of innocent youth, but ultimately, through hardship and hunger, creates future social fighters of them. Ardizzone, as director of this emotionally-charged scene, further accentuates the polemic atmosphere by including the lyrics of the International

Workers of the World songs.

211

II. Story within Story

Acting as the children’s guardian and socialist educator, Gaetanu Grigenti unravels the

thread of the story of the princess that would not laugh,10 by resorting to folklore, he echoes

Oscar Handlin, who mentions the lack of confidence in the new surroundings that

characterizes recently-arrived immigrants, leading to their close attachment to tradition (99).

For the group of immigrant children, the presentation of the traditional story from their home

country comes temporarily to distract them from their problems. Furthermore, it strengthens

their feelings of belongingness to their own ethnic group, as well as class, since, as Vladimir

Propp contends, folklore constitutes “the art of the oppressed classes” (5). Stephen Stern enunciates on the crucial role of folklore for the perpetuation of “social and cultural equilibrium” (262). In particular for the ethnic persona, as is the case with the strikers’ children, folklore plays a crucial role in “the codification and transmission of shared values and beliefs” (262). On the other hand, Homi K. Bhabha argues that “the very act of the narrative performance interpellates a growing circle of national subjects” (“DissemiNation”

297). Through the embedding of Sicilian tales, the immigrants’ offspring keep the memory of bedda Sicilia, beautiful Sicily, alive. In addition, the children manage to maintain the demarcation between the “others” and themselves, as participants and actors in their particular cultural heritage.11

However, in In The Garden, it is the socialist character of the tale that prevails and

reshapes it. If one of the motivations of narrating is “to establish a claim on the listener’s

attention, an appeal to hearing, which is also an appeal to complicity, perhaps to judgment,

and inevitably to interpretation and construction” (Brooks 61), Gaetanu seeks implicitly to

bequeath his audience with vital information about the insidious ways of the capitalist

system. The details of the story are proof of the teller’s goals, the radical connotations of the

tale being explicit from the first description of the young princess and her father. To the 212

hungry audience’s surprise, even though she had everything, as far as food was concerned, the princess was extremely unhappy. To her characterizations, Gaetanu interestingly adds,

“she was the daughter of the king, the biggest labor boss of all, the worst of all thieves and so

she was just like him, selfish and vain, and even though she was a child just like you she

never laughed” (24-25). The special emphasis that the storyteller places on the king’s identity

alludes to the anti-capitalist morale of the story, to be fully revealed in the end. Instead of the

usual fair, female protagonist, conventionally suffering from heartache melancholia, the

storyteller surprises the listeners with a heroine that is consumed with egotism and vanity, a

constant attribute of “bosses” across spaces and times. The socio-historical conditions which

these children experience justify the changes that the traditional tale undergoes. Exploring

myth and tale, Joseph Campbell notes that “to account for elements that have become for one

reason or another meaningless, secondary interpretations are invented often with considerable

skill” (247).

Thus, the spoilt and self-centered royalty in Gaetanu’s tale receives hordes of poor people

who are willing to risk their lives for “half the kingdom as well as her hand in marriage.” The

petty aim of the competition, to provoke the princess’ laughter, is perceived as concrete

evidence of the governors’ blatant indifference to the real needs of the people. The oppressed,

guided by a most persuasive as well as harsh master, hunger, associate all their hopes for

survival with this quest, to the point of losing their heads. Instead of aspiring to a fairer

society, they stoically accept the wishes of the ruling class, never questioning its authority or

its wisdom in decision-making. This passive acceptance of the ruling authority, that

characterizes the majority, also reflects the political situation in Sicily in the early twentieth-

century, a period of massive immigrant waves to the States. Fred L. Gardaphé explains the

connection between the oppression of the poor in the Italian South and their relocation in

America, in the following words: “In the feudal-like system of Sicily and southern Italy, the 213

peasant could not hope to aspire to a better life by challenging the forces that controlled him

[…] This is the reason so many emigrated to other lands” (“Re-Inventing Sicily” 61).

Indulging the whims of the princess, the poor peasants of Gaetanu’s story squander their

precious energy on meaningless quests that keep them divided and, thus, weak. Their

incentive, that is their survival, is all powerful and the limits of their ventures are non- existent. they torture, ridicule and disgrace almost everyone: the lawyer, the scribe, the poet, the blind judge, the skinniest old woman, the pompous doctor (25). With need and ignorance on their side, the powerful, in a display of cruelty, divert themselves by ensuring the practical annihilation of the oppressed since, “Soon the castle’s walls were decorated by a thousand and one poles bearing a thousand and one heads” (26). Clearly, the display of the atrocities the low-classes suffer at the hands of the oppressors uses as its agent “the double vision of the tales” that Marina Warner refers to (From Beast XVII), that is, the tales both project the

actual experience, as well as the probable, the inner fears and nightmares. Sicily’s blood-

stained history, before as well as after the Risorgimento, attests to the sufferings of its

inhabitants.12

In any case, whether expressing unuttered fears of possible devastation, or recording

actual events, Gaetanu’s tale, with its ending, achieves the goal Warner generally attributes to

the genre, that is “fascination and the power to satisfy” (From Beast XXI). As tension is built,

through the narration of the obscenities the working classes suffer, the listeners’ craving for

social justice is finally satisfied, in the face of the traditional Sicilian simpleton named

Giufà.13 Justin Vitiello exploring Sicilian folklore enumerates Giufà’s attributes in the

following terms: “The popular Sicilian hero, incarnate in the Giufà of Arabian nights origin,

is the waggish ‘fool’ who always gets out of the trouble into which his apparent

ingenuousness plummets him, by a stroke of luck and/or his own bizarre, native geniality”

(66). Ardizzone’s Sicilian narrator of the children’s tale involves the familiar figure of Giufà 214

in his story, and pigments his adventures with shades of the socialist struggle, always aiming

to influence the children’s political sympathies. Apparent in Gaetanu’s creative storytelling

and the changes he makes to the traditional tales, is this freedom of the foreigner, who,

caught up between cultures and traditions, is endowed with “the extravagant ease to

innovate,” a point that is eloquently made by Julia Kristeva (Strangers 32).

However, apart from the attributes of simple-mindedness for Giufà and selfishness for the

princess, Gaetanu refrains from a detailed portrayal of the tale’s characters, whether heroes or

villains. In his study, Fairytales, Sexuality and Gender in France 1690-1715, Lewis C. Seifert

clarifies the single-dimensional portrayal of fairy-tale figures, who ultimately embody

specific traits and values, desirable or harmful; in this way, they highlight the importance of

the unity of community, as opposed to the self-interest and egotism that can be devastating

for general welfare (138). Thus, the narrator focuses on the most vital aspects of the two

opposing sides: their contrast of status and their contribution to the common good. Any further exploration of the two protagonists of the story would transgress the dictates of the tale, as well as sidetrack the listeners from the socialist orientation. In this war, Ardizzone’s folktale hero foregrounds Bona’s well-founded contentions that “[i]n their silencing of official discourses of power, writers of Italian America illuminate the folkloric world of storytelling and ritual, and support values of cooperation and individualism within protective and albeit poor communities” (By The Breath 36).

When Giufà, following his adventures with the farmer’s daughters and the innuendos

concerning his tremendous sexual energy,14 accidentally wins the contest, the conclusion of

the tale subverts the expectations of the children. Gaetanu sarcastically comments on the

audience’s romanticized notions that involve a happy marriage to the “sour princess,” as he

calls her, with half the kingdom for a dowry (29). The pedagogical core of the tale is

overshadowed by the proletarian cause: Giufà might be simple but he is not stupid, Gaetanu 215

adds. So, like any person of average intellectual capacities, not only does he not marry the

princess and get half her kingdom, but he proceeds with the following symbolic, as well as

“socialistically oriented,” actions: after connecting the dead heads to their respective bodies,

Giufà shares the endless food supplies with the starving population of the kingdom and teaches the egotistical princess hunger and destitution. Jack Zipes underlines the omnipresence of the theme of a princess’ or a noblewoman’s education and considers it as

“an important didactic motif in the medieval, oral and literary tradition” (688). When the princess happens to be the daughter of one of the most ruthless capitalists, as initially mentioned, the educational purposes of the tale are emphatically underlined. Its political moral, concerning the fair distribution of wealth which is concentrated in the hands of the

capitalists, and the prompt satisfaction of the workers’ needs, finally satisfies the audience’s

feeling of justice. Walter Benjamin elaborates on the wisdom of the fairy tale throughout the

centuries and highlights the optimistic teachings of the fairy-tale for children (102). Echoing

the socialist credos, on the one hand, and following his traditional tale representations, on the other, Giufà’s carefree spirit and spontaneity result in his winning the laughter contest, while his inherent feeling of justice leads to the redistribution of wealth, the constant dream of every proletarian fighter.

The conclusion to the tale that Giufà orchestrates, is contrasted to the naïve expectations of the fruitful cooperation and peaceful coexistence between capital and the working classes:

Gaetanu points to the contradictory interests of the classes, when he ironically adds: “Shall I give you a real children’s tale? Then the king and the farmer became friends, and the farmer ruled the campagnoli until they could govern themselves, and everyone lived with honor,

dignity, and peace” (30). The utmost necessity to redeem this case of social decomposition is emphasized by Giufà’s presence. Even a simpleton can comprehend the dead end the low classes find themselves in: following the whims of the bosses, they continually suffer and the 216

only way out is a radical move that will re-establish peace and end the suffering. Thus, the

storyteller reproduces the perpetual entrenchment of the social classes, but he also reveals the

agitational character of his story to the children, an aim concurrent with the role of leftist

literature (Murphy 1). The storyteller’s goal, just as that of the leftist writer’s, is to awaken

the “audience,” and inspire them to fight for what is stolen from them. The tale captivates the

audience, in this case the strikers’ children, who identify with the hero, since the latter, in

spite of his simplemindedness, manages to strip the king of his riches and save the poor from

their misery.

