Annalysse Mason

Tarchetti Response

9/29/13

Professor Seaman

In Tarchetti’s novel, Passion, suffering is a reoccurring theme. The main character Giorgio wins the love of a married woman after he explains to her how much he suffers in his life, “pity led to her love” (pg 19). A similar method of courtship is attempted by a diseased woman named Fosca. While both Giorgio and Fosca attempted to find love through the pity of their suffering, Giorgio is the only one is successful in finding love, even though he suffers less than Fosca.

                Giorgio, a military officer, believes that he suffers because he was “stricken by a grave heart ailment” (pg 10). He exploits the suffering he feels to win the love of Clara, a married woman that he meets during his two month leave from the force. Soon after meeting Clara, Giorgio, inclined to know if she pities him asks himself, “Did she comprehend that I was unfortunate? Did she feel the need to comfort me with her affection and compassion?” (pg 16). Giorgio is intoxicated by Clara’s presence, but he states that he was intoxicated “not with love, no; I still did not love, did not hope for it; rather, I was thirsty for comfort, sympathy, tears” (pg 17). Giorgio continues to seek Clara’s attention and he writes her a series of notes explaining his so-called suffering. In the days following one of his notes, Giorgio notices Clara’s door is open; he races in and flings himself to her knees. After she asks him to leave he says “No, I shall die here, I am suffering” (pg 19). This theatric attempt to gain Clara’s pity was successful, she eventually says “ I love you, I love you, but leave me”(pg 19).

                The reader is unaware to how miniscule and pathetic Giorgio’s “suffering” is until Fosca is introduced. After Giorgio’s two month leave has ended and he has returned to duty, the colonel invites Giorgio to stay in his house, insisting that his current residency at a hotel did not provide adequate meals. The colonel describes his cousin, Fosca, as an “illness personified, hysteria made woman, a living miracle of the nervous system, as one doctor who examined her recently put it” (pg 35). After overhearing one of Fosca’s nervous convulsions coming from her room one night, Giorgio questions how a “person who produced such a scream might yet be alive” (pg 38). Fosca is diseased and beyond recovery. Doctors at the house describe her body as being “so feeble that it lacks the strength to produce a fatal disease” (pg 39), explaining why she “might live till eighty”( pg 39).

Fosca explains her endless suffering to Giorgio soon after they have met for the first time. He misunderstands that because she is out of bed, she is recovering. Fosca responds by saying, “I think not. Infirmity is my normal state, as health is yours” (pg 43). Giorgio may believe that he is suffering but compared to Fosca’s constant illness, he is relatively healthy. Giorgio describes Fosca’s existence one night at dinner, “she appeared to be suffering intensely, she endeavoured to maintain a cheerful demeanor, her spirit was not superficial” (pg 47). Fosca also suffers because she is considered by all to be ugly, Giorgio concurs that “it was evident that her ugliness for the most part was the effect of the illness (pg 42).

There are a multitude of differences in the  levels of suffering that Giorgio and Fosca experience.  While Giorgio’s life has only been slightly affected by his ailing heart, Fosca’s life will never be the same because of her disease. Giorgio’s pity for himself is unfair, especially because he still has the audacity to pity himself after meeting Fosca who’s  “miseries must have been infinite” (pg 57). The reader feels more sympathetic for Fosca than they do Giorgio, it is only after they learn of her psychopathic quest to earn Giorgio’s love later in the novel, that their emotions change.