Customer Reviews

The Woman of Rome: A Novel (Italia S.)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Alberto Moravia was a leading mid-Twentieth Century Italian novelist and short story writer. Although his works were quickly translated into English, they were little read in the United States. Fortunately for interested readers, many of his books are now in print again and accessible, including his 1949 novel, The Woman of Rome.

This is a story of Adriana, a beautiful, poor, and uneducated young woman who begins as an artist's model at the age of 16. Although she dreams of a quiet, modest home with a loving husband and children, she becomes both a prostitute and a thief. As a prostitute, she is involved with a number of men with competing ideologies and interests including Astarita, a Fascist chief of police, Giacomo, a student revolutionary against the Fascists and Sozmogo, a criminal and a thug.

The story is told in the first person. Adriana is always on stage and the character of highest interest. The reader gets to know her well. The book is told in a linear, easy-to-follow style which builds to a large cresendo, for me, at the end of the first part. The second part of the book loses slightly in dramatic intensity and in construction.

As with any work of depth, this book functions on a number of levels which reject easy paraphrase or simple meaning. Many readers see the book as a picture of corruption in Rome while others see it more as the story of Adriana. I am more inclined to the second view. As far as I can tell, however, there is a strong spiritual theme in the book which sometimes gets too little emphasis in the pull of conflicting readings.

There are no less than four pivotal scenes in The Woman of Rome set in a church. Although the book is replete with sex, violence and raw brutality, it is also highly internalized. Many of its most effective moments are those in which Adriana relects (in church or out) on her life and on the course it has taken.

The German philosopher Frederich Nietxche (Adriana does not mention and would not have known of him) used the phrase "amor fati" to describe the wise person's attitude towards life. The phrase means loving one's destiny or, to use another related Nietschean phrase, "becoming who one is". The specific facts of one's life may be determined by circumstance. What is not determined is one's attitude. A person can understand his or her life and accept it joyfully, regardless of its state. It is in the acceptance and understanding that choice resides and that gives life its value and dignity.

The novel shows the attempt of a poor, but intelligent woman to find "amor fati" and to become who she is. She struggles to accept her nature and her being as a prostitute. Many of Adriana's reflections in the church are quite explicit and insightful. Adriana, alas, is no more successful than are most people in staying with her insight into herself. That, in my opinion, is the tragedy of the story which leads to the downfall of the men involved with Adriana.

The spiritual tone of the book goes well beyond Nietsche. Together with the theme of amor fati, there is a religiosity that emphasises, in the context of Western theology, God as merciful and as all-forgiving rather than God as a moralizer or judge. This God -- or self-understanding is open to all regardless of creed or station. The religion that seems to be espoused in the book recognizes the sinful, fallen nature of people and their frequent inability to change. It seems to suggest the possiblity of atonement and forgiveness offered to everyone by a turning of the heart, even if, perhaps, behavior cannot be changed. It is a powerful picture of a God of mercy and forgiveness who holds the possiblity of love out to all.

This is a first-rate or nearly first-rate Twentieth Century novel.

It surprises me when I read the previous two reviews. On the contrary, I think this book is one of Moravia's best. The first time I read it, I was stunned, feeling very uncomfortable, because, with his characteristic style clear view about life, a view without any illusion, Moravia pushed me to think about life in a new way.

It is not just a usual romantic story of a girl of humble background with a boy from a wealthy family. It is a story of a cruel, inhumane wolrd, its corruptive forces, its lack of meaning and reason, and the people who lived in it, some strived for a meaning, some gave up, some became part of the corruptive force...

Yes, it is told through the girl with some clarity of understanding of what happenned to her that may have shamed some people who have got the best education in the world. But, please, what does education have to do with wisdom. I know the intelligence of Adriana has invited criticism, but I would rather believe it.

That being said, I love this book. Like most of Moravia's books, love is a question, not a ready, easy answer to the central question of our existence - the meaning of life. Every charactor in the novel brings his/her individual history and existence, in particular, the sutdent and the lover of Adriana, Mino, deserves much respect, understanding, sympathy and affection.

Ever since I found the book in the bookstore and bought it home, I return to it from time to time, for the enjoyment of Mr. Moravia's wonderful language, for more understanding, and for people who lived in the book.

