The evil eye

The evil eye is a folk power Prosperine Tucci considers using against Gallante Selvi after he abuses her friend Violetta D’Annunzio. The episode makes the idea hinge on a distinction between recognizing or curing harm and deliberately inflicting it: Prosperine knows how to diagnose and treat the evil eye, but hopes that knowledge might also let her wield it as vengeance.

Meaning and Practice

Prosperine first considers more direct violence, then rejects it because killing Gallante Selvi in public could leave her imprisoned and unable to care for Violetta. She turns instead to the gaze, hoping to give wrongdoers what she thinks God is too busy to deliver. Although Ciccolina had refused to teach her the art of vengeance, Prosperine reasons that her experience treating the evil eye might enable her to cast it. The text presents this as her hope, not as proof that the power exists or that she can command it.

Prosperine’s Attempt

For two or three days, Prosperine watches Gallante Selvi with hatred as he sleeps, eats, paints, and solders. When he shouts complaints about her work, she glares back at him. Her gaze is therefore both a covert attempt to harm him and an act of defiance within a household where he can openly berate her. The method lets her pursue revenge without the knife or cleaver she had imagined using in the village square.

Failure and Significance

The attempt produces no visible injury: the longer Prosperine stares, the more powerful and healthy Gallante Selvi seems. Meanwhile, Violetta D’Annunzio’s suffering continues; she wakes Prosperine with sobbing and later shows her new bruises, including teeth marks on her leg. The contrast leaves the evil eye suspended between belief and impotence. Prosperine’s conviction that Gallante Selvi will pay expresses her refusal to accept his violence as final, but the passage offers no supernatural remedy for Violetta’s immediate danger.