Giulia’s pregnancy with her first child by Vincenzo

Giulia’s pregnancy with her first child by Vincenzo changes a private affair into a consequential struggle over their future: whether she will be sent away, whether he will accept responsibility, and whether their child can belong within a family that has not been formalized by marriage. Giulia chooses to keep the baby despite Vincenzo’s refusal to marry her, while his later intervention prevents her family from sending her away from Palermo. The episode exposes how affection, family authority, and the unequal social costs of pregnancy pull the couple in different directions.

The news and Vincenzo’s refusal

In the spring of 1835, Giulia is alone at home, where she lives as Vincenzo’s kept woman and mistress. After a sleepless night, she tells him she is expecting his child. They have been together for about a year. Vincenzo first struggles to take in the news, then asks whether the child is really his. Giulia answers that he was the first and is the only one; he knows she is telling the truth.

His response is an immediate refusal of marriage. He says he cannot marry her, points out that his mother is still looking for a wife for him, and warns Giulia not to imagine that pregnancy can bind him to her. His reaction frames the pregnancy not as a shared decision but as a threat to the future he has reserved for a socially acceptable marriage. He dresses and leaves, while Giulia’s sobs follow him to the door.

Giulia’s decision and her family’s plan

Giulia does not accept the suggestion that she should end the pregnancy. She tells Vincenzo plainly that she will not get rid of the child: it is hers, and she wants it. She also understands that he may eventually marry another woman or simply tire of her. In that case, she says, the child will remain something of him and of their relationship. Her decision is firm even as she recognizes the precarious place she occupies in his life.

Her mother, Antonia Portalupi, responds with alarm rather than comfort. Ill and coughing, she asks what the family will do about a child born outside marriage. When Giulia refuses the suggestion of ending the pregnancy, Antonia tells her to leave for Milan, stay with her aunt Lorena, and give birth there. Giulia refuses to go. She knows that people may insult her and call her a whore, but she wants to remain with Vincenzo and is prepared to accept the limited share of his life available to her.

Antonia nevertheless presses ahead with secret preparations to send her away. Giulia’s brother Giovanni plans to find passage to Genoa, escort her to Milan, and then return to Palermo. Vincenzo, meanwhile, has disappeared: he sends no note and makes no visit, although before the pregnancy he had spent his nights holding her. It is his absence, as much as her family’s plan, that breaks Giulia’s resolve to withstand the situation alone.

Vincenzo intervenes

Vincenzo eventually learns that the Portalupis are seeking passage to Genoa. He comes to their home and tells Giulia’s father, Tommaso, that he promised to protect Giulia and that she must therefore stay in Palermo with him. The announcement reverses the immediate prospect of her removal; Giulia looks up, and color returns to her face.

The intervention does not erase the conflict. Antonia argues that Giulia cannot live in Palermo unmarried with a fatherless child and insists that she and Tommaso must protect their daughter. Vincenzo’s promise of protection counters the family’s plan, but the evidence does not describe a marriage or a settled public status for Giulia at this point. The pregnancy has secured her continued presence in Palermo, not equality with the woman Vincenzo’s mother hopes he will marry.

A momentary vision of home

After the confrontation, Vincenzo’s response develops beyond his earlier rejection. He thinks of the expected child as a boy and an heir, and imagines a home with Giulia. As they lie together, she embraces him, and he falls asleep thinking that this is home. The scene gives the pregnancy a new meaning for him: not only a complication to his plans, but a possible continuation of the family line and a source of belonging.

That hope sits beside the unresolved terms of their relationship. Giulia has chosen the child without any guarantee of marriage; Vincenzo has defended her right to remain in Palermo after first denying that he would marry her. The pregnancy therefore marks both a bond between them and the limits imposed on that bond by his choices and their social circumstances. In the epilogue, Giulia recalls her first pregnancy among the hardships of their shared life, including Vincenzo’s refusal to marry her, and affirms that she stayed.