Political disunity of post-unification Italy

Political disunity of post-unification Italy is the contradiction at the heart of national unification in The Leopard: the country is reunited in name, yet its regions remain estranged, its political loyalties unstable, and its new institutions entangled with old habits of private advantage. The Prince of Salina sees both continuity beneath revolutionary change and a widening disorder that even the language of unity cannot conceal.

Promises of Change and Local Interests

Before unification, Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina, anticipates that the upheaval will bring negotiations punctuated by limited violence, after which everything will be much the same despite appearing changed. His encounters with local power brokers make that forecast tangible. Don Pietro Russo, a dependent of the Salina household, professes sympathy for the bold young men and promises liberty, security, lighter taxes, and commercial ease. Yet the Prince knows that Russo has hidden three hundred baskets of the Prince’s lemons and is trying through intermediaries to buy the Argivocale estate. Russo’s political assurances coexist with his own efforts to accumulate property and protect his interests.

Russo also tells the Prince that Villa Salina will be safe because Russo has many friends and that the incoming Piedmontese will pay their respects. He invokes the Prince’s standing as Tancredi Falconeri’s uncle and guardian, making family connection part of the reassurance. The Prince feels humiliated by the implication that his safety depends on Russo’s network and that his remaining claim to importance is his relationship to Tancredi. Russo’s confidence that the rest will remain as it was, while honest and able men gain opportunities, gives the Prince’s earlier prediction a sharper social meaning: political change may chiefly rearrange who gets ahead.

The Plebiscite and Its Unequal Public

The plebiscite in Donnafugata exposes the gap between civic procedure and political reality. When Don Fabrizio goes to the Town Hall, committee members rise as he enters, and peasants who arrived before him are moved aside so that he can vote without waiting. He gives his yes to Don Calogero Sedàra. Father Pirrone does not vote because he has avoided being registered as a resident; Don Onofrio Rotolo casts his vote at the Prince’s express request. The scene presents participation as shaped by status, personal direction, and access, rather than as an encounter among equal citizens.

The announced result is 515 voters, 512 voting, 512 yes votes, and no votes. The stark unanimity sits uneasily beside the controlled circumstances surrounding the vote. Before the booths close, women excluded from voting appear in the square wearing tricolour ribbons in their hair, protesting that exclusion. They are jeered at even by advanced liberals and driven away. Four days later, the Giornale di Trinacria describes their appearance as a patriotic demonstration welcomed by the population. Their protest is thus displaced in public reporting: exclusion becomes evidence of popular enthusiasm for the new national future.

From Reunification to Regional Fracture

At a later gathering, a speaker who has served with the Bersaglieri describes a country that has become more divided since it was reunited. Turin resists giving up its position as capital; Milan considers the new administration inferior to Austrian rule; Florence fears for its works of art; Naples laments the loss of its industries. Sicily, meanwhile, faces what the speaker calls a vast, irrational disaster. These complaints are not merely differences of temperament: each region measures the new state against its own interests and fears, and no shared national settlement resolves them.

The speaker warns that red shirts may return and predicts that when they disappear, other groups in different colours will take their place, followed in turn by the red shirts again. The repeated succession makes political allegiance seem less like a settled national consensus than a cycle of factions. Even the image of Italy’s Lucky Star is qualified: a fixed star, the speaker observes, is fixed only in appearance. Don Fabrizio’s heart contracts at these prospects, registering the emotional force of a future that offers reunion without dependable cohesion.

Political Continuity and the New Elite

Don Fabrizio’s response to the political transition is neither simple endorsement nor confidence in the old order. When asked to accept a Senate nomination, he refuses, explaining that he stands ill at ease between the old world and the new and lacks the self-deception he regards as necessary for guiding others. Rather than presenting himself as the proper representative of the new state, he recommends Don Calogero Sedàra. Don Calogero, he argues, has power, practical abilities, and an effective record during the May crisis; he also knows how to create public illusions when necessary. The recommendation recognizes that influence is shifting from the aristocratic Prince to a capable local figure whose authority is rooted in practical power.

The subsequent outcome confirms the direction of that shift: ten years later, Don Calogero does enter the Senate. Yet the transition does not resolve the divisions the novel has traced. Regional grievances persist, factions recur, and formal national politics remains linked to personal influence and local advantage. Unification changes the holders and language of power, while the Prince’s uneasy forecast—that much will remain beneath the change—continues to illuminate the country’s unsettled political condition.