Giovanna’s Passage into Adulthood

Giovanna’s path traces how a wound to her self-image draws her into family secrets and competing worlds, before she begins to claim responsibility for her own choices.

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The Inherited Face

The Inherited Face A child’s certainty Giovanna has grown up believing that her father’s affection confirms her beauty and secures her place in the family. When she overhears Andrea compare her emerging face to Vittoria’s, the remark feels like a verdict on both her appearance and her future. The search for a self She examines photographs and then her reflection, looking for signs of the aunt her parents have taught her to fear. The search turns ordinary adolescent changes into evidence of an inherited defect, and contributes to her distraction at school and growing alienation from herself. Meeting Vittoria does not resolve the question. Giovanna finds her aunt frightening and compelling at once, and learns that beauty, ugliness, affection, and cruelty cannot be neatly separated into the categories her childhood depended on.

Learning to Lie

Learning to Lie Two competing accounts After her first visit to Vittoria, Giovanna tells Andrea a deliberately limited version of what happened. Her aunt has described Andrea as the enemy who severed her from the family; her father has warned that Vittoria will use Giovanna to hurt him. Giovanna begins hiding what she hears and feels from both sides. Truth as a disguise She also starts embellishing the story of Vittoria for Angela and Ida, discovering that invention can make her feel powerful and interesting. These lies do not simply conceal events: they help her try on identities and preserve separate bonds with people who would otherwise demand her loyalty. As the adults’ secrets multiply, Giovanna finds it increasingly hard to tell whether she is repeating a fact, shaping it, or protecting herself from it. Her developing independence therefore begins not with open defiance but with the uneasy practice of withholding and distortion.

The Family’s Collapse

The Family’s Collapse A secret made visible The return of the bracelet by Costanza accompanies the rupture between Andrea and Mariano and the collapse of Giovanna’s understanding of the adults around her. Nella reveals that Andrea has maintained another relationship for years, while Giovanna’s suspicions about Nella and Mariano remain caught between observation and uncertainty. Retreat and rebellion Believing herself implicated in the disorder, Giovanna withdraws from her friends, abandons her studies, and fails her first year of high school. She treats failure as a mark of difference, even as her mother tries to keep it from others and maintain some structure in their damaged household. When Andrea leaves, Giovanna interprets his absence as a judgment on her and becomes increasingly estranged from the family life that once defined her. Her isolation is not freedom yet; it is a form of self-punishment and a refusal to perform the successful daughter her parents expected.

A New Measure of Desire

A New Measure of Desire A powerful new ideal Giovanna’s first sight of Roberto overwhelms her with desire and the belief that her life must change. She begins to imagine that his learning, moral seriousness, and attention can offer a measure of worth different from her father’s approval or Vittoria’s inheritance of family identity. Friendship and self-deception As Giovanna and Roberto speak, she studies and reads in preparation for their next conversation. She also becomes close to Giuliana, whose relationship with Roberto gives Giovanna both a cherished connection and a source of jealousy. When Roberto calls her beautiful, she receives the compliment as a possible rebirth, though she knows she may be mistaking kindness for a promise. That uncertainty becomes consequential when Giovanna returns to Milan alone. She recognizes that she is prepared to betray Giuliana for the chance to be chosen, then refuses Roberto’s invitation to share his bed. Desire has not made her morally clear, but her refusal shows that she can interrupt an impulse rather than simply obey it.

Choosing Her Own Exposure

Choosing Her Own Exposure The end of a borrowed plan Giovanna’s experiences with Roberto leave her with neither the romantic possession she imagined nor the secure moral guidance she hoped to find. She has wanted to live on the edges of his and Giuliana’s life, yet she increasingly sees that such a role would make her dependent on their attention. A deliberate step forward Back in Naples, she resumes her studies and develops friendships and arguments of her own, without resolving the contradictions that have shaped her. Her sexual experience with Rosario is painful and awkward, but the decision is hers, not a fulfillment of Vittoria’s romantic ideal or an attempt to become Roberto’s chosen beloved. At the end, Giovanna leaves for Venice with Ida. Their promise to become adults differently from the adults around them is hopeful rather than conclusive. Giovanna has not escaped family history, but she has begun to act without pretending that one person’s approval can settle who she is.

At age twelve, after her school performance begins to decline

At thirteen, during the first months of her meetings with Vittoria

At thirteen, after the bracelet is returned and her parents’ relationships come into the open

At fifteen, after Giovanna meets Roberto in the parish church

At sixteen, after the Milan journey and before leaving for Venice