THEand women of the circle They have an extraordinary force. They know how to reject violent husbands, they rebel against overwhelming, they know the powers of the herbs, they take care of the body and the soul. Peppina is the guidance of this Congregation of women which meets regularly in a village of Southern Lazio At the beginning of the twentieth century. The youngest of them is Camilla, born in the most in view of the village, but marked by the death of the mother and by a painful secretwho has been carrying inside since childhood.
The wound prevents them at the beginning of letting go in the arms of the Husband Aldinobut it will be the circle that helps her free himself. Just as his daughter, Viola, in love with a possessive and abusive man. All these women are united by Feminine, A spark of freedomwhich is also the title of the debut novel by Antonella Molliconeteacher and scholar of epigraphy. The story of a piece of ancestral worldrough and farmer, who intertwines superstitions, traditions and beliefs to tenacity of unconventional womenunscrupulous, decided not to accept compromises. Also challenging death.
What is “feminine”?
For me it is an archetype of the women of my land and in part I feel it inside. For Peppina, for example, it is vehemence of body and language against the arrogance of males. For Camilla it is the ancient and modern knowledge to be used to feel free and decide on one’s life.
The feminine, by Antonella Mollicone, North publishing420 pages, 20 €
Peppina was her great -grandmother. Is this the story of his family?
Partly yes. I started writing this book at eleven years of age, I noted all the sentences that I felt about the women around me. As a big way I started making more in -depth investigations, I went to neighboring countries and interviewed other women. My great -grandmother, like Peppina, knew the medicinal herbs, prepared mixtures, at Christmas, at midnight, told me a secret. So it was used.
Is it as a child who met the circle?
I remember on August 26, 1981, the day of my first communion. The women had gathered to prepare the desserts, then they started drinking wine and exaggerated. They laughed unveiled, spicy secrets confessed. That was the first circle I saw. I invented the definition, but these spontaneous meetings were real, I myself was part of them. As I write, the purpose of the circle is to make women aware of the wonder they are.
Antonella Mollicone teaches literary subjects and deals with epigraphy. It manages Bibliotè, literary bookcase-bookcase in the city of Sora. For the feminanza he collected testimonies on the field and drew to the popular and historical memory of southern Lazio (pH: bass cannarsa).
In these meetings you pray, embroidered, but we also speak of female pleasure, masturbation, desire. What gives the courage to these women to be so uninhibited?
The characters of the book are inspired by women really existed. The speeches on sex, even between elderly ladies, I listened to them with my ears. Of course, they were not all like that, many were prisoners of fathers and husbands. But in the circle it was not judged. The courage to these women comes from the awareness of having inherited the feminance, an ancient energy that felt on them.
His protagonists are emancipated and modern. But they believe in superstitions, they pray obsessively, prepare miraculous potions. How do you reconcile these two attitudes?
It is an intertwining of modernity and tradition, one thing does not exclude the other. There is a thin border that divides superstition from the sacred and these women are aware of it.
Peppina is a “closes”, assists the dead. Does this figure still exist?
Yes. When my mother died I didn’t immediately call the funeral pumps but her most dear friends who took care of her, closed her eyes and watched her over.
Camilla has murderous instincts towards the firstborn and suffers from depression. Why did you decide to show the darkest side of motherhood?
I myself suffered from post-parto depression and I understood that many stories, heard in the past, of mothers who hated or cursed the children were probably linked to this problem. Then it was a taboo and it was not talked about, but it was quite frequent.
Almost all male characters are cowardly and violent. Nobody is saved?
Unfortunately, it was reality. But I tried to balance with two positive figures. Gnore Paolo, father of Camilla, who has always left her free, and Aldino, his husband, kind and understanding, who has many traits of my father and grandfather. Camilla, however, also hides terrible pain.
He writes that Paolo and Aldino are “poet’s men”. What does it mean?
He is a man who brings out his soul, who shows his female part in attitudes and words. Once we accepted a man in our circle.
His language is alive. Aspra and in part dialect, it reflects the social conditions of the characters. How did you build it?
At home, in Rocca d’Arce, I speak in dialect. On the page I tried to maintain the dialectal syntactic construction, more raw and direct than that of Italian. Before writing them, the words I have to imagine and smell it.