As the tale reaches its end, Gaetanu mocks social conventions and the children’s

expectations for a happy denouement: instead, the hero stresses his liberal ideas once more,

by ending his tales with three weddings, marrying the simpleton to the three daughters of the

farmer. Taking into account his minor audience and their expectations, Gaetanu characterizes

the hero’s marital life in an ironic tone: “Well, of course Giufà married all three of them, but

since this is a Christian country I’ll say he did so one by one by one, in full accordance with

the rules of the Holy Church. On second thought, hey, maybe each month there were a couple

of nights when, like you and your brothers and sisters, they all slept together in the same bed”

(30). Endowing his character with tremendous sexual prowess, Ardizzone captures some of

the spicy flavor inherent in the frame tales of the medieval tradition. Furthermore, since Giufà

represents the lower classes, the Italian-American author also opts for the stereotypical

identification of his working class hero, with physicality and bodily expression (Fiske in

Felski 35). His adult readership, though, will not fail to notice, the allusion to the sexual

promiscuity that the conservatives had, however, equated Socialism with: the underlying

suggestion of a ménage-à-quatre reflects this depravity leftists were often accused of by their opponents, when solid argumentation failed the latter.15

217

III. The Brutal Reality of the Slums and Factories

The ending of the tale and the children’s departure, however, coincide with the return to

the brutal reality of the immigrants: not only is the narrator emotionally affected by the

children’s departure, but he is also intrigued and inspired to narrate another tale, a realistic

one this time. Through it, he reveals the trials and tribulations of his people at the hands of the “bosses” on both sides of the Atlantic: attacking the class enemy, Gaetanu, with his realistic descriptions of the working conditions in the cotton mills, unveils the canvas of misery, the background against which the immigrants are, ironically, chasing the Immigrant

American Dream. Thus, the cruel face of the capitalist owner does not distinguish between pregnant woman or helpless child; the pace of work remains unchanged irrespective of incident or accident. In this hellish pit, death is constantly present, as Gaetanu confesses:

“And if you let your mind wander, the machine can swallow your hand and turn it to a sack of gravel, or grab your hair and in a half a heartbeat rip off your scalp” (31). The industrial accident and the tragic death of Antuninu from Campufiuritu wonderfully allude to Pietro Di

Donato’s Christ in Concrete (1939). In Ardizzone and Di Donato’s references to the frequent

industrial accidents, the Immigrant American Dream turns into a nightmare that, ironically,

threatens the dreamer’s existence. While fighting for his life, Antuninu, in Ardizzone’s novel

covered in his own blood and in delirium, asks the narrator “Why does my head feel so wet?

Did I fall into the sea” (32); this way it is reminiscent of Geremio’s cries in Christ in

Concrete, as, stuck in concrete, he gasps: “Save me! Save me! I am being buried alive” (16).

With this climax of devastation, both writers succeed in aptly depicting the cannibalistic face of the exploiters, who raise their own status to the detriment of the lives of their workmen.

In Gaetanu’s confession, the final trial for the proletarians that sparks off the blaze of their

protest, foregrounds, once again, the bosses’ avidity. As Gaetanu states: “It all started with

the state passing a law against women and children working more than fifty-four hours each 218

week” (32). The representatives of the capital are likened to vampires,16 thus: “The owners

still wanted to drink the fifty-six drops of our blood they’d grown used to. So they ordered

the mills to speed up. They’d get their fifty-six hours of work, but in only fifty-four” (32).

The desperate immigrants, craving for a life they were denied, are easy prey in the hands of

the owners. The latter’s insatiable thirst is unstoppable and Antuninu’s sacrifice is

insignificant, since the poor immigrant can easily be replaced by another naïve, ignorant,

“greenhorn,” straight off the boat (32).

Nonetheless, Ardizzone presents the proletarian spirit of rebellion triumphing since the

immigrant workers retaliate against the abuse and exploitation, when the devaluation of their

job’s worth is announced. This utter injustice is received with unanimous commotion: irrespective of race, gender, age or occupation, the social protesters gather to demand what should be theirs, by right (34). Passionate and dynamic, the strikers, encouraged by the power of their numbers, see the world through the lens of idealism. As Gaetanu claims: “They said that if we all stood together, all twenty-five thousand of us, we could remake the world! One by one we are nothing but united we could be a powerful union!” (33). In this sense,

Ardizzone captures the socialist fever of those turbulent times since, as Ingrid Von Rosenberg stresses, large- scale strike actions are crucial for the creation of an image of solidarity and a unanimous voice, that will ultimately result in the establishment of a classless society (154).

Admittedly, through Gaetanu’s passionate cries for a fairer world for everyone, Ardizzone

manages to reproduce the ambience of the proletarian struggles and teachings that were

recorded in classic novels with socialist affiliations, books of the likes of Charles Dickens

and Michael Gold. Thus, in Dickens’ Hard Times the Unionists’ claims are governed by the

same driving force, injustice, and are characterized by the same vibrancy, when the latter

declare: “One United power and crumble into dust the oppressors that too long have battered

upon the plunder of our families, upon the sweat of our brows, upon the labor of our hands” 219

(106). While, on the other side of the Atlantic, almost a century later in Jews Without Money, in one of the most notable contemporary novels, the author Michael Gold, intoxicated with the joy of Revolution, declares through his narrator: “O workers’ Revolution, you brought hope to a lonely suicidal boy. You are the true Messiah. You will destroy the East Side when you come, and build there a garden for the human spirit. O Revolution, that forced me to think, to struggle and to live” (1753). Clearly, in both excerpts, as in Gaetanu’s case, the emphasis is placed upon a collective, overwhelming reaction: fighters, as their mottos show, irrespective of the time span, invest all their energy in “the emergence of a post- individualistic social world,” since the fighters aim at “the reinvention of the collective and the associative” (Jameson, The Political 111).

Naturally, this passionate rebellion is proportional to the destitution that workers

experience at the hands of the capitalists. In Ardizzone’s realistic and gruesome descriptions

of the living conditions of poor ethnic workers, the reader confronts the dark face of famine and exhaustion: “Each day we eat pani e favi –bread and beans –and never enough, just

enough to live to be hungry another day” […] “Most of the time I stink worse than a goat”

[…] “My smell sometimes is so high it could make a dead man without a nose roll over three times in his grave” (36). On a similar note, in his novel Michael Gold poetically sketches immigrant despair during wintertime, in the following words: “O golden dyspeptic God of

America, you were in a bad mood that winter. We were poor, and you punished us harshly for this worst of sins” (1756). Jerre Mangione and Ben Morreale in La Storia, their historical

study of Italian-American trials in the Promised Land, echo the immigrants’ misery and the

harsh reality that they encountered in the New World, in the following words: “The

conditions the immigrants found instead promoted a sense of deception. They entered a

Dickensian world of treeless stone tenements crowded four-storey houses squeezed in one

upon the other, rents so high families had to live in primitive commune like fashion” (283). 220

Still, the workers stubbornly fight to survive against all odds and adversities clinging on the

hope of the family’s reunion in the New Land (36).

Moreover, using Gaetanu’s memory, Ardizzone unearths the tragic irony of the life of

these wretched creatures: in a reconstruction of the naturalistic atmosphere, Ardizzone depicts exploitation and suffering as borderless and timeless vultures preying on the downtrodden of the Earth. Back in the homeland, these same protesters eked out a living by fighting against the greed of their landlords, and the bloodthirsty imperialistic cravings of their government. Consequently, the Sicilians’ wasted lives in wars and their disillusionment with a government they like to call ladro-thief became a choking knot in their throats, a cry of protest that overwhelmed them: “The land was generous, but the master’s share was vast.

Did Garibaldi ever clear a field of rock? Did his palms know the feel of a hoe? Had his

fingers ever traced the curve of a sickle, for which they say bedda Sicilia was named?” (37).

The escape of the Sicilians from “the thief of a government” was bound to succeed with the

intervention of the atrocious patruni, described as having cloven feet and a split tongue,

“rolled in oil” (38). Assured of the illiteracy and naivety of their victims, Ardizzone’s patruni

seemed to convince their prey of the ethereal quality of the Dreamland called LaMerica. In

turn, the patruni became the mouthpieces of the American Dream, conveniently neglecting to

mention its prominent ingredient: hard work and exploitation. With the omission of the

concept of “intolerable” as well as badly-paid labor, the vulture-like patruni became the

successors of a tradition of promotion works, as early as the dawn of the seventeenth century

and Captain John Smith’s idealistic presentation of bountiful Virginia for the hungry and

ignorant European masses. In Gaetanu’s reminiscence, the promoter of LaMerica:

[…] described a land where the world’s sweetest fruit grew in such abundance

that it fell from the trees unpicked, where everyone ate meat every day, where

there were magnificent mountains full of nuggets of gold. All you had to do 221

was bend down and pick up the gold. All you had to do was reach up to the

next branch for the fruit. A lovely girl would carry the meat to you on a golden

platter. In her other hand would be a glass of fine wine. (38-39)

Ironically, this mystical narration of the Garden of Eden alludes to the previous “fairytale” ending, narrated to the immigrants’ children: according to this moral precept, Giufà shares all the king’s food with the destitute of the kingdom and thus stirs the children’s delight.

Following Ardizzone’s approach, the fairy-tale quality of the New World is apparent in both tales, the one intended for the strikers’ children as well as the one narrated by the patruni to the destitute Sicilians. Consequently, a parallel is drawn between the two audiences, with a special focus on the naïve, childlike innocence of the adult Sicilian listeners. In Ardizzone’s adult story, the gullible, hungry peasant is further convinced by the words of a supposedly returning immigrant, who asserts the truth of the contractor’s words. Following Max Paul

Friedman, the prospective immigrants valued the information they received from their compatriots abroad through letters, personal narrations and even songs (560). These pieces of information would normally counterbalance the idealistic image of bountiful America that the patruni and the promotion literature of the time projected. Here, the opposite is achieved, as a result of the contractor’s cunning.17

Contrary to what the poor peasants were promised, the bubbly American Dream vanishes instantly and is replaced by the furnace of the factory. For poor Gaetanu, during all those lonely hours of hard, repetitive work, the Catholic faith and Sicilian folklore appear to be the only companions of the disheartened worker; they are his inner resources that sustain him in his toils. In concurrence with Rosa Dolci’s comments on the persistence of folklore in the first chapter, Richard Gambino comments on this isolation of Sicilian immigrants, as well as their adherence to the old ways, la via vecchia, when he states that Sicilians, “hold to the sovereignty of the old ways and thereby seal out the threats of the new ‘strangers,’ the 222

American society that surrounded them” (35). The Madonna’s visits assist the narrator in his

constant struggle and comfort him as he feels her motherly presence; he likens the Holy

figure interventions to his mother’s caresses that he received as a child. Through her

presence, that of her son, Jesus, as well as the faith and memory of his Sicilian origins, the

troubled worker manages to bear his work load. Maria Laurino, in her memoir Were you

Always an Italian?, considers the persistence of tradition and storytelling, as well as its

bittersweet quality within immigrant circles, when she states:

