The essay addresses Melville’s use and abuse of the sentimental literature of the day through a reading of his most unusual and rare characters, namely the female protagonists of his short fiction of the mid 1850s. Melville's heroines are all abandoned women and lonesome girls who may be said to stand not only as representatives of a common and wretched humanity, but also as specific examples of the subaltern and lower orders of the American continent. As a case in point, the essay focuses on the shy and solitary “pale-cheeked girl” of “The Piazza”. Marianna is a character who fully belongs to Melville’s lowly community of downtrodden women, a heroine who, like all her Melvillean sisters, is doomed to remain alone and unrescued, beyond the reach of material succor or spiritual alleviation as well as outside the compass of a historical rehabilitation through discursive glorification or counter-traditional versions of hero-worship.
The Impotence of Grief: On Melville’s Wretched Women and Lonesome Girls
NORI, Giuseppe
2005-01-01
Abstract
The essay addresses Melville’s use and abuse of the sentimental literature of the day through a reading of his most unusual and rare characters, namely the female protagonists of his short fiction of the mid 1850s. Melville's heroines are all abandoned women and lonesome girls who may be said to stand not only as representatives of a common and wretched humanity, but also as specific examples of the subaltern and lower orders of the American continent. As a case in point, the essay focuses on the shy and solitary “pale-cheeked girl” of “The Piazza”. Marianna is a character who fully belongs to Melville’s lowly community of downtrodden women, a heroine who, like all her Melvillean sisters, is doomed to remain alone and unrescued, beyond the reach of material succor or spiritual alleviation as well as outside the compass of a historical rehabilitation through discursive glorification or counter-traditional versions of hero-worship.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
