In Verga’s story of the She-Wolf, Pina’s reputation disables her from effectively mothering her child. Pina, a woman of lust, is known for her reputation of having intimate relations with different men.  Pina is ostracized by the women in her village, the village that originally gave her the name of “She-wolf”. Verga writes “the women made a sign of the cross when they saw her pass” (pg 3). Pina’s alienation by these women is because she was intimate with their kin and husbands, she “sucked the blood of their sons and husbands in a flash, and pulled them behind her skirt with a single glace of those devilish eyes” (pg 3). Pina has an irresistible quality that makes men succumb to her despite the fact they they know of her reputation, Verga expresses that these men would have committed these acts even if they were “before the altar of Saint Agrippina” (pg 3).

 Pina’s reputation was so universally unaccepted that its ramifications negatively affected her daughter, Maricchia. Pina’s forbidding reputation dismantled Maricchia’s candidacy for being a virtuous wife. Maricchia was perceived as unable to be married even though she was nothing like her mother; she was a “good girl” (pg 3) and “like every other girl in the village, she had her fine linens in a chest and her good land under the sun” (pg 3). Pina cannot be a proper mother to her daughter because she permanently altered her daughter’s chances of being happy.