Once many, many tears ago, my grandparents escaped the abysmal poverty of

southern Italy when they boarded ships in America. They tried to leave behind

the sadness of their land, but this lachrymose history could not be erased, it

was part of them. They would bring the stories and traditions of this land, they

would carry the effects of its deprivation and misery. (215)

Thus, Gaetanu uses the power of religion and singing as his amulet to confront the monstrous

machine.18 By foregrounding the image of the superstitious, music-loving Sicilian, who finds

recourse to the few stable pillars of his life, faith and folklore, Ardizzone satisfies the

stereotypical expectations of all non-Sicilians and non-Italians. As regards the Italian songs

the immigrants sang, Victor Greene notes their optimism for a better life, a common feature

in immigrant melodies, but also their fears and skepticism about the new ways (77). It is these

grievances that the young peasant gives vent to through his singing, but also his difficulty in adjusting. Unable to absorb all the shocking novelties in his life, he cannot but be marginalized. Oscar Handlin rightly notes the awkward transition from a pre-modern country to the core of contemporary industrialization and the subsequent negative feelings: “His dwelling and his place of work had no relationship to him as a man. The scores of established routines that went with a life of the soil had disappeared and with them the sense of being one of a company. Therefore the peasant felt isolated and isolation added to his loneliness” (95). 223

With work as his only focus, Gaetanu moves into the realm of obsession. He even works in

his sleep or perhaps sleeps at work, exhausted but still determined to succeed. As Gaetanu

himself confesses, his only thought in his monotonous and nightmarish life in the New World

is to repay his debt, to succeed: “I knew that only through more work could I ever outrace the

struzzeri and the mounting interest of my debt. With this machine there was no time for

conversation or even thought. It demanded that every instant I attend to it. It demanded that I

do its bidding and become its slave” (43). The Sicilian-American’s worries outline the true

dimensions of “free labor” within the context of the developing American market and

economy. Gunther Peck rightly parallels this type of work to wage slavery (18). Furthermore,

Gaetanu’s reference to the machine and the frantic pace of work resuscitates Frederick

W.Taylor’s work system known as Taylorism; that is a “second-by-second accounting of

scientific management” (Rodgers 168); in this system, the workers were exploited to the point of complete exhaustion, so as to achieve maximum productivity, with meager wages, because of the growing supply of cheap working hands.19 In his stereotypical portrayal as a

family-loving man, Gaetanu is further victimized, as he “labors for the positive well-being of

those one loves on earth, one’s family” (Gambino 92); the poor immigrant’s craving to

succeed and re-unite his family, to offer them a life in America, inevitably chains him to this

mechanical and never-ending repetitive work, that exhausts his energy, but does not bear

fruit. His frenetic pace of work, as well as his ambition, allude to the notion cauterized by

Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, as the “myth of success” that mesmerizes the

masses of the deceived; it drugs them into an incessant pursuit, thus enslaving them forever

(134).20 Following Horkheimer and Adorno’s allegations, the oppressed have given up all hope of change in their lives, since they feel chained to objectification, which “presents objective necessity, against which they believe there is nothing they can do” (138). This way, immigrants struggling to survive appear to be forever trapped in the capitalist vicious circle 224

of materialist acquisition that saturates all their being. With the amelioration of their lives as

their only need and aspiration, they remain forever at the beck and call of their bosses. As

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels convincingly argue: “The mode of production of material life

conditions the social, political and intellectual life in process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being but on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness” (4).

However, at the peak of the peripeteia, liberation and catharsis from the bonds of the

patruni is brought about in the least expected way: a fire that destroys all documents recording the immigrants’ debts frees them from the slavery of their loans. Able to work for their own welfare, as official immigrant WOPS, WithOut Papers, and to enjoy their “blazing freedoms” the immigrant workers recognize the power of gold they were promised, which is really nothing other than their own bare hands. With this emblazoning end, both literal and metaphorical, Gaetanu completes his adult tale which, contrary to the denouement of purely naturalistic works, and like all good tales, has an optimistic, happy ending. Consecutively, the immigrant workers place all their enthusiasm in the utmost fight that has to be won: social justice. John Bodnar attributes immigrant participation in the labor movement, as well as the foreigners’ interest in the socialist struggles, to their hope of “humanizing” the New World social system; as Bodnar claims, the workers attempt “to impart human and moral values to a society dominated by commercial ones” (45).

V. Ethnic Space and Radicalism

On the whole, through his chapter on Gaetanu and his battles against social evil, the author

of this postmodern work attempts to sketch important chapters of Italian-American history; in

this respect, he inevitably alludes to the ghetto pastorals of the first half of the twentieth

century. Arming his protagonist with the sole mission to inform and instigate action, 225

Ardizzone concludes Gaetanu’s stereotypical portrayal as the striker in the picket line,

following the dictates of the proletarian novel he recalls. To my mind, Gaetanu’s facet as the

starving hard worker is the only one accessible to the reader, since it is the one that

reproduces the agitational role of leftist literature. Obsessed with his goal to pay off his debt

and bring his family from Sicily, the young immigrant stands out as a representative of all

immigrant victims of American capitalism. Furthermore, the polar opposition of capitalists as

villains and workers as heroes, the pace set by the propagandistic workmen’s lyrics, and,

most importantly, Gaetanu’s tale to the children, and the persistence of the theme of social

injustice, all underline one goal: to reproduce the polemical atmosphere of that period of

immigration in America; to underline the constant call for social justice, and, most

importantly, to shed ample light on the role of Italian-American proletarians in the fight for a

fairer, classless society.

Surprisingly, Gaetanu’s flame is abruptly put out by Rosa’s narrations, at the end of the

novel: what Ardizzone attempts to re-enact with his chapter on the strikes and Gaetanu’s arduous political involvement, he suppresses emphasizing the family’s prosperity. Thus, the careful reader of Ardizzone’s novel cannot fail to notice the sharp contrast between

Gaetanu’s arduous involvement in the proletarian war and Rosa’s self-congratulation in the last chapter of the novel. Rosa’s final chapter magically obliterates all sense of struggle for the contemporary children of ethnic descent who are now affluent enough to become tourists visiting Sicily. Unbearable and unpaid labor, misery and bitterness, as well as all the revolutionary passion displayed by Gaetanu, are ironically erased from memory and replaced by an all telling phrase: “Thank God, figghi di mi figghi, daughters of my daughters, sons of my sons, that each of you is a stranger to real hunger” (331). Once the goal of survival and a certain standard of living have been achieved, the New World no longer represents a site for the proletarian struggle, but, conveniently becomes, in Rosa’s terms again, a beloved country, 226

“just like here, only with more food and better work” (336). In my opinion, the contrast

created between Gaetanu and Rosa should be seen as Ardizzone’s commentary on the first

generation Italian-American passion for social justice, gradually spent and replaced by the

newly-acquired suburbia status and conformism. It is this ongoing feeling of oblivion that is

reflected here, a deadly inertia the author himself intends to dispel by incorporating Gaetanu and Teresa’s narratives; to overcome what Jacques Derrida labels as “amnesia,” forgetfulness, prevailing after the accomplishment of the revolutionary task (Specters 111).

Were the goals of the revolutionary task accomplished for the unhappy immigrant workers,

demanding the realization of a classless collectivity? The reality of the sweatshops and slums

of today, shakes its head.

Contemporary labor reality attests that deprivation and exploitation still constitute the worker’s everyday companions. At the dawn of a new century, the hordes of illegal immigrants and the nightmarish surroundings in which they try to survive, while working in the industrial infernos of the developed countries, prove the validity of Gaetanu’s wish for prosperity and justice: “Then the masters of this New World will be made to feed us from their big pot of beans that never grows empty, their big silver platter of meat that can never be licked clean, their bee’s nest full of honey so smooth and sweet that one taste nearly makes you want to die.” (336) It is the same hope that, according to socialist hopes, will some day overwhelm the constant unjust capitalist reality. Following Jurgis, the Lithuanian socialist worker’s aspirations at the end of Sinclair’s The Jungle:

And then will begin the rush that will never be checked, the tide that will

never turn till it has reached its flood–that will be irresistible, overwhelming–

the rallying of the outraged workingmen of Chicago to our standard! And we

shall organize them, we shall drill them, we shall marshal them for the victory! 227

We shall bear down the opposition, we shall sweep it before us- and Chicago

will be ours! (422)

In its idealistic essence, this hope still feeds the hungry souls of the millions of oppressed and

suffering of this world. And this is something that even a simpleton like Giufa would admit.

B. “Only a fool judges wine by its bottle”: Teresa Pantaluna’s Story of Gender and

Class Discrimination

While Gaetanu’s struggles replicate the fighting spirit of the labor movement in the early

twentieth century, his wife’s, Teresa’s,21 accompanying figure reveal the obstacles Sicilian

women faced on both sides of the Atlantic in the early twentieth century, a theme previously

explored by Helen Barolini and Susan Caperna Lloyd. In this context, Teresa’s dreamy

narrations, bearing resemblance to Haviaras’ episodic narratives, are saturated with the magic of folklore, and, in particular, storytelling: they thus recreate and represent the “space” of female oppression as a site of contestation and defiance, in which only women armed with determination, persistence and self-confidence, succeed in their goals.

I. The Embedded Story: Teresa’s Father

Ardizzone initiates his chapter on Teresa with another embedded story, one which leads to

the heroine’s birth, fulfilling yet again the author’s wish to “write a whole novel as a series of folktales” (Gardaphé, Dagoes 29). Teresa’s father, Placidu the fisherman, embodies the

image of the oversexed Catholic Sicilian, whose adventures with a female spirit result in the

narrator’s birth, as the umpteenth fisherman’s daughter. In his attempts to restrain his lust, at

the stimulating site of naked girls bathing, the fisherman squeezes some nearby figs and is

consequently punished for his sexual cravings by the spirit inhabiting the fruit. Teresa’s story

of birth alludes to postmodern feminism, since women are vindicated by a female spirit for all 228

the “rough treatment and disrespect” they have been subjected to, as the narrator insinuates

(48). Placidu’s “cross to bear,” imposed by the spirit, is his miraculous fertility, thus he

begets hosts of baby girls. The female spirit’s words, expressed with the gravity of a judge

carry the validity of a severe sentence:

From this day on, from now until the day you die, I say that each seed you

spill will become a girl just like one of these girls, and I command that you

feed and clothe them and give them a place to live, a house with a tight roof

and strong, thick walls and narrow windows covered with jalousies so that

sneaky, empty-headed boys like you can’t spy on them each evening when

they’re naked and at play. (49)

Fecundity is clearly presented here as a curse for men since they have to act as guardians of their daughters’ virtue. The weight on the “poor” fisherman’s shoulders seems unbearable; it

is hard enough to have one daughter to take care of and protect, let alone thousands! With this

tale of lust and suffering, the Italian-American author derides the so-called “curse” of having

girls to raise, a common notion among Mediterranean peoples. In need of strong working

hands that could aid them in the fields or at sea, and would not need constant supervision,

Sicilians prefer to have boys. The poor fisherman’s desires enchain him and the rest of his

kind in a vicious circle of sin and punishment, since his incredible fertility triggers the birth

of thousands of daughters who, in their turn, will enflame and torment thousands of other

men, lovers and fathers-to-be.