Moravia's elegant novel takes the familiar theme of unfulfilled dreams and invests it with quiet strength and descriptive authenticity. Months after reading "Woman in Rome," it is the voice of Adriana, the woman of the title, that lingers in my memory. By telling in the 1st person his story of a young woman whose beauty, poverty, passivity and kindness lead her to prostitution and abandonment, the author shows us how such a fall from hope and grace is a gradual, imperceptible process, one day after the next. Moravia writes in a deceptively simple style that keeps the reader close to his heroine's actions, so that her losses become our own. Near the end of the novel there is an astonishing paragraph, in which the narrator imagines herself drowning. This heartbreaking paragraph encapsulates the downward pull of the entire book, the longing for oblivion in the face of lost dreams. It is too long to quote in full, but here are some excerpts. (Note, too, the beautiful translation.)

"I obeyed and he undressed in the dark and got into bed beside me. I turned toward him to embrace him, but he pushed me away wordlessly and curled himself up on the edge of the bed with his back to me. This gesture filled me with bitterness and I, too, hunched myself up, waiting for sleep with a widowed spirit. But I began to think about the sea again and was overcome by the longing to drown myself. I imagined it would only be a moment's suffering, and then my lifeless body would float from wave to wave beneath the sky for ages. [...] At last I would sink to the bottom, would be dragged head downward toward some icy blue current that would carry me along the sea for months and years among submarine rocks, fish, and seaweed, and floods of limpid seawater would wash my forehead, my breast, my belly, my legs, slowly wearing away my flesh, smoothing and refining me continually. And at last some wave, someday, would cast me up on some beach, nothing but a handful of fragile, white bones [...] a little heap of bones, without human shape, among the clean stones of a shore."

Good novel. You must like Moravia, and you should not mind about happy ends. I enjoyed it, and I will remember it, so I'm doubting between 4 or 5 stars.

A riveting portrait of a Roman prostitute during the Fascist regime. Moravia has a well developed insight into feminine psychology. What I find most compelling in this novel are the restricted choices women had during the era: wife/mother, maid, seamstress or prostitute. If in desperate need of money, prostitution is the expedient choice in a patriarchal society. Adriana navigates the seedy underworld with grace and to a wonderfully ironic conclusion.

The author does have a propensity to "tell" as opposed to "show." That's not my taste so it took a a long time to really get going with this book. But once I got into it, I found it very interesting.

I disagree with the "official" review. Adriana understands exactly how she became a prostitute. These are among the most interesting passages of the book and they really establish the different sides of her basically stoic character. We usually think of stoicism and a passive (and unflattering) trait. But Adriana's move toward prostitution, and her way of living that life, show a surprisingly proactive brand of stoicism.

As to Giacomo, the student revolutionary ... I'll keep quiet - there's really no way you're going to guess how he fares as the novel unfolds. :-)

Whoever compared this novel to anything written by Dostoyevsky obviously does not know much about Dostoyevsky. Mr. Moravia's style is fluent, to be sure, but the characters however are far fetched and grossly underdeveloped. I do not undrestand why the writer wants to share with us in first person, the insights of a character who isn't particularly intelligent or insightful.

Adrianna - the heroine of the novel, is a rather far fetched personality. A supposedly sensitive hardworking and sweet girl, who isn't much scarred by being raped or becoming a prostitute. For the amount of misfortune that Adrianna goes through, she seems minimally put off, which would be fine, had the writer wished to create a coarse personality akin to Zola's Nana, but Adrianna remains her sweet self throughout. If mr. Moravia wanted to show Adrianna as a "holy fool" like Dostoyevsky's Prince Myshkin from "The Idiot",then on the other side he didn't make her simple enough.

On the whole, I found the characters to be poorly thought out and that, conequently made Woman of Rome a tedious read.

Frankly this book brought Sticky to new depths of sadness and depression as Adriana (the titular Woman of Rome) abandoned all hope and care and sunk to prostitution and risotto. It is the latter which saddened Sticky the most, our protagonist creating ever more bland risottos with every turn of the page, and forsaking the sticky rice teachings of the kind Chinese laundry gentleman who ran the little laundry on the Via Di Consolazione.

A devastating read...