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RESEARCH PRODUCT

De la violence dans quelques nouvelles de Verga

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Giovanni Verga was a man of his time. He believed in progress and thought that evolution entailed the elimination of those who were unfit to economic change. The author of this article analyses three short stories whose main characters are the victims of social violence. Because Nedda is the only daughter of a poor and sick widow she is doomed to destitution, celibacy and dishonour when she gets pregnant. Rosso Malpelo is a child who works in a quarry and after his father’s death is bullied by his fellow workers while he himself victimizes a sick lame boy who works under his supervision. In La libertà Verga relates the revolt of the peasants of Bronte and the ensuing repression by Garibaldi’s deputy Nino Bixio and his troops. However, the article focuses on how Verga compels his readers to face violence. In Nedda the narrator has compassion for the “poor girl’s fate” and so have the readers. This means that the harshness of Nedda’s plight is softened and partly concealed by the sympathy her condition arouses in the readers. In Rosso Malpelo on the contrary the narrator (as demonstrated by Romano Luperini) thinks that physical abuse is a natural feature of social life. Consequently the readers must dissociate themselves from the narrator in order to protect themselves from the violence reported in the text. In La libertà, there is no mediation between the gruesome sight of the peasants’ cruelty or, later, the ferocity of the armed forces, and the reader. Hence the latter’s inability to take sides either with the rioting masses or those who carried out the repression.