Under the guise of enumerating Placidu’s responsibilities as a father, Ardizzone displays

his well-known interest in the position of Sicilian and Sicilian-American women22 and their

domestic seclusion. Simultaneously valued and feared for her capacity to reproduce, the

Sicilian woman is portrayed as trapped within the walls of her own home; always under a familiar male gaze, the Siciliana’s fate is already explored in Lloyd’s description of the 229

Amoroso home, in Chapter 4. The Siciliana’s life course is considered to be predetermined and centered on her capacity to procreate and the maintenance of her virtuous existence: from a daughter raised under the protective and confining presence of her father and male relatives, to a mother chaperoned by her husband and sons. In both roles, Ardizzone’s indirect and ironic reference outlines the extent to which “the South Italian woman’s social identity is an extension of her connections with relevant males-fathers, brothers, husbands and sons”

(Berkowitz 89).

Placidu’s encounter with the “the ewe with the eyes of a woman” confirms the power of

the spell placed upon him: that this particular animal has connotations of meekness and

innocence, is another illustration of the Madonna-like qualities that the Sicilian mother is

traditionally expected to have.23 Intentionally adopting a male perspective in Placidu’s story,

Ardizzone initially opts to limit the ewe’s role in this story of miraculous procreation to her

breeding duties. To draw attention to the female position and constant troubles of child rearing, the author subverts the situation and gives Placidu responsibilities that are conventionally attributed to the mother. The fertile father appears to be troubled by his miraculous procreating capacity, since he is strained by the multiplicity of the tasks related to the daily care and upbringing of his hordes of daughters, who consume all his time and energy (49-50). The author’s intentions, as well as sympathies with female toils in raising children are summed up in the following words: “In short, the clever pond spirit had cursed him with a woman’s outlook and life” (50).

In a further exploitation of the potential of stereotypes, the frustrated Placidu finds recourse

to the church, in this manner offering Ardizzone another target for his social commentary:

instead of cutting his genitalia, as his wife suggested, the fisherman, counting on the priest’s

wisdom, is ready to follow any advice, no matter how absurd or ridiculous it might seem; his

despair for his tremendous fecundity is such that he even tries sprinkling holy water on his 230 genitalia after he has knelt on a pile of acorns and beans while holding his arms as if he were crucified! Causing bouts of laughter in his readers with Placidu’s trials, Ardizzone is consistent in his critical view of the practices of Catholic priests and nuns, a theme he also deals with in his prize-winning collection of short stories, Taking it Home, Stories from the

Neighboorhood (1996). 24 Instead of enlightening the exasperated villager on the facts of life, the priest abandons him in his ignorance, and increases his belief in ridiculous tricks that, as the paesano hopes, will resolve his “problem.” Not only does the priest not assist the believer, but he also has the opportunity to strengthen his own position. Ardizzone, having had personal experience of a strict Catholic schooling himself (Gardaphé, Dagoes 25), does not hesitate to express his anticlericalism, another theme often explored in Italian-American literature.25 He thus, underlines the negative feelings of the peasants towards the clergy, since the nineteenth century, as Rudolph Vecoli underlines (qtd. in Bona, “Private Justice” 220).

Ardizzone indirectly condemns the obscurantism that the practitioners of the Catholic faith spread through the members of their congregation, especially as far as matters of procreation are concerned; through this strategy, clergymen perpetuate the peasants’ confusion and sufferings, while also safeguarding their own status as “vectors” of knowledge, in the peasants’ dark ignorance. Through Placidu’s fertility story, the Chicagoan author also draws attention to issues that are still labeled “taboo,” within the Roman Catholic Church: abortion and birth control. As expected, the priest in the story reiterates the omnipresent motto, the importance of faith as the only escape route, and washes his hands of all responsibility, stating: ‘Trust in God’ said the priest. He pointed to the straw roof of his hut. ‘Put your faith in God and he’ll help you find a way’” (51).

231

II. A Boy Named Teresa

Irrespective of Placidu’s attempts to control his seed, the ewe’s constant gestations

continue, resulting in Teresa being daughter number eighty-nine thousand seven hundred and

twenty-six. Teresa’s fate differs from that of her sisters’, a result of her father’s obstinacy to

have a son after the thousands of girls he has been having. In fact, the ewe that is her mother

constantly conceals her sex from her father, as well as the rest of the world, and raises her as if she were a boy, since, as a docile mother, “she noticed only what her big sad eyes had been told by her husband to see” (52). Surprisingly, it is the maternal passivity and willingness to satisfy the father that provides the lucky Teresa with a way out of the confines of her Sicilian family. As the narrator herself admits, “Soon I worked beside my father on the sea, even though I had a pair of rosebuds on my chest and I squatted over the baron jar whenever I peed” (52). In this sense, assisted by the subversive potential of folklore Ardizzone sees female rebellion and defiance as a dormant quality in the prevailing status of female oppression, a fire ready to be kindled.

As a result, Teresa’s concealed female identity liberates her from the boundaries of her

home and becomes her passport to freedom and a world denied to the Sicilian female

children. The questions that the young daughter, assumed to be a son, poses to her father,

reflect the questions of those pioneering women, who suffered seclusion, domesticity and

objectification. The father-daughter exchanges on the open seas are not really representative

of the Sicilian women’s political concerns of the era, for the status of their own kind: the

Italian woman of the South, apart from a few exceptionally strong-willed and assertive

women like Anna Maria Mozzoni,26 or Maria Messina and Grazia Deledda of Sardinia

(Mangione and Morreale 236), who dared to go against the norm, were generally engrossed

in their role as the cornerstone of the family. Ardizzone’s approach and Teresa’s ruminations

on women’s position could be alluding to those few female figures that fought hard to make a 232

difference. Or better, Ardizzone, exploiting the weapon of artistic license, uses his heroine as

the mouthpiece of the first wave American feminist movement, whose participants fought for

the freedom to work outdoors, make their own living and vote. A recent study on Italian

migrant women conducted by Donna Gabaccia, Franca Iacovetta and Fraser Ottanelli, comes

to offer new insights into the interests of Italian immigrant women and their home. Rejecting

the stereotypical presentation of the Italian peasant home, either as a “patriarchal prison” or

as a “female-dominated haven” for women (69), the three authors move into a balanced

presentation of women as wage earners and family-raisers, beyond the sterile and typical

roles assigned to them. The three researchers, however, differentiate the Italian women’s

sphere of political interest from that of the Anglo-American feminist fighters of their era and

underline the central importance of the family in the following words: “In contrast to

celebrated leaders like Emma Goldman, and to socialist and middle class advocates of

suffrage, ordinary anarchist wives and mothers spent the bulk of their time discussing

motherhood, children, and social or collective equality” (70).

Teresa’s insistence and will to probe into the topic reveal her rhetorical capacities and the reasoning behind her arguments: “Does a daughter not have two hands, just like a son? Two arms? Two legs? Two eyes, just like you and me?” (52). Her remarks reach the core of the first wave feminist argument on the issue of female conditioning: “What makes a boy? [...] Is it that Mamma cuts my hair? That I wear these pantaloons? That I work in the boat beside you?”(52) Unfortunately, Teresa’s bold questions that dare to question the patriarchal “status quo” are ironically well-protected behind her male mask, provided by the tale’s conventions.

In this manner, Ardizzone points to the freedom provided by folkloric license, while, at the same time, deriding male single-mindedness. Teresa concludes by forming the most important question “Papa am I defined by my essence or my function?” Her final point 233

embodies the long-standing core of women’s argumentation concerning their upbringing and

the social conditioning that perpetuates their inferiority status.

As would be expected, the stereotypical response she gets is “Tutti matti”; this time there

are no underlying interpretations on Teresa’s part, since Placidu is literally dumbfounded, and

defeated. The father-daughter dialogue, concerning women’s place in the society, restages the

debate and also the clash between the two opposing sides as well as two opposing worlds and

mentalities.27 This way, Placidu’s answers unmask, once again, the male strategies of female

restriction, practiced over the ages since “a daughter’s place was to be hidden away,

screened, cloaked, veiled, shrouded, made secret, invisible unseen” (53). Repeating the

central Judeo-Christian origins behind female maltreatment, Ardizzone conventionally

presents women as the embodiment of sin and temptation; since their “crime” dates back to

Adam and Eve’s, women need to be “punished and made to stay inside,” as Teresa pinpoints

even though, as she adds, the boys are the real trouble.

Furthermore, blessed with her fairytale identity, Teresa, released from the fetters of being a

woman in Sicily and enjoying a male upbringing, decides to abandon her home country.

Working next to her father in the vastness of the open sea, away from the wailing babies

always demanding a mother’s full attention, Teresa realizes the restrictions of motherhood

and the sweetness of independence that is strictly a male privilege. In her words: “To be by

oneself, in a boat out on the gray water, seemed beyond heaven! The very thought of being

alone somewhere was thrilling beyond name” (55). As Ardizzone reveals, the curse placed by

the spirit on her father is, in reality, her mother’s and not her father’s constant nightmare,

since she is the one who is tormented by the plethora of baby daughters. On the open horizons of the African Sea, Teresa has her own moment of epiphany; echoing the tradition of feminist novels,28 she listens to the pounding of her own heart, a heart distinct from her

mother’s and her sisters’ (56). It is this moment of realization that is critical in her decision to 234 take her life in her own hands and leave her motherland, where only in disguise can she taste the sweetness of freedom, but not of personal development, because of her poverty. On a parallel to Marguerite’s course of alienation from the mother in Chapter 2, Teresa’s separation from the homeland, but also from the image of the suffering mother, appears to be a prerequisite for her survival.

Employing a favorite motif of the fairy tale, disguise, Teresa abandons Sicily, dressed up as a rich young man, since strict moral rules label any woman traveling alone “as damaged goods, a cracked, or broken vessel, abandoned and deserving of shame” (54). The costume of a young nobleman is therefore essential to free Teresa from all the restrictions imposed on women and paupers; this way she is doubly privileged, since she now has “the best of both sexes: the guile and wit of a woman, and the appearance and freedom of a man” (56).

