Giulia confronts Donna Giuseppina in public

Giulia confronts Donna Giuseppina in public over whether Giuseppina will acknowledge her granddaughter, turning a family rejection into a dispute witnessed by the people of Palermo. Giuseppina denies the child is her grandchild even when Giulia points to the baby’s resemblance to Vincenzo; Giulia, in turn, challenges the belief that she freely chose her place in the family. The encounter ends with Vincenzo following Giulia and asking her to return with him, calling their destination home without resolving the unequal history that has made that word contested.

The visit and its setting

Giulia prepares carefully before setting out with the baby. She dresses the child, asks her own mother to look after Angelina, and goes to morning Mass at San Giacomo, where working people attend because they cannot spare time for the afternoon service. Giuseppina is there too, less from necessity than habit. Giulia waits until after Mass and follows her toward her front door on Via dei Materassai, choosing a public approach rather than a private appeal.

The place and timing give the encounter an audience. Giulia calls out to Giuseppina loudly enough for those nearby to hear, and people stop to stare and listen. Her question is direct: does Donna Florio want to see her granddaughter? The baby is not only the subject of a family claim but a visible presence before neighbors who can witness both the denial and the challenge.

Denial and recognition

Giuseppina answers that she has no grandchildren. When Giulia points out that the baby has her name, Giuseppina dismisses the name as shared by many. Giulia then identifies the more difficult evidence: the child has Vincenzo’s eyes. Giuseppina glances at the baby despite herself and recognizes the resemblance in her features, including Vincenzo’s nose and high eyebrows. She steps back, but does not withdraw her denial.

The exchange turns on the difference between what Giuseppina can see and what she will publicly accept. Her response is a degrading comparison that denies the child’s known parentage and attacks Giulia’s standing. Giulia counters by describing herself as bound to Vincenzo, while insisting that she did not initiate the relationship: he was the one who took her away from her home. Giuseppina answers that Giulia has misjudged her prospects and has no place in the Florio household. The exchange makes the child’s resemblance undeniable while leaving her social acceptance unresolved.

A dispute over choice and power

Giulia’s reply, delivered as Giuseppina reaches her threshold, rejects the idea that she chose her constrained position for money. She says Giuseppina has never loved anyone and therefore cannot understand her. The accusation turns the confrontation from a question of biological recognition into a conflict over how the women judge one another’s lives: Giuseppina treats Giulia as an intruder, while Giulia insists that her attachment cannot be reduced to material advantage or treated as a freely chosen arrangement.

That dispute echoes the wider family history. When Giuseppina was being sent from Bagnara, she protested that women had no power and were treated as their husbands’ property; she had been brought away without control over the decision. Later, she challenged Paolo’s claim that his sister had chosen marriage, recalling that the girl had been fourteen when their father married her off. Her own marriage, too, began with Paolo bringing her to Palermo. These earlier experiences give weight to Giulia’s insistence that she did not choose the circumstances in which Vincenzo placed her, even as Giuseppina now uses exclusion to defend the household.

The household’s competing claims

Giuseppina’s refusal is not only personal hostility. She has regarded what Ignazio and Vincenzo built as an inheritance that must be protected and passed on, and has believed that the family needs a suitably raised woman and legitimate heirs. That concern places blood, marriage, and the continuity of Casa Florio alongside affection, but also helps explain why Giulia and her children have faced rejection. The woman who once described her own powerlessness within marriage now helps enforce the household’s terms against another woman whose choices have also been constrained.

Vincenzo watches the confrontation from the dining-room window, barefoot and in his robe. He sees Giulia leave and hears Giuseppina’s angry account of the encounter, including her insistence that she has put Giulia in her place and that Giulia should stay away. He does not turn around. His silence leaves the women’s conflict unanswered inside the house, even as he has witnessed it directly.

The response and its limits

Vincenzo then runs through the alleys, past closed shops, and finds Giulia walking along the Cassaro among people in their Sunday clothes, her head bent over the baby. He recognizes that the public appeal has cost her effort and catches up with her in front of everyone, taking her by the arm. His words are an invitation: “Let’s go home. To our home.” The shift from Giuseppina’s declaration that there is no room for Giulia to Vincenzo’s claim of a shared home offers a public countergesture to his mother’s rejection.

The ending does not erase what Giulia has endured. In a later confrontation, she recalls that for years she lived with their children without rights, fearing Vincenzo might cast her aside to marry a noblewoman selected by his mother. She says she will not allow Angela and Giuseppina to undergo the same humiliation or be married to men who despise them for Casa Florio’s interests. The public encounter thus anticipates a broader challenge to the family’s power over women’s choices: Vincenzo’s invitation offers belonging, but Giulia’s later demands insist that belonging must include rights and protection for their daughters.