Parallels in Una Donna

Sibilla makes it clear early on that her relationship with her father is more important and dear to her that that with her mother. Sibilla’s love “dominated” her and gave her the masculine tenacity to realize that singular female independence, not overshadowed by family ties, is crucial to the future of women (3). Sibilla draws character traits from bother her mother and her father. Much like her mother Sibilla contracts depression and attempts suicide. When she develops a responds to the attention of other men she draws similarities to her father who had an affair while her mother was diagnosed with dementia and institutionalized. Silvia finds herself in an unhappy and unchanging relationship due to her fear of mistreatment and also her child. Her father, married to an irrational woman, is in a similar situation. Sibilla was desperate for a way out; she asks herself, “what if this terrible cycle was destined to continue forever?” and draws together the final parallel: the absence of a mother figure (107). Her new job as a journalist gave her insight into feminism, and when her husband was found to have a relationship with a woman that works there Silvia leaves her husband and her child behind. Silvia’s absence directly relates to her own family life with her father. Silvia and her mother emphasize the consequences of a broken household, both the results of a lack of female independence.