Inevitably, beyond this idealized and optimistic statement, Teresa’s masquerade adds another dimension to the author’s critical approach to the immigrant reality. In fact, Teresa’s costume proves to be essential for her to overcome the other severe obstacle alongside her gender, her class. In a moment of lucidity, Teresa observes: “I realized that becoming a man isn’t so much a shift in gender as it is a change in class or social standing” (56). Doubly marginalized, both as a woman and a pauper, Teresa protects her dreams and aspirations behind the façade of the identity of a wealthy, young baron’s son.

To justify her humble attire, she makes up a story that underlines both her inventiveness and the gullibility of the peasants. Equating in their minds wealth and nobility with maltreatment, arrogance and abuse, the oppressed are automatically convinced of Teresa’s noble birth, even without any proof other than her cruel behavior. To Teresa’s surprise, these people are so resigned to their fate as downtrodden, so convinced of the inevitability of their destiny, that they are automatically victimized (57). The total inertia on the part of the workmen stems from the perpetual exploitation and humiliation that extinguishes even the 235 slightest will to rebel against what they have been brought up to consider their place in the universe. Thus, from the other side of the social gamut, Teresa enjoys the forbidden fruit and luxuries of the oppressors; in sharp contrast to the destitution of the people of her own social standing, she escapes to the other side of the globe, hoping for a better future.

III. Free at last?

However, after all this political preparation and contrary to what a post-feminist reader would expect, once aboard the ship to freedom, the young protagonist does not continue her solitary but fulfilling voyage to self-discovery. On the contrary, she succumbs to her expected role as a woman. Ardizzone here, bringing to light and recording the pains and aches of the

Sicilian immigrant woman in the period of mass migration of the early 1910s, adheres to the most frequent development in the lifelines of these women, marriage and a family. Constance

Callinicos, in her own research on Greek-American women, explains the rare occurrence of women rebelling against their prescribed female role by pointing towards the exceptional defiance required by ethnic women in order for them to “overcome the insurmountable barriers set up” by their ethnic culture (26). In In the Garden of Papa Santuzzu, the narrator’s personal trip to individuality, reaches its end abruptly aboard the ship to America, the minute she encounters the man of her life, Gaetanu Grigenti. The heroine, regardless of the previous anti-conventional “male” upbringing she received, is influenced in the end by the circumstances that characterized her sisters’ lives. Far from the realistic and dynamic Teresa of her youth, the Sicilian-American author projects the softer, more sentimental, docile side of the heroine’s personality, the image of a woman seeking protection and shelter in the arms of a man, the woman for whom family is the most important value: “If I’d been born a boy, I thought, I would be exactly like him, not so much in appearance but in attitude. He was like my own brother, I thought, the mirror image of my soul. He was everything that I was, only 236

disguised and in reverse” (59). In her collection of essays Chiaroscuro: Essays on Identity

(1999), Barolini explicitly states that the female journey to self-realization and identity is

feasible only once liberation from any kind of yoke is achieved, be it parental, political, or

social (109). Such a voyage of self-discovery is not feasible in the sphere of traditional Italian

culture, where “familism” is the only destination.

Additionally, Teresa’s redeployment to older, safer roles underlines the insecurity that first

generation immigrant women felt, thus resorting to safeguarding at least some control over

their tumultuous lives. Therefore, as was previously noted in Barolini’s novel Umbertina, the matriarchal figure of pragmatic Umbertina cannot but hide her entrepreneurial skills and cunning behind the façade of a quiet housewife, promoting her much older husband instead as the force responsible for her family’s business success. It will take two future generations and Umbertina’s granddaughter Marguerite, for the women in the family to reach out and attempt to claim their independent existence, escaping from their conventionally-assigned roles. Elisabeth Ewen’s study on Italian and Jewish immigrant women of this period refers to the older generations’ unwillingness to taste freedom as opposed to their daughters’ thirst for the same. Ewen explains the mothers’ intimidation in terms of the overall feeling of fear of separation from their tradition and background, their “generous, sharing communal vision”

(205), as she says. Alice Kessler-Harris further examines women’s insecurities and lack of ambition: afraid of severing all ties from their people, the women are willing to work for less pay or accept worse work conditions, so long as they feel safe, close to their own kind (141).

To denote his heroine’s total yielding to her female role as partner, wife and mother,

Ardizzone downplays all other thoughts and concerns, and Gaetanu monopolizes his

narrator’s interest. As the heroine’s lifeline is entangled with Gaetanu’s, so her storyline is

entwined with his, to the point of identification. While Gaetanu releases his energy and power in the just causes of the proletariat and exerts himself, Teresa’s short descriptions of the 237

hellish working conditions only cover a paragraph, while she simply reveals her craving for

work outdoors, at her father’s side. In this way, she only briefly comments on the difficulties

of adjustment that immigrant women face, moving from a pre-industrialist agricultural

context to the heart of contemporary industrialism, and political activism. Mary Jo Buhle, in

her study Women in American Socialism 1870-1920 considers all the pressing factors that

deter women from active participation, in the following terms: “Village provincialism,

illiteracy particularly marked among women, religious and civil traditions of female

subservience, and the sheer difficulty of life, offered scant margin for the standard

organizational forms of political Socialism” (298). In the remainder of the chapter, Teresa’s

mere existence is centered around Gaetanu’s: she responds to his needs, teaches him

mathematics, reveals her identity and assumes her place by his side.

Teresa’s only comment regarding her previous political concerns is addressed to the

socialist, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, and is related to the practicality of wearing trousers, clearly

stemming from Teresa’s previous disguise as man. Teresa’s remark also points to the

satisfaction of the Italian immigrant women’s realistic needs that Buhle underlines as a vital

precondition for women’s participation in the Socialist party (299). Flynn’s answer to

Teresa’s feminist remark gives precedence to the socialist character of female battles at the time. Following Teresa’s reminiscences: “But she reached across the crowd to me with her eyes and voice and said that a woman needs to be able to afford trousers before she can wear them, and the crowd cheered loudly” (67) 29. Inevitably, for the proletarian women activists

of the time, the issues of gender were treated alongside those of class (Weedon 140) since

men and women were united by the single common denominator of both their troubles:

capital. Following Heidi Hartmann’s statement: “Capital and private property, the early

Marxists argued, are the cause of women’s particular oppression just as capital is the cause of

the exploitation of workers in general” (5). Consequently, the success of the common fight 238

left no room for disagreement and fragmentation within the same side. Unanimity is deemed

essential for the prompt and successful tackling of the enemy of the proletarian front, regardless of the workers’ sex, as the contemporary Marxist scholar Fredric Jameson pinpoints (The Political Unconscious 281).

However, in Ardizzone’s novel, Flynn’s prompt response to Teresa dampens all discussion

on the toils of women within the strikes and struggles of the particular era. Ardizzone refrains from further delineating the exploitation and injustice women and their feminist cause suffered at the hands of their socialist combatants. Exploited for their numbers, in order to put pressure on the employers during strikes, the working women’s needs continued, however, to be ignored (Kessler-Harris 157). Instead, they were light-heartedly sacrificed in the class war,

“as just another victim, undistinguished from the proletariat in general, or the pernicious class division of labor” (Eisenstein 11). Therese Malkiel’s fervent words, from her writings in

1909, brilliantly crystallize the problem within socialist circles and underline the necessity for cooperation between men and women for the fulfillment of both causes:

In the heat of the battle for human freedom the proletarians seem to forget that

the woman question is nothing more or less than a question of human rights.

That the emancipation of woman means in reality the emancipation of the

human being within her. They seem to overlook the fact that it is as much their

duty to fight for the working woman’s political freedom, as it is to her

advantage to make common cause with the men of her class in order to bring

about the regeneration of society. (266)

Unfortunately, even after the pleas and arduous attempts of enlightened individuals, the

socialist feminists’ pains fail to bear fruits. Sally Miller connects the socialist women’s

failure to their lack of unity, initiative, methodical planning, and work. As she declares,

“those who saw women’s liberation as a distinct part of the class struggle often did not 239

transcend traditional role assignments and family structure.” For Miller, change was never

brought about since what was essentially lacking was “one designation of a new family

structure to facilitate full female liberation” (111), an allegation confirmed by Teresa’s

engrossment in her family duties, to the detriment of the collective cause.

Following the Flynn incident, Teresa concludes her socialist preoccupations with a minor

reference to one of the permanent demands of feminists of all time related to women’s pay:

“Can you believe that after I showed up to work as a woman in the factory they cut my pay in half?” (68). The revelation of Teresa’s true identity is another opportunity for the employer to augment his profits, given the fact that Teresa’s productivity remains steady.30 However, the

unequal treatment of women at work is, for feminists, yet another insidious way for the

patriarchal forces to perpetuate male superiority. Women like Teresa are discouraged from

working and choose to dedicate themselves to the roles of housewife and mother, this way

willingly surrendering the battlefield of the workplace (Hartmann 22). Domesticity was, and

in some cases still is, promoted as the separate sphere of women’s reign in the following

words by Mrs. Samuel Gompers “A home, no matter how small is large enough to occupy (a

wife’s) mind and time” (Chafe 77).

Given the Italian emphasis on the precedence of the family in a woman’s priorities,

Teresa’s subsequent silence and disinterestedness in socialist, as well as feminist issues, as

soon as she gets pregnant, comes as no surprise. Although Ardizzone is not explicit about

Teresa’s working life, it is assumed that, like the majority of the women in her era, it follows the development of the family: as a single, childless woman, she works away from the hearth

while once a wife and a mother, she concentrates solely on the raising of a big family

(Lamphere 136). This is exactly the reason for Anne A. Maley’s laments in 1907: regarding

the social “oblivion” that characterizes women of her time, on the basis of their procreative

nature. In Maley’s own poetic diction: “O woman, we have been sex-cursed. In the life of one 240

baby we forget the unprotected weaklings of the world. In the care of one home we forget the

homeless, we forget the hovel. We think that the husband who shields us should not be so

much as look beyond our little domestic circle” (260). Significantly, while Ardizzone

sacrifices his heroine on the altar of the Italian family, feminist proletarian women attempted

to elaborate on this double, often, contradictory burden. As Laura Hapke highlights, female

authors with proletarian affiliations like Olsen, Lesueur and Smedley, explored the fragile

balance between being a good mother and a passionate proletarian fighter, all at the same

time (244).

