Prosperine Tucci—Violetta D’Annunzio

Prosperine Tucci and Violetta D’Annunzio are childhood companions whose friendship is tested by separation, violence, and flight. When Violetta returns to Pescara after a year under Gallante Selvi’s control, their renewed closeness gives Prosperine both a person to protect and a reason to risk everything. Their bond grows from intimate care into a partnership in resistance, and finally into a shared escape from the consequences of their actions.

Reunion and recognition

On Violetta’s first day back in Pescara, she and Selvi behave politely and affectionately in front of visitors at Ciccolina’s cottage. Their public performance conceals the state of their marriage. Prosperine, meanwhile, has been left to cook and clean for the visiting couple, and her protests are dismissed by her father. The contrast places the women in different forms of constraint: Violetta is living under her husband’s authority, while Prosperine is expected to serve him and remain obedient at home.

The performance gives way to intimacy in private. Violetta tells Prosperine what the past year has been like: Selvi has repeatedly beaten and humiliated her, accused her of infidelity, and subjected her to degrading treatment. She describes serious lasting consequences, including a shoulder that no longer works properly and a miscarriage. Her account also includes thoughts of ending her life. Rather than answer with judgment or disbelief, Prosperine receives the story and stays with her. Their reunion is therefore not a restoration of the carefree companionship they once had; it is recognition of what Violetta has endured and an immediate commitment to her care.

After Violetta speaks, Prosperine brushes her hair, an act of tenderness she had practiced before. Violetta still has her tortoiseshell brushes, a familiar possession carried across the rupture in their lives. Prosperine puts her in clean clothes and watches over her as she sleeps. The gestures are modest but consequential: Violetta’s return makes their friendship a place of refuge, while Prosperine’s attentiveness gives that refuge practical form.

Care becomes resistance

Prosperine’s concern quickly turns into anger at Selvi. While butchering rabbits in the village square, she imagines each act as a punishment directed at him and vows that he will pay with his life. Yet her attachment to Violetta also limits what she is willing to do. She considers openly attacking Selvi, but recognizes that arrest would leave Violetta without her protection and care. Her friendship is not simply the feeling that prompts revenge; it shapes her calculation of what risks she can afford to take.

Prosperine first tries to use the evil eye against Selvi, reasoning that the ability she associates with diagnosing and curing it might also let her direct it at someone she hates. The attempt fails. A different possibility emerges from the debris Selvi leaves behind when his work goes wrong. Prosperine is made to clean up after his outbursts, and the discarded material accumulates near the animals. When a young goat eats some of it, becomes ill, and dies, she recognizes a way to poison Selvi. The discovery converts her anger into a plan, but she does not act alone.

Prosperine and Violetta prepare in secret, whispering when Selvi is nearby and working on their plan when he is absent. They choose Sunday, when Prosperine is not required to go to the square. Their joint preparation marks a change in the relationship: Violetta is no longer only the injured friend whom Prosperine comforts. She participates in deciding what to do, and the two women become partners in an act that is both retaliation and an attempt to escape Selvi’s continuing power over her.

Conspiracy and flight

The plan succeeds in killing Selvi, but it does not remain concealed. After the undertaker removes his body, Violetta embraces Prosperine and cries. At first, both women hope the danger may have passed. That hope is short-lived: a man who ate some of the tainted food falls ill, and the resulting evidence leads the local authorities to investigate Selvi’s death. The circumstances turn their private alliance into a shared flight from discovery and punishment.

Prosperine’s father reaches her before the police arrive. He gives her money and urges her to run. His intervention complicates her sense of him: she had believed he had disowned her, yet his final embrace lets her understand that he has loved her, even though he had previously sold her away. Prosperine leaves Pescara with Violetta, and the pair use Violetta’s beauty and Prosperine’s money to enlist the help of fishermen who had desired Violetta. Their escape depends on their distinct resources, but its decisive feature is that they leave together.

They travel by boat down the coast, passing Bari and Brindisi and crossing the Strait of Messina to Sicily. Prosperine has never before left Pescara. In Catania, the women find work on an olive farm, but suspicion surrounding Violetta prompts them to escape again, this time by train to Palermo. Their movement from place to place extends the partnership beyond the immediate crisis: survival requires them to keep adapting together, rather than to treat their flight as a single completed escape.

Mutual aid beyond Pescara

In the weeks after their flight, Violetta grants favors to a legal contact, who secretly informs Prosperine’s father that the two women are alive and need money. The message sets up a long wait. Nearly a year passes before a young sailor arrives with a photograph, recognizes Prosperine, and gives her a purse of money from her father. He is her younger sister Teodolina’s husband, not a police agent as Prosperine fears. Help from the family reaches her through this unexpected connection, while Prosperine and Violetta remain together far from home.

The relation’s defining movement is from unequal exposure to shared agency. Violetta returns diminished by Selvi’s abuse; Prosperine responds with shelter, companionship, and an increasingly dangerous resolve. Their conspiracy does not erase the harm they have caused or the danger they face, but the narrative presents their escape as a joint act undertaken because neither woman can secure the other’s safety from within Pescara. Friendship here means more than sympathy: it is care made material, a plan made together, and continued mutual support across an uncertain life in exile.