On the Circumvesuviana and The Vesuvian Imaginary: The Woman‟s Journey to Naples in Three Texts Lucy Madeline Dougan Bachelor of Arts (Honours) This thesis is presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of the University of Western Australia Discipline Group of English and Cultural Studies 2009 Abstract “On the Circumvesuviana” is a collection of poems that explores what it is to have been born and raised in Australia without knowledge of an Italian father and a family in Naples. Travelling between “here” and “there,” Australia and Naples, this work necessarily involves a renegotiation of self and place. The poems draw on memory, family stories, objects and myths to articulate both the joy and dislocation of this experience. The metaphorical relationship between the poems and the critical work is broadly articulated through notions of the hidden or buried, journeys, and narratives of self- reconstruction. Both approaches, the poems and the textual analysis in the exegesis, sit inside a wider tradition of women‟s journeys to Italy read as transformative experiences, and focus specifically on this tradition in relation to Naples. The exegesis considers women‟s journeys to Naples in Roberto Rossellini‟s film Journey to Italy, Shirley Hazzard‟s novella The Bay of Noon and Mario Martone‟s film L‟amore molesto. It examines how setting can elicit similar stories and comparable sets of representational concerns, tracing intertextual relationships between Rossellini‟s influential film and the other two texts, and locating these journeys inside wider contexts such as the Grand Tour, the motif of the heroine transformed by Italy, the construction of the Italian South as Other, and the long association between Naples and the feminine. It locates and traces a Vesuvian narrative from outsider to insider views that posits the central paradox of Naples as a site of catastrophe and a space that offers each heroine the chance of self-reconstruction. I argue in readings of the three texts that the central female protagonists turn inwards away from the famous panorama of the Bay of Naples to investigate ruined spaces and radical sites of anti-spectacle. ii Contents Abstract ii Acknowledgements iv On the Circumvesuviana 1 Table of Contents 2 The Vesuvian Imaginary: The Woman‟s Journey to Naples in Three Texts 58 Introduction. Naples Outside-In 59 Chapter One. The Recasting of the World: Journey to Italy 73 Chapter Two. Another Journey to Italy: Intertextuality in The Bay of Noon 94 Conclusion. Naples Inside-Out: L‟amore molesto 116 Figures 130 List of Works Cited 138 iii Acknowledgements My thanks to the Discipline Group of English and Cultural Studies, and the Graduate Research School, for supporting this work through even the most challenging times. I have had the great, good luck to have had wonderful supervision. My biggest debt must go to Professor Gail Jones who has helped me immeasurably to conceptualize this work, and who has lent me her strength and her critical acumen. I was blessed to have additional supervision at the beginning by Professor Dennis Haskell and at the end by Assoc. Professor Judith Johnston. Without their help and good humour, the job would have been much harder, my very warm thanks to them both. Special thanks, as well, to Dr. Kieran Dolin for always patiently helping me through the paperwork trail. I owe a great debt to the following friends who have kept me afloat with their generous support – my heart-felt thanks to Aaron Hales, Gerri Cox, Sally Scott, Susan Midalia and Mojgan Sadighi. I would also like to thank my publisher Professor Ivor Indyk and my poetry mentors, Jean Kent and Paul Hetherington, for their on-going support. I value their judgment and generosity greatly. Lastly, I want to thank my family for putting up with me through this demanding time. I owe a particular debt to the Ferrara family in Naples for their unfailing hospitality and for sharing knowledge about their elusive city. Mille grazie. My biggest debt of all I owe to my family here – to Tim, Larry, Dan and Julia Dolin for their daily love, patience and support. It would not have been possible to do the job without you. Because this work is about a number of strong women who come to terms with life‟s vicissitudes in Naples, I dedicate it, with love, to all the strong women in my family both at home and in Naples, and to the memory of Dorothy and of Rosa. iv On the Circumvesuviana 1 Table of Contents I: Origin Uncertain ............................................................................. 4 Wayside ................................................................................................. 5 Compact ................................................................................................ 7 On Looking Back .................................................................................. 9 Thickly then......................................................................................... 11 The Chest............................................................................................. 13 Monstrous ............................................................................................ 15 Head in the Sand ................................................................................. 16 Not Mine ............................................................................................. 18 I Went…(that words can‟t) ................................................................. 19 II: Rivers, Oceans .............................................................................. 21 L‟avventuro ......................................................................................... 22 Lost Rivers .......................................................................................... 23 Circlet .................................................................................................. 24 A Wedding .......................................................................................... 25 Your Birth ........................................................................................... 27 The Mice ............................................................................................. 28 Beneath Us .......................................................................................... 31 III: A Journey In ............................................................................... 33 The Foal............................................................................................... 34 Cumae.................................................................................................. 35 Dislocation .......................................................................................... 36 The Charm ........................................................................................... 38 Green Pool at San Giorgio a Cremano ................................................ 39 The Ties My Sister Makes .................................................................. 40 The Sisters ........................................................................................... 41 The Bracelet ........................................................................................ 43 At Villa Bruno ..................................................................................... 45 Crying in Public .................................................................................. 46 Thresholds ........................................................................................... 49 A Ruin ................................................................................................. 52 Holes.................................................................................................... 53 A Question........................................................................................... 54 2 Passport ............................................................................................... 55 On the Circumvesuviana ..................................................................... 57 3 I: Origin Uncertain I know that it is by being unknown to myself that I live. Hélène Cixous, rootprints: memory and life-writing 4 Wayside My body wants the long way back just to find lost land rehearsing what it will be – unexpected flowerings locked tight in seeds. I have searched for this as one seeks origin: to find the errant sower jaunty in a book of days, the uncertain map of family trees. It is that ur-place of first collections – black furred caterpillars, glass jars and grass rash, time in suspension, place as mood. Seeds in my pocket put me in mind of the strange, small plants we grew in the cupboard – 5 an experiment that claimed my pity. And of my nipote, a love child too, who took me aside and mimed at fireworks with hands and eyes, his fingers sprayed. We‟re like this, you see, all kaboom and splutter – who knows where we‟ll fall. Somewhere between Piazza Dante and Piazza Gesù is all I am told. My body wants the dark of a city when paths were lit by shrines, by love, their frail flames petals no-one owns. 6 Compact The day of the row about true fathers we hide in the lean-to. My sister soothes my telling skin. Skilled as a bush doctor, she works from the clam of her compact until my face is set to dissemble. Her fingers are smooth as crepe strips of paperbark, her powder fine as the stuff they release. When the hinge of her compact shuts, it sounds out its sound on pact – the secrets between us of lies and lineage; and my face – the unsure “O” of my