Fosca’s Past Influencing her Relationship with Giorgio

            As Giorgio is explaining his struggle between his growing love for Fosca and preserving his relationship with Clara, he shares Fosca’s letters that she wrote to him during her illness. Fosca describes her past passions to him, which were more like obsessions. Although she does not discuss it at length, Giorgio is her current obsession. Fosca tells Giorgio, “I cannot recall a period in my life when I did not love something” and “I could have loved the entire universe without exhausting myself” (93). She lacked confidence when she gave affection to people, objects, and ideas and they did not return the love. As a child Fosca explains how her attachment to her companions and family was excessive, she describes, “I demanded more of their affection than they could possibly grant me; hence, any contraries led me to believe that they were indifferent, apathetic, ungrateful” (94). Her relationship with Giorgio is the same way and she constantly needs his reassurance to feel important. She admits, “I suffered from it as I would now suffer from a true abandonment or true ingratitude” (94). Her past helps Giorgio understand her present state.

            Fosca’s past marriage with Lodovico was a detriment on her, her family, and others in her life. From a young age, Fosca knew that she was ugly and she yearned to have love in her life. She was disheartened and hopeless, and with despair wrote, “All women choose; I must be chosen” (99). When Lodovico claimed that he was in love with Fosca, she quickly became obsessed and “thought of nothing but him” (102). Although Lodovico treated Fosca with disgust after they got married, she still continued to cherish the idea of love and later she and her family give him money. After a woman tells Fosca the horrible truth about Lodovico, she becomes internally damaged. Her family had virtually nothing left of their fortune, she gave birth to a child that she could not keep because she “was so perverted that (she) could not even feel the purest joys of motherhood,” and her parents both died (114). Although she and her cousin reunited, she lived in isolation.
           So how did Fosca’s past affect her relationship with Giorgio? She experienced many obsessions with people, activities (such as reading and meditating), and God. Fosca became infatuated with Giorgio, which made it harder for him to leaver her. Two men she had loved before, the friend of her father and Lodovico, both had other women in their lives and could not love her. Once Giorgio showed interest in her, she could not accept that he loved Clara. She was good at using guilt, manipulation, and excuses to lure Giorgio because she had to use these tactics to get attention in the past. After learning about Fosca’s past, many things begin to make sense for Giorgio as to why Fosca acts in such an obsessive, hysterical way.