Andrea and Nella’s separation is a drawn-out family rupture rather than a single departure: they remain under one roof for brief periods over almost two years, while Andrea disappears for weeks, returns with apparent affection, and soon resumes fighting with Nella. Their eventual move toward making the separation legal leaves Giovanna caught between her parents’ conflict and the divided family loyalties Vittoria has brought into view.

A family divided by place and history

Before the separation becomes explicit, Giovanna knows little of Andrea’s relatives. Her mother’s family has a familiar home in Museo, but her father’s kin seem to inhabit a nameless world below the family’s home on the heights of Naples. The descent feels so long that the two branches appear to belong to different cities. Her parents travel through the lower city for work and study, but visits to Andrea’s relatives leave them unusually weary and anxious.

Andrea’s return to his origins

On the drive to visit Vittoria, Andrea briefly breaks the silence by describing the neighborhood where he was born and grew up. He says his family was poor, then points out the deteriorated apartment building where he lived and where Vittoria still lives. The bleak streets, industrial buildings, puddles, and waste make his origins newly concrete to Giovanna; his own gesture of recognition does not erase the distance between that past and the life he has built on the heights.

Vittoria and the meaning of kinship

Vittoria takes Giovanna to meet Andrea’s siblings and their families, calling the trip a visit to her blood. The relatives welcome Giovanna warmly despite their evident hostility toward Andrea: they do not ask after him or ask Giovanna to send him greetings, but they make clear that they do not blame her. They call her Giannina, a name her parents never use, and among them she feels unexpectedly relaxed and affectionate. Vittoria presses her to look closely at the contrast between the relatives’ warmth and her parents’ distance, repeating her demand that Giovanna look rather than merely see.

These visits complicate the parents’ version of the family divide. Giovanna observes that the relatives treat Vittoria tenderly, and that her father’s estrangement has also kept his daughter from people who might have welcomed her. The warmth does not reconcile Andrea with his siblings, but it gives Giovanna a lived experience of kinship that is separate from her parents’ account of it.

Separation and its aftermath

It takes Andrea and Nella almost two years to decide to separate, although they live together only intermittently during that time. Andrea vanishes for weeks without warning. Giovanna fears he may have taken his life in a dark, squalid part of Naples; only later does she learn that he has been living in a beautiful house in Posillipo, given to Costanza by her parents, while Costanza is in continuing conflict with Mariano.

When Andrea returns, he is affectionate and courteous and seems to want to resume life with Nella and Giovanna. The reconciliation lasts only a few days before the old pattern of quarrels resumes. Yet on one point Andrea and Nella agree: Giovanna should not see Vittoria again. Giovanna accepts the ban and shares their judgment at first. She believes she is exhausted by Vittoria’s hatred, desire for revenge, and language, and hopes that the fascination she felt alongside fear is fading.

The separation is not made legal immediately. After a summer in which Andrea is absent, Nella summons him in late winter to ask that they formalize it. Their dispute over possessions turns intensely bitter: Andrea asks for notes from the desk, while Nella threatens to prevent him from taking even a book, notebook, pen, or his typewriter from the house. The practical division of belongings makes the marriage’s breakdown tangible, while Giovanna’s position remains shaped by what her parents conceal, forbid, and divide.

Significance in Giovanna’s story

The separation intersects with Giovanna’s estrangement from both her parents and Vittoria. She withdraws from Angela and Ida, hides that she is repeating her first year of high school, and begins to find consolation in both prayer and lying. Her parents’ conflict thus belongs to a larger collapse of trust: the family divides its home and possessions while Giovanna hides her own failure and tries to keep the rupture from public view.

Vittoria’s influence persists even when contact is forbidden. The relatives’ welcome and the name Giannina have shown Giovanna a version of herself and her family that she does not encounter at home. The separation therefore deepens the novel’s contrast between formal family unity and lived belonging: Andrea and Nella can agree on excluding Vittoria, but their agreement does not undo the older divisions or the loyalties Giovanna has already experienced.