Thus, the female immigrant’s contemplations of In the Garden of Papa Santuzzu are

abruptly terminated, probably along with her life as a working woman, since all her energy is consumed in constant child-bearing and child-rearing. In this way, Teresa ironically suffers

the burden of the fertility curse initially placed on her father, a curse whose toll in reality

tormented her mother “the ewe with the eyes of a woman” and every woman before her. As

Nancy Chodorow contends, “women are prepared psychologically for mothering through the

developmental situation in which they grow up, and in which women have mothered them”

(39). Furthermore, Teresa’s complete final yielding to her prescribed role, proves the all- powerful character of the capitalist network, since the heroine’s non-conventional nature of the heroine’s early years in Sicily is gradually defeated by the prevailing ideological system.

This way, Teresa herself turns into the “ewe with the eyes of a woman,” irrespective of her initial wishes or her promising initiation. Replicating her mother’s role, Teresa assumes her position at the center of family life as producer of future male laborers, and, through her own example, she molds the life of her daughters. Margaret L. Andersen testifies to the crushing results of ideology, since “most of our experience is determined by capitalist relations of production” and, in the end, these propagated ideas “become ideology –understood to mean a system of beliefs that legitimate and maintain the status quo” (330). 241

Ardizzone’s silenced heroine transmits, through what Dale Spender calls voicelessness

packed with meaning (115), all the bitterness of the activist women of her era: these women

of the first wave feminist movement, were activists who, at some point in their lives, had

hopes and dreams of a different life for themselves, but sooner or later had to give in and

adapt to their mothers’ niches.31 Having momentarily tasted the freedom that has always been

denied to the members of their sex, they have to return to the traditional roles assigned to them, since true change needs a time to become reality, as Barolini’s female saga proves.32

On a final note, Teresa’s chapter reaches its conclusion with a last story revolving around the theme of female fertility once again, and women’s craving to change the world. In this story, from Teresa’s home country, women use the potential of their child-bearing capacity to stop one of the most destructive powers in human lives: war. This different “blow” is this time employed as a means of establishing peace on earth and halting the suffering. Hiding the baby boys they bear in a cave, and replacing them with baby lambs, women are under the illusion that, like the Aristofanean heroine Lysistrata, they can decisively dismantle the blood thirsty war machine. Worthy of note is the cunning and manipulation, the dark sides of their personalities that these women use, so as to achieve their goal, that is, to stop the bloodshed.

Nevertheless, their decoy is eventually revealed and the punishment is dear: women will survive their husbands so that they repent for their deceit in trying to create a world without

men. The story’s sad moral foreshadows Teresa’s devastation at the early loss of her husband,

Gaetanu. 33

C. On Subalternity: Story, History and Folklore

In closing, by depicting the colorful universe of the Grigenti family, and especially through

Gaetanu and Teresa’s narratives, discussed in the foregoing, Ardizzone through his fictional

stories, places emphasis on the political activism of both genders in the turbulent years of the 242 early twentieth century, also paying homage to his ethnic past. Thus, by embracing with his fiction the long-forgotten socialist cause, the common battles, gains and losses of the past,

Ardizzone comes in a way to remedy David Harvey’s argument concerning the a-political effects of post-structuralism since, as the theoretician claims, “[b]ut the effect has been to throw out the living baby of political and ethical solidarities and similarities across differences, with the cold bathwater of capitalist-imposed conceptions of universality and sameness” (62).

Furthermore, as the reader gathers the fragments of the stories the Grigenti family members narrate, he discerns the broader picture of the ethnic group’s historical course. Thus, the personal narrative of the storytellers is deemed as their testimony, voicing similar ethnic life courses, and in the same way as Haviaras’ narrative, it is gradually submerged in the collective ethnic story. In an interesting study of ghosts in postcolonial literature, Kathleen

Brogan elaborates on the historian Lynn Hunt’s writings on the postmodern changing perception of history as stories told, either already in the past or potentially in the future (18).

Reproducing postcolonial theoretical approaches, Brogan successfully notes that the subaltern author is fully aware of his disappearance from the volumes of the oppressor’s story, a knowledge which “leads to an emphasis on multiple view points, the fictionality of any reconstruction of the past and the creation of alternative histories through the telling of unheard or suppressed stories” (18). Through Gaetanu and Teresa, the author projects the unknown Sicilian story of immigration, the pain, discrimination and struggle that the Sicilian-

American space thrives in.

Moreover, Ardizzone’s experimentations with the ethereal elements of Sicilian folklore open up an interstice of magic, difference and empowerment just like Haviaras’ universe of the small town people. As the hopeful marriage of deconstruction and post-colonialism declares, the power of the subaltern lies in the alterity and the defiance of his writing. With 243

the readings of Antonio Gramsci, Jacques Derrida and Homi Bhabha reflected in many

postcolonial works, Deborah Madsen, among the prominent contemporary scholars,

underlines the rebellious quality of postcolonial texts, their idiosyncratic nature, and their

elusiveness from categorization (6). In this sense, Ardizzone’s recourse to Sicilian culture and

language, his escape into the sphere of fantastic Sicily, through language and tale, follows the

tradition of resistant texts, which come to “resist easy assimilation to a Western perspective”

(Madsen 9). On a parallel with Haviaras’ powerful narrative, the unique material of folklore

endows the subaltern author with the ability to glide through the strict conventions set by mainstream culture, and escape into the realm of magic realism; thus, the artist is able “to create artful narratives that resist oppressions of silence, overlaying them with individual and

communal uses of voice” (Bona, By The Breath 211). This seems like a good starting point for what Henri Lefebvre has labeled as “revolutionary space” that the French geographer envisions as: “sudden uprisings followed by a hiatus, by a slow building of pressure, and finally by a renewed revolutionary outburst as a higher level of consciousness and action–an outburst accompanied, too, by great inventiveness and creativity” (419). In fact, for Lefebvre and his Marxist credos, art, in the form of the production of space, is meaningless, if it does not embrace the collective aims. Sharing similar views, authors previously mentioned, such as Yiezierska and Gold, Fante, Bezzerides, Di Donato and Steinbeck, testify to the revolutionary impetus of literature, when ethnic writing outpours its trials and tribulations under the oppressor’s boots.

However, it is important to highlight that Davidson’s and Lloyd’s personal ventures in

Chapters 3 and 4–the scope of which was limited and the character was mainly celebratory,

self-gratifying and pacifying–partly justified Jameson’s accusations (The Cultural Turn 7)

concerning the recourse to old styles, themes and techniques as lifeless and unproductive.

However, Tony Ardizzone’s novel seems motivated and inspired by the contemporary 244 collective cause. What is more, it manages convincingly to recapture the aroma and ambience of past classic works that, in their times, became the voices of the voiceless. Bringing to the forefront the rights of the oppressed, the Sicilian-American author shatters the acquired suburban silence and inertia that second and third generations have gained, while highlighting the ghetto’s grimness, the bitterness of confinement. His approach echoes Deleuze and

Guattari’s comments on the potential of minor literature since: “It is literature that produces an active solidarity in spite of skepticism; and if the writer is in the margins or completely outside his or her fragile community, this situation allows the writer all the more the possibility to express another possible community and to forge the means for another consciousness and another sensibility” (17). In this respect, through his storytelling, the author opens up the ethnic’s story and reveals its explosive potential, proving its diachronic appeal, since the oppressed still need a pen to portray their ordeals. In this sense, Tony

Ardizzone’s literary creation confirms Edward Soja’s arguments on his suggested approach to identity, space and literature. In Soja’s words: “This emerging postmodern critical human geography must continue to be built upon a radical deconstruction, a deeper exploration of those critical silences in the texts, narratives, and intellectual landscapes of the past, an attempt to reinscribe and resituate the meaning and significance of space in history and in historical materialism”( Postmodern 73).

245

Notes

1 For Ardizzone’s experimentation with magic realism see Heart of the Order.

2 According to Ardizzone’s webpage, his “short stories and occasional personal essays have appeared in over forty literary magazines and have received the Pushcart Prize, the Lawrence Foundation Award, the Bruno

Arcudi Literature Prize, the Prairie Schooner Readers' Choice Award, the Black Warrior Review Literary Award in Fiction, the Cream City Review Editors' Award in Nonfiction, and several citations in the annual anthologies

Best American Short Stories and The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses. In 1985 and 1990 he was awarded Individual Artist fellowships in fiction from the National Endowment for the Arts” (accessed on

26/04/10).

3 See Charles Sutphin’s review at http://www.indiana.edu/~girgenti/garden.html

4 See Joseph Gibaldi’s review at http://www.indiana.edu/~girgenti/garden.html

5 See the Publishers Weekly review at http://www.indiana.edu/~girgenti/garden.html

6 http://www.indiana.edu/~girgenti/garden.html

7 http://www.indiana.edu/~girgenti/garden.html

8The leftist novel of the early twentieth century; as Gustav Klaus states, in those years of social turmoil “fiction would be the means of both educating readers about political work and galvanizing them for future action” (16).

9 Di Donato could be characterized as a proletarian writer given his participation in the Socialist party and his highlighted leftist affiliation evident in Christ in Concrete. In this case, his inclusion in Denning’s “genre” is uncertain.

10 The origins of Gaetanu’s tale for the children can be retraced in the tradition of tales compiled by Giambatista

Basile in his work Lo Cunto de gli Cunti or Pentameron (1634). The opportunity for the narration of Basile’s forty-nine stories of the whole work is the same “royal” problem: the king’s daughter cannot laugh so numerous people attempt to amuse her with their tales (Zipes 855). For more information see Zipes The Great Fairy Tale

Tradition: From Straparola and Basile to the Brothers Grimm. 2001.

11 The prominent position of storytelling and the central importance of folklore for children’s political, social and sexual education, especially in times of crisis, also constitute the focus of Stratis Haviaras’ latest novel.

Blending autobiography and fiction, Haviaras proves once more his diachronic interest in the Second World

War, as it was experienced in Greece, and the Civil War that followed with Porfiro kai Mavro Nima,(‘Scarlet and Black thread’) (2007). In this novel, the young orphaned, protagonist Vassilis lives on a tiny, rocky island of 246

the Aegean Sea with a distant relative, during the dreadful years of the German occupation. Like Gaetanu in

Ardizzone’s novel, old aunt Martha distracts Vassilis from his hunger and sufferings, transporting him to the mythical years of the Byzantine Empire through the narration of a series of tales that, as the boy makes her promise, will never end. The stories for Vassilis, like Gaetanu’s audience, are as important and nourishing as the food he craves (22), easing his loneliness, lulling the lingering pain of death. They also manage to enhance the young boy’s patriotic fervor, and resuscitate the hope of glorious ethnic feats awaiting the Greeks sometime in the future.

