Giovanna fails her first year of high school

Giovanna’s failure to advance at the end of her first year of high school exposes the distance between her parents’ attempts to manage a setback and her own need to have it recognized. Her mother disputes the school’s judgment and promises secrecy; Giovanna, by contrast, feels that failure is the one mark that belongs to her. The episode makes academic disappointment a crisis of identity, family responsibility, and shame.

The School’s Decision and Her Mother’s Protest

In June, Giovanna’s mother goes to the school to learn how Giovanna has been doing and discovers that she has not been promoted. Although she knew Giovanna was doing very poorly, she considers failure an extreme outcome. She wants to speak to the teachers and the principal, and brings Giovanna along as if her presence could help prove that an injustice has occurred. The visit is painful for both of them: the teachers have difficulty remembering Giovanna, but her records show poor grades and an excessive number of absences.

Her mother is particularly upset by those absences and asks where Giovanna went and what she did. Giovanna says she was at the Floridiana. The literature teacher interrupts to say that Giovanna apparently has no talent for classical studies. Giovanna does not answer, though she wants to reject the broader judgment she hears in the remark: she no longer feels talented at anything, and sees herself as neither intelligent nor capable of good intentions. Her conclusion reaches beyond schoolwork into a sweeping sense of personal inadequacy.

Her mother answers for her, insisting that Giovanna is talented and describing the school year as a period in which she was a little lost. The contrast is pointed: in front of the school, her mother defends Giovanna’s capacity, while Giovanna’s private account of herself has become much harsher than the teacher’s assessment.

Blame, Secrecy, and Shame

Outside the school, Giovanna’s mother blames her husband for the failure, arguing that he left and should have been watching over, helping, and encouraging their daughter. She continues blaming him at home. Unable to find him there, she seeks him at school the next day. Giovanna does not know what passed between her parents, but that night her mother tells her they will not tell anyone she failed.

The proposed secrecy deepens rather than relieves Giovanna’s humiliation. She realizes that she wants other people to know: failure, she thinks, is the only distinction she has. She imagines her mother telling the colleagues she works with at school and the people for whom she corrects proofs and writes; she particularly wants her father to tell the people who respect and love him. In that imagined announcement, she casts herself as unlike her parents in learning and effort, and imagines herself as ugly inside and out like her aunt, perhaps going to live with her in the Macello neighborhood, in the Industrial Zone. These are Giovanna’s painful self-judgments and fantasies, not a verdict established by the school’s records.

Her mother tries to make the failure manageable, calling it a small setback and saying Giovanna can repeat the year, study, and become the best in the class. Giovanna agrees unwillingly. The promise of a fresh attempt does not undo the shame she feels; repeating the year is the practical outcome, but concealment threatens to make the experience feel like something the family will not acknowledge.

Friends and the Parents’ Shared Feeling

Before Giovanna can leave for her room, her mother tells her not to mention the failure even to Angela or Ida. Giovanna asks whether her friends were promoted; her mother says that they were. Giovanna then asks whether her father had asked her not to tell them. Her mother gives no answer and bends back over her work. Giovanna sees her as looking even thinner and concludes that her parents are ashamed of the failure, perhaps the only feeling they still share.

The episode therefore ends not with a reconciliation or a new confidence about school, but with Giovanna’s reading of her parents’ silence. Her mother’s initial defense of her, her accusation against her husband, and the request for secrecy coexist without resolving the family’s tension. For Giovanna, the failure becomes a way to name her estrangement from the identity her parents might want for her: hiding it would erase the distinction she has seized upon, while their shared shame confirms that the setback has become part of the family’s troubled common ground.