'New' Woman in Verga and Pirandello

This book investigates the transposition of short stories to drama in the works of two leading Sicilian authors, Giovanni Verga (1840-1922) and Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936), focussing specifically on their representation of women. De Francisci argues that, once the female characters are transposed into the dramatic genre, they gain a voice of their own and thus become 'new' women whose antecedents can be traced to Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House (1879). In uncovering the voices of the 'new' women, the book draws attention to the early actresses, namely Eleonora Duse (1858-1924) and Marta Abba (1900-1988), who were instrumental in transforming the female characters from their fictional existence on the page to their physical enactment on the stage, and were key influences on Verga and Pirandello respectively. By revealing the evolution of the female voice in the two authors' works and the added enrichment of this voice as a result of its transposition to the dramatic genre, the book offers new insights into why the narrative genre is so well suited to Verga's preoccupations, why the theatrical form is more effective in articulating Pirandello's umorismo, and what Pirandello's adaptations reveal about the way in which he comes to negotiate the transition from Realism (or verismo) to Modernism.
Enza De Francisci is Lecturer in Translation Studies at the University of Glasgow.