12 For a better understanding of nineteenth century Sicilian history, see Gambino’s Blood of My Blood (1999).

13 Italo Calvino in his compilation of Italian fairy tales entitled Italian Folktales has included several tales with

Giufa’s adventures, basically originating from Sicily.

14 Following Freudian psychoanalysis (Freud 188) on the symbolism of oblong instruments, the story thrives on implications of Giufà’s sexual potency. Prominent examples in the novel are the reference to Giufà’s legs as a way for him and the beautiful girl to escape from the dark cave they have fallen in (27), as well as the goose with the long neck, where Giufà’s hands appear to be stuck and the farmer’s daughters are eventually stuck as well (28).

15 Kate Richards O’ Hare, one of the female leftist fighters in a piece written in 1911, the period of passionate labor struggles, records this atmosphere concerning socialists in the following wording: “For years the moral hid their faces, the pious shuddered, and the church trembled every time they heard the word Socialism because they feared that Socialism would bring about an era of ‘free love’” (251).

16 The freakish nature of the oppressors of this world constitutes a common theme in proletarian literature. In

John Steinbeck’s classic of the late thirties The Grapes of Wrath (1939) the small farmers are forced out of their properties by the invisible as well as all-powerful enemy: the banks and corporations. The workers’ opponent in its monstrous description makes it look invincible: “But-you see, a bank or a company can’t do that, because those creatures don’t breathe air, don’t eat side-meat. They breathe profits; they eat the interest on money. If they don’t get it, they die the way you die without air, without side-meat” (41).

17 Ardizzone’s reference to the immigration story villain alludes to the labor contractor, an omnipresent figure in immigrant accounts of the period, irrespective of the ethnic group exploited. Within Greek-American literature, Buried UnSung, Louis Tikas and the Ludlow Massacre (1991) by Zeese Papanikolas chronicles the travails of Greek-American immigrant workers in the early twentieth century. Papanikolas embarks on this research inspired by the killing of Louis Tikas, a union organizer, during the immigrant strikes of Ludlow, 247

Colorado, in 1914. The Greek-American’s eloquent description of the Greek padrone Louis Skliris, complements Ardizzone’s laconic, but eloquent, reference to the patruni. It also pinpoints the continuous oppression that the proletarians face on both sides of the Atlantic: “Skliris listens to the Cretans with ill- disguised contempt for their country dialect. For he is both above them and necessary to them. It was he who made sense of the anarchy of life in the mines and on the railroads. He filled a void in the crude workings of the industrial system and brought his men jobs as scabs and menials. He sent them out to work for $1.75 a day when a good German or Welshman could get $2.50, but this was the work the Greeks needed, the work America held out to them. And they needed Skliris because they knew him. He was the bey, the landowner, the Ottoman with his hand out to make a bribe or dispense a favor. They had always known these things” (28).

18 In his interesting study of song within American immigrant groups of the period 1830-1930, Victor Greene displays the tunes that brightened the grimness of the immigrants’ existence.

19 Upton Sinclair in The Jungle refers to the same characteristic of industrial labor, the frenetic pace demanded of the workers, in the following words: “The pace they set here, it was one that called for every faculty of a man-from the instant the first seer fell till the sounding of the noon whistle, and again from half-past twelve till heaven only knew what hour in late afternoon or evening, there was never one instant’s rest for a man, for his hand or his eye or his brain” (71).

20 This same obsessive fever for success is a common theme in ethnic literature. The constant craving for social ascension is apparent in the Greek-American novel Thieves’ Market, by the famous Hollywood scriptwriter

Albert Isaac Bezzerides. Nick, the young protagonist, recalls his father’s desperate attempts to embody the successful, self-made individual and his willing enslavement to the yoke of labor, just like Gaetanu: “Another memory came on Nick, of his father working in the coal yards of the town and coming home black with dust, of him unloading lumber from the flat cars over in Helbing’s Mill; working in the farms, the vineyards and orchards of the valley, working in the packing houses, in the wineries, buying a wagon and a horse and peddling fruits and vegetables in the streets of Fresno, shouting, Fresh orangey, peachy, trying hard to make money to buy a farm, to buy a truck, not for himself but for his wife and child, to make a foothold for them in the world”

(4).

21 Moreover, Ardizzone’s explorations of the Sicilian immigrant woman’s participation in the socialist battles for workers’ rights, through Teresa’s fictional account, comes to remind us as well as highlight the relative scarcity of female Italian-American writings especially of that period. In the Introduction to The Dreambook, her Anthology of Italian-American Women’s writings, Helen Barolini clarifies the reason for the absence of 248

Italian-American women’s works, while she eloquently pinpoints the position women of Italian origin were expected to hold. Always perceived within the sacred unit of the family, women were expected to invest all their energy and skills in the creation and maintenance of their own family. In Barolini’s own words: “Italian-

American women did not come from a tradition that considered it valuable for them to narrate their lives as documents of instruction for future generations. They were not given to introspection and the writing of thoughts in diaries. They came from a male-dominant world where their ancillary role was rigidly, immutably restricted to home and family. They came as helpmates to their men, as mothers of their children, as bearers and tenders of the old culture” (Introduction 5).

22 See Ardizzone’s story “Nonna” in Taking it Home. In her essay “Mater Dolorosa No More? Mothers and

Writers in the Italian/American Literary Tradition” (1996), Mary Jo Bona among other things, discusses how

Ardizzone in Nonna “grieves over the often damaging expectations placed on women in Italian families” (2).

23 Drawing a parallel between the Weeping Virgin Mary (Mater Dolorosa) and the motherly duties of the Italian woman of the South, Mary Jo Bona states that: “In her role of succoring the bereaved, the mater dolorosa also shares their sorrow, a role that the Southern/Italian woman was expected to perform for her family, the one abiding and stable social reality in a life of constant impoverishment, few resources, and political oppression in the Mezzogiorno" (“Mater Dolorosa” 5).

24 See especially the stories “Holy Cards” and the “Eyes of Children.”

25 See Mary Jo Bona’s “Private Justice and the Folkloric Community in the World of Italian Americans.”

26 Following Mangione and Morreale among the few exceptionally strong willed and assertive women of their era, were Anna Maria Mozzoni who “protested against the popular stereotype of the woman as a Madonna”

(236). Also, Maria Messina wrote about the life of peasant women while Grazia Deledda of Sardinia won the

Nobel Prize for literature in 1926. Mangione and Morreale also refer to powerful women of the nineteenth century who protested for Pane e Pace ‘Bread and Peace.’

27 This father-daughter confrontation between Placidu and Teresa, emblematic of a tumultuous period in male/female relationships within the family, has been repeatedly exploited in Italian-American literature, reflecting the collision of the two worlds and eras. In Josephine Gattuso Hendin’s powerful novel The Right

Thing to Do (1999), the father is “the retainer of la via vecchia (the old way) and upholder of l’ordine della familia” (Bona, Afterword 221). He represents the patriarchal mentality whose expectations from his New

World daughter provoke a tremendous friction in their relationship. Dorothy Bryant’s Miss Giardino also reveals the Italian-American father-daughter conflict that is triggered by the daughter’s wish to rise socially 249

through education. It is only on his deathbed that Miss Giardino’s father admits that he likes her, unable to express his love after all those years of abuse, caused by drinking and frustration (18).

28 See Davidson’s ending.

29 At this point, Flynn’s words reverberate the enthusiastic spirit of the socialist women since they were thrilled with the exciting prospects that they believed socialism opened up for them and their cause. In the tumult of

1911, Kate Richards O’ Hare ardently declares: “Socialism will give back to women all the freedom and security of the savage fraternal culture and add to it all the advantages of our more civilized life; will make her an equal owner and give her an equal voice in the men’s hands. She will have an equal opportunity to have access to the means of life, receive equal returns for her labor, and will thus be enabled to lift herself above the necessity of selling her virtue for bread” (252).

30 William H. Chafe, recalling the social injustice women suffered in the workplace, affirms: “Women suffered from the heavy burden of discrimination based on sex. They were assigned to the least skilled jobs, given the fewest possibilities for advancement, and treated as the most expendable members of the work force. Even more, than men, they lacked the collective strength to combat the methods of unscrupulous employers and needed a labor organization to guarantee their rights” (80).

31 The same disillusionment of women at the beginning of the twentieth century is aptly voiced in its Greek version, by Niki the seamstress and protagonist in Pantelis Voulgaris’ film Brides (Nifes) (2004). In Brides, a host of mail brides from the East, that is Greece, Russia, Turkey and Armenia, in search of a better life for themselves and their loved ones back home are forced to be cut off from their hearths, and make a living and a family in the New World. In the film, the industrious and dynamic Greek seamstress from Samothraki, Niki, makes a living aboard sewing the dancers’ costumes while being sent as a mail bride, her family’s only hope for survival. The contradictions she tastes and pressure imposed on her between the traditional home country values and her needs as a woman and independent agent are clearly visible when she falls in love with an American photographer. Unable to disgrace her family back home and let them starve by breaking the engagement to the unknown Greek immigrant, Niki is forced to succumb to her role as obedient daughter and loving sister and relinquish her newly acquired powers. Her profound disappointment for the female lot is eloquently expressed in her exchange with her American beloved. When, towards the end of the film, he corrects her English grammar on the correct plural form of the noun women, “It is not women’s, just women”, ambiguity suffuses

Niki’s retort. Her bitter answer “Just women” along with her thoughtful and melancholic facial expression share some of the protagonist’s ruminations on the prescribed lives of the women of her era. 250

32 In an interesting article George Revill discusses male and female storytelling of the immigration story. There, he claims: “Men disparage the past in order to construct themselves as self-made and migration as an appositive experience of self-fulfillment. Women idealize the past because they refer to a time when they had clearly defined status and support systems within the patriarchal family” (131).

