Prosperine

Prosperine Tucci is a displaced Sicilian woman whose life in Domenico Tempesta’s family story is marked by labor imposed in childhood, separation from home, a hard-won bond with Ciccolina, and violent conflict with Domenico. He first sees her as an unwanted bride and persistently calls her the Monkey, a degrading label that shapes how her actions reach the reader. Her account of her past, set against his hostile narration, reveals a person whose resistance is repeatedly interpreted by men with power over her as a problem to be controlled.

Identity and First Appearance

Prosperine is introduced to Domenico by Nunzio as his prospective wife. The introduction takes place in front of the brothers, with Prosperine standing in a black dress and holding small glasses of anisetta on a tray. Domenico’s response is immediate rejection. He had expected a young girl, he says, and instead judges her to be nearly thirty; her face also reminds him of Filippa, the drowned monkey associated with his brother Pasquale’s tragedy. These comparisons belong to Domenico’s contemptuous point of view, not to an independent account of Prosperine’s character. He leaves rather than accept the match.

The scene establishes an imbalance that persists in the later episodes: Domenico gets to name and appraise Prosperine, while she initially appears to him as the object of a family arrangement. The nickname Monkey reduces her to the resemblance he perceives and follows her into the narrative even when she is telling her own history. That history complicates his caricature by showing the circumstances that have shaped her life and the practical skills and loyalties she has developed.

Childhood Labor and Separation from Home

In Prosperine’s account, her father is a poor macaroni-maker whose wife and son have died of typhoid, leaving him to raise three daughters. As the eldest, she has to take on a maternal role toward her younger sisters while working in the family shop. Their days begin before dawn: their father makes dough from semolina, and the sisters press, cut, and shape macaroni with their hands and machines. The repeated motions become so ingrained that, years later and far from home, Prosperine still catches her fingers making pasta when her mind wanders.

Her removal from that life is arranged by men negotiating payment. Gallante Selvi visits the shop, and Prosperine’s father considers the commission he might receive. By the time the painter leaves, Prosperine has been assigned to work for his elderly godmother: sweeping, gathering firewood, tending goats and chickens, and helping with a small business in return for food and lodging. Her father receives part of the payment in advance, with the balance promised for Christmas, when Gallante is due to return to Pescara. The bargain takes Prosperine away from the macaroni shop and her sisters, but it is still made over her head and in exchange for money to her father.

The change brings relief as well as loss. Prosperine later recognizes how much she had hated the repetitive labor and the daily soreness in her back, legs, and fingers. She wonders whether remaining in the shop might have left her bent like the old woman. At the same time, she remembers the pain of being separated from her father and sisters. Her account holds both facts together: leaving was a release from exhausting work, but the release came through another person’s decision and left her alone in a new household.

Ciccolina and the Inheritance of Protection

At first, Prosperine goes to Mass on Sundays. When Ciccolina suffers a dizzy spell, Prosperine stays behind to help her, and the interruption becomes a turning point in their relationship. Ciccolina calls her figlia mia and hints that she may someday pass on her gifts. Prosperine no longer fears the older woman or her capacity to harm her. She looks closely at Ciccolina’s face and physical features without recoiling, recognizing a familiarity and tenderness where she had once felt fear.

Prosperine’s attachment develops in a world where she feels betrayed and threatened. She recalls villagers who spat at her and called her a little witch, her father’s decision to send her away for Gallante’s money, and Gallante’s role in separating her from Violetta. Ciccolina refuses to teach her revenge, warning instead against using power to take over God’s work. This refusal matters: Prosperine receives a practice associated with protection and resistance, but not permission to answer every injury with retaliation.

On Christmas Eve, Ciccolina gives Prosperine a necklace of dried red chilis, explaining that the pointed corno can break the evil eye and protect its wearer. She then instructs her in a ritual using olive oil and three bowls of holy water from the cistern blessed by Padre Pomposo. Prosperine repeats Ciccolina’s incantations and learns to read the oil on the water. Ciccolina rubs saliva onto Prosperine’s eyelids and tells her to use what she knows against evil. The episode presents the transfer as a specific act of teaching and trust; it does not establish whether the supernatural powers Prosperine learns are objectively real.

Ciccolina dies the following month in the bed she shares with Prosperine. Prosperine tries to wake her, then uses holy water and oil to read the beads on the water’s surface as a sign that Ciccolina’s soul is at peace. She closes Ciccolina’s eyes and kisses her hands, face, and the lump on her forehead. The woman who had once frightened her has become a mother-like figure whom Prosperine loves in her entirety, including the features others might find ugly. Ciccolina’s death leaves Prosperine without the person who had offered both shelter and a form of protection.

Resistance, Violence, and Confinement

Later, Prosperine’s precarious position is visible in a dispute over her wages and conduct at the boardinghouse. Signora Siragusa gives Domenico four dollars rather than the usual six, reporting that Prosperine has stayed upstairs claiming illness, failed to satisfy the other boarders, and made nighttime trips down the attic stairs. She threatens deductions if food or silverware goes missing and suggests that Prosperine may be meeting one of the bachelors. She also speculates that the illness could mean Prosperine is pregnant, but this is an accusation, not a confirmed fact. The information reaches Domenico through the landlady, who controls Prosperine’s pay and lodging; it provides no independent confirmation of the allegations.

In a later domestic confrontation, Domenico demands an apology from Prosperine. She bites the hand with which he is holding her. He responds by pulling her by her braids, striking her, and slamming her face against a wall after she reaches for a bread knife. Ignazia tries to intervene, and Concettina cries. The scene makes clear that Prosperine’s resistance does not occur on equal terms: Domenico controls the household encounter and answers her physical refusal with greater force. His narration calls her crazy and treats the injury to his own hand as a grievance, revealing how his account centers his authority even while recording his violence.

At New London station, Prosperine takes Ignazia’s hand and urges her toward a departing train. Ignazia begins to follow, then looks back fearfully at the policeman. Domenico tells her that he has an arrangement with him and threatens that she could be jailed and separated from her child if she leaves. The moment shows Prosperine actively trying to help Ignazia escape, while Domenico uses his relationship with the police and the threat of custody to force a choice. The train’s arrival makes the possible departure immediate; Prosperine’s appeal is not an abstract wish but an attempt to get Ignazia out before the opportunity passes.

Prosperine is eventually taken to an asylum in a police wagon, struggling against a straitjacket. When she sees Domenico, she screams curses at him. He has signed the admission papers, and the scene ends with her physically restrained and in an institution. The passage does not establish a diagnosis or offer a clinical account of her condition. It does show the consequence of Domenico’s intervention: a woman who had tried to resist him and help Ignazia is delivered to an asylum in restraints.

Narrative Role and Significance

Prosperine’s story is filtered through Domenico’s first-person account, which repeatedly uses the Monkey as a name for her and frames her conduct through his suspicions, anger, and sense of masculine authority. The contrast between that framing and the details he recounts is central to her characterization. She is not only the woman he rejects as a bride: she is an eldest daughter shaped by exhausting work, a displaced worker whose father accepts payment for her labor, a mourner who loved Ciccolina, and a person who attempts to act against the confinement imposed on herself and others.

The narrative also links different forms of control without making them interchangeable. Prosperine’s father decides her future through a financial bargain; the boardinghouse owner controls her wages and threatens her lodging; Domenico uses physical violence and police influence; and the asylum receives her in a straitjacket. Against these arrangements, her remembered work with her hands, her care for Ciccolina, and her attempt to lead Ignazia to the train provide concrete instances of agency. Her ending is nevertheless one of confinement, and the story offers it through the same narrator whose contempt helped define her from the start.