Animals

Animals, a work of fiction set in rural Sicily around the 1940s, offers a first-person glimpse into the harsh reality of Lucia, the oppressed and penniless protagonist, whose story unfolds chronologically across three chapters: “Summer,” “Winter,” and “Fall.” Throughout the novel, we witness Lucia blossom from an innocent little girl, enchanted by the natural world at her feet, into a brazen housewife forced to embrace her savage nature to survive. At the outset of the narrative, the reader is told that Lucia's life is marked by suffering: “I was born with a past, a mass of painful memories, a conscience” (13). Although various characters experience hardship in the book, the author portrays Lucia's struggles as exceptionally onerous.In the opening chapter, “Summer,” we get a glimpse into the suffocating home environment of young Lucia, embodied by the stifling heat and exacerbated by the family's cramped living quarters: “Our house was a hostile, dark cubicle—especially during our scorching summers, when the shutters had to stay closed to leave the heat outside” (16). We are introduced to Lucia's mother, Anna, who is ashamed of her femininity and had hoped for a miscarriage when carrying Lucia. Anna suffers from “weak nerves” and Lucia repeatedly describes her as “crazy” throughout the plotline. The narrative, however, falls short of depicting how, beyond domestic neuroticism, her mother is uniquely unstable for a woman of her time. Nonetheless, Pirandello certainly attributes a few quirks to Anna. For example, “After meals where she'd barely swallowed a crust of bread, she'd often hide away in the bathroom to eat, thinking that none of us knew” (15). Lucia recounts that her mother is afraid of education. Lucia, however, is skilled with a pen and she is scornful of her classmates who work hard to earn praise. I would be remiss not to note the similarity between the dynamic of Lucia/Mother and Elena Ferrante's Lenù/Mother (with a twist of Lila) in L'amica geniale (2011). In the initial pages of Animals, I at times had the sense that I was reading snippets of Ferrante's work, an impression that diminished by the time I reached “Winter,” when the plot revealed its twists.Throughout the first chapter, male characters are portrayed as absent, carefree, or fickle. Lucia's father is framed as the source of her mother's unhappiness. Anna's sad state ultimately leads to her father's suicide, one of numerous self-inflicted demises in the family. Lucia's older brother, Pino, with whom she shares a fleeting friendship after they cheat on a carnival game of bingo and win a red bicycle, is physically ugly but his mischievous antics render him charming. We are told that he calls Lucia “little beast.” Both father and brother, however, are killed off by the close of the first chapter. Lucia's father is captured at war and succumbs to pneumonia, and her brother is taken by a bloody cough on the day of her first menstruation. By the time “Winter” arrives mother and daughter are strapped for cash and Lucia is being pushed out of the home in search of work in Northern Italy.In the second chapter, we meet Catena. Although past her prime and homely in appearance, she marries a decent man from the mainland and escapes Sicily, unlike the women from her village forced to “eat the dust” (47). Lucia's aunt, a fortune teller, was credited for the marriage and thus was owed a favor. And so, as fate would have it, Catena provides Lucia lodging and finds her work doing chores and caring for children. In exchange for her hospitality, every evening Lucia is obliged to recount the minute details of her laborious day, from the smell of the children to the state of the silverware. Just as soon as Lucia settles, however, her mother dies suddenly. In the wake of her mother's death, she performs her duties mindlessly.Lucia's life takes a bold turn when she meets a butcher. Although the “vulture-like” man preys on her, she does not outright rebuff his advances. Rather, Lucia is intrigued by his “animal-like” behavior (63). During their courtship, Lucia is dismissed from her job when she is caught contemplating the theft of her employer's earrings. With time to spare, Lucia's butcher teaches her the profitable trade of cutting meat. She quickly learned that “being brutal paid off” (66). Within a few months, she is wed to the butcher and lives a wretched and lonely existence. Fifteen years later, Lucia is abandoned by her butcher.In the third and final chapter, “Fall,” Lucia returns to Sicily, where she lives with her old aunt. The storyline picks up when the local butcher drops dead and Lucia takes over the meat market, although not without opposition from the villagers. She receives word, to her distress, that the butcher has been attempting to hunt her down. She fears his “wolfish sense of smell” will lead him to her village (114). When he eventually finds her, she attacks him from behind, dragging his lifeless body into the fields: “That day he had to die, and I had to kill: everything and everyone had led us there” (121). The next day, Lucia returns to the butcher shop resolved to live fully in the present.Animals is a novel in which readers bear witness to vivid scenes of animals tortured, butchered, and consumed at the hands of humans. (Merely the domestic cat is spared.) In essence, in line with contemporary ecocritical works, Pirandello positions people as the most perverse animal of all. Indeed, we follow Lucia from childhood, carelessly crushing the life out of innocent lizards, to adulthood, when she learns to wield a knife and skillfully slaughter animals, and finally, to maturity when she steadfastly batters the last breath out of her husband. The text's strength lies in its imagery of nature and, dare I say, its visceral description of brutality. However, readers may find themselves struggling to stay engaged in the plotline due to the various characters killed off early in the book: father, brother, and then mother. In a similar vein, it is difficult to invest emotionally in characters such as the butcher husband, who meet their end later in the story, but who are afforded little action earlier in the narrative. Thus, the reader is left with a somewhat solipsistic protagonist and a text that is devoid of adequate action and development. Could the author, however, be making a more profound statement about the state of humanity via this narrative structure? The text suggests that it may not be worth investing too deeply in human animals, who abuse, betray, and are downright beastly in their own way.Whether you relish the ecological perspectives found in the works of renowned Italian writers such as Grazia Deledda and Anna Maria Ortese, or you seek out stirring contemporary voices like Erri De Luca and Laura Pugno, Sofia Pirandello's Animals is a must-read that invites critical reflection.