33 Inevitably, Teresa’s image as a wife fearful of her husband’s early death, probably as a result of overwork, exposure to unhealthy work conditions, and limited male life expectancy is reminiscent of Maria Dalli’s sad figure in Mari Tomasi’s Like Lesser Gods (1949). In the aforementioned novel, the first generation immigrant wife constantly dreads the possibility of her husband’s slow death in the stonecutter’s workshop, due to the lack of precautionary measures against silicosis; such is her obsession that she even destroys his work to have him fired; her feelings of doom manage to shadow the optimistic images of life in the small Vermont town, inhabited mainly by immigrants. Towards the end of the novel, Maria Dalli sees her fears confirmed, and pays the price for her family’s survival echoing Teresa’s similar fears, in her embedded story. 251

Closings and Openings

At the outset of this journey upon the vessel of two ethnic literatures, Greek-American and

Italian-American, this comparative study was based on the common ground that the novels

share: on the one hand, the theme of returning to one’s country of origin, imbuing the diverse

works and demonstrated as a craving for the ethnic space that ethnic artists often knew solely

through family history and narrations, Sunday school or their personal readings; on the other

hand, the key role attributed to ethnic identification for the ethnic persona’s course towards

self-definition. In general, the geographical and cultural affinity between the two countries of

origin, as well as their common historical course of oppression and illiteracy naturally gave

rise to the variations of similar cultural traditions: the Persephone-Demeter myths and rituals,

the centrality of the Virgin Mary as a female role model in both cultures, female seclusion in

Harem-like homes, the bonding role of traditional cooking. Further study of the literary

depictions of ethnic life in the New World in both literatures revealed similar historical

narratives of displacement, marginalization, even discrimination, as well as female

oppression and the lingering around Old World role models, cultural traditions and beliefs.

Through ample use of myth, ritual and stories to facilitate the ethnic’s return and assist him in

developing a realistic perception of his identity, numerous Greek-American and Italian-

American novelists clearly continued, expanded and enriched with their own local color, the

cultural themes that renowned figures in letters had previously employed in the field of

African-American, Native-American and other Caucasian ethnic literatures. However, what

was initially intriguing in the six novels discussed was the frequent recourse to myth, ritual

and storytelling on the part of contemporary novelists, mostly third-generation.1 This element

cracked open an interstice of folkloric wealth, the texture, nature and rhythm of which were at first felt to be largely contrasted to the late-capitalist, hi-tech backgrounds that these authors experienced in the New World. Additional readings of the novels and theoretical 252

explorations highlighted the “anchoring” role of ethnic culture in the frantic lives of

immigrant artists, precisely because of the balance ethnic culture offered, enlightening and

enriching the ethnic persona’s materialistic life in the New World. Simultaneously, further

research revealed the broader context of economic, political and socio-historical conditions of

late postmodernism that still urge, nurture and often invest in the consumption of ethnic

culture bowing to the growing purchasing power of the ethnic consumer. Such a context

justified to a large extent and explained, and often still does, the multiplicity of artistic creations by authors of ethnic origin, frequently to the detriment of the work’s quality. Most importantly, however, a close reading of four of the six novels discussed in this thesis revealed a similar perception of ethnic space as those in postcolonial spatial theorizations, by significant scholars such as Henri Lefebvre, bell hooks, Michel Foucault, Edward Soja and

Homi Bhabha: for Athas, Barolini, Haviaras and Ardizzone, ethnic space was ultimately projected as a space of inherent potentiality and explosive energy, “a space of choice” as hooks highlights.

In particular, the discussion of the first four novels, written and published in the last two

decades of the twentieth century by female authors, focused on the centrality of the ethnic woman’s course towards self-definition and the role of ethnic space in the heroines’ enlightenment and empowerment. The examination of the two novels in the first section,

Chapters 1 and 2, Daphne Athas’s Cora (1978) and Helen Barolini’s Umbertina (1979),

respectively, revolved around the female quest for self-definition in the seventies. Thus,

Athas’s middle-aged WASP heroine, Cora, her adventures in Greece and, most importantly,

her imprisonment on an isolated beach, became for the author the perfect setting to present the heroine’s “rite of passage” in her own heterotopia, an experience that resulted in her complete physical and mental metamorphosis. The depiction of Greece as a locus saturated with philosophy and mythology, a place of mystique and potentiality, simultaneously 253

presented the inherent potential of ethnic space as the postcolonial Third Space of female

empowerment and enlightenment. Cora’s Italian-American “counterpart,” Helen Barolini’s

Umbertina, presented ethnic space through four generations of women of Calabrian origin

and their vacillations between two Worlds and backgrounds. While Athas resorted to a non- ethnic female heroine to project the importance of ethnic space, Barolini followed the changing allegiance to ethnic space, from the severing of the ties and rejection for survival of

the first generation to the fourth generation concept of hybridity and female personal

“agency.” Like Athas, Barolini incorporates the literary and theoretical influences of the 70s,

psychoanalysis, feminism and identity issues in her novel, and comes to offer a historical,

pragmatic, and diachronic approach to the female immigration story; thus, the female ethnic

persona reached a balanced and constructive perception of ethnic space with Umbertina’s

great-granddaughter, Tina. When the visit to the legendary family birthplace, Castagna,

demystified her mother’s erroneous notions and revealed it to be a site of deprivation and

oppression, Tina managed to value ethnic space for its potential to spawn female dynamism

and resilience, attributes she had long equated with the figure of her great-grandmother,

Umbertina. As the heroine made well-deliberated life decisions, to have a scholarly career in

Italian literature drawing from her great-grandmother’s strength and dynamism, she was

projected as the embodiment of Bhabha’s hybridity, a powerful mixture of two worlds and

backgrounds.

Still exploring the same theme twenty years later, the ethnic female journey of self-

definition, in the post-feminist era this time, the novels in the second section, Catherine

Temma Davidson’s The Priest Fainted (1998) and Susan Caperna Lloyd’s No Pictures in My

Grave (1992), unraveled their authors’ experiences in the land of their ancestors, through

first-person narrations that concluded with triumphant endings. Reflecting her feminist

beliefs, Davidson’s narrator rewrote the myths and explained the recipes through a feminist 254

perspective, while at the same time she attempted to discover her mother’s and grandmother’s

stories, to create a female matriarchy. Her discoveries about the “lot” of Greek women of her

time, gradually revealed her Orientalist perception as well as her neo-colonialist stance,

whereby she selectively opted for elements from her dual cultural background, at will, and depending on the occasion. Thus, ethnic space was still perceived as a site of female oppression, burdened by Saidian stereotypes of the Orient and further fettered by its oscillation between spirituality and backwardness. The novel’s denouement at the end of a year in Greece, found the heroine more certain about her identity and background: happy with the selective cultural combinations she had made, following her mother’s example, the heroine oversimplified, for mass consumption, the female quest of gender and ethnic identity.

On a similar note, Lloyd’s heroine found recourse in Sicily for all its spirituality and ritual,

though this was technically not her father’s place of origin. Having declared her need for

spiritual sustenance, the narrator came to consume the advertised “home-country” experience

and explored the local sites, ruins and rituals, in her attempt to resolve her gender and identity

dilemmas. Like Davidson’s heroine in her relations with the local women, Susan, the

narrator, displayed her Orientalist pre-conceptions and, willingly and selectively, resorted to

an identity invoked at will, depending on the situation: either her spiritual Old World legacy

or her New World dynamism. For her too, the female ethnic space was a sphere of Harem-

like relations that she could observe from a distance and be thankful for her good luck and

American citizenship. The novel’s coda again misinterpreted an important life process and

deceived women into being satisfied with symbolic endings and the triumph of a heroine

who, finally self-confirmed, managed to participate in an all male ritual.

The final section of this thesis discussed two novels, Stratis Haviaras’ When The Tree

Sings (1979) and Tony Ardizzone’s In the Garden of Papa Santuzzu (1999), two books

written by male authors whose narrators employed storytelling as a means of survival in 255 turbulent times. Haviaras’ Bildungsroman, unraveling the story of a young boy in a period of occupation and civil strife, projected storytelling as a means of survival, political activism and empowerment, when all hope appears to be lost. The child’s recourse to his rich ethnic background, mainly the subversive traditional shadow puppet theatre, and the universe of small town people, with the incredible feats and enchanting storytelling that the author created, proved to be catalytic in forming the child’s identity and his political education.

Moreover, imbued with the author’s love for magic realism, Haviaras’ embedded stories were saturated with Gramsci’s notion of “alternative hegemony,” with the subaltern never surrendering. In this way, ethnic space was demonstrated as a site of collective political activism, “a space of resistance” following bell hooks’ teachings. Thus, through the young narrator’s personal story of pain and loss, Haviaras synechdochally recorded the “alternative” history of the subaltern that transcended time and space. In the same vein, Ardizzone wrote his own “alternative history” through his frame tale narrative and the trials and tribulations of the ethnic socialist worker in the New World. Through Gaetanu and his wife, Teresa’s, narratives, Ardizzone returned to the beginning of the twentieth century and, through the heroes’ consecutive storytelling reminded the reader of the proletarian fighting spirit in the explosive era of strikes in the early twentieth century. With his story to the strikers’ children, as well as his personal story of immigration, Gaetanu was reminiscent of Lefebvre’s

“revolutionary space” and confirmed, once again, Deleuze and Guattari’s teachings on the political importance of ethnic literature. As the author gave voice to Teresa and her tale of female immigration at the beginning of the century, he brought to the fore the courage, dynamism and hard work of the ethnic woman, long neglected behind her veil of seclusion and family obligations.

In closing, the final lines of this comparative study cannot but confess to a feeling of incompleteness and a thirst yet unquenchable: for all the novels that were excluded, denied 256

discussion and examination, powerful literary creations by both ethnic literatures, but also for

the significant films and interesting poetry, all depicting two parallel ethnic courses, similar

ordeals, victories and losses. As far as the novels here discussed are concerned, further

explorations could be attempted to delve deeply into themes that could only be briefly

touched upon here, such as the issue of trauma and depression which lurked behind most

texts. With only two novels examining the male ethnic point of view, future comparative

studies could revolve around such perspectives, examining male political activism in depth.

Such thoughts may potentially alleviate the aforementioned thirst through the promise of

more journeys to come, aboard the vessel of the two ethnic literatures, or even coupling them

with other ethnic literatures; besides, how can one do other than enthusiastically accept bell hooks’ inviting words: “marginality as a site of resistance. Enter that space. Let us meet there” (152).

257

Notes

1 Among the novelists discussed Haviaras is first-generation, Athas second and the rest are third generation immigrants. Patrona 258

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Biographical Note

Theodora Patrona holds a B.A. from the School of English, Aristotle University of

Thessaloniki and an M.A. in Translation from the University of Surrey, UK. Ms Patrona has

been working as a state school teacher since 2004. She has also worked as a teaching

assistant at the School of English teaching Poetry and Computer Skills to first year students,

American Literature and Culture: 17th-18th centuries and 19th Century American Realism and

Naturalism to older students. Ms Patrona has presented her research in international conferences in Greece, Europe and the States and she has also published essays on Greek-

American and Italian-American literature. She holds the 2010 American Italian Historical

Association (AIHA) Memorial Fellowship. Ms Patrona is interested in the interweavings of ethnicity, gender, memory and space in literature and film.