“Freedom at the foot of the olive trees”, by Rosa Ventrella, gives voice to invisible women

In the heart of rural Puglia, in southern Italy in the 1940s, two sisters, Teresa and Angélina, live a childhood punctuated by war. When their father goes into battle, the two little girls with opposing temperaments find themselves alone with their grandmother and mother, Caterina. The incomparable beauty of the latter will prove to be an asset to meet their needs for all … Faced with the precarious situation, the mother of the family makes a compromise with Baron Personè, changing the fate of each of them. . Drawing inspiration from her grandmother’s experience, Rosa Ventrella gives a voice to invisible women of the war and post-war years. A highlight that liberates.

A portrait of war at the height of a child

While many stories tell the horror of war for soldiers, few of them focus on children, who also suffer the consequences. We discover here the dark daily life of two little girls, Teresa and Angélina, who stayed in the village. Their doubts, their needs, their spirit of solidarity, but also the admiration they have for their mother, a magnified figure, but shattered by the war … The story of a weakened innocence, which upsets us all the more so as they are still rare in the literature.

Three entwined women – a mother and two daughters – defy bombs, war and hunger, death in soul and in body. I have never felt my mother so fragile as she was then. I have never loved her so much.

The female gaze, a revolution also in literature

More importantly, in Freedom at the Foot of the Olive Trees, Rosa Ventrella gives an important place to what her female characters feel. If Teresa is the narrator, her gaze serves to expose the sorrows and traumas of the women around her: those of her sister, those of her mother. As the years go by, the years go by and all face the terrible patriarchal pressure. Here we feel certain regrets, a melancholy of childhood.

As they grow up, Teresa and her sister inherit their mother’s suffering. And if it is impossible for us to live their daily life in times of war, we observe the mechanisms of male domination of a whole era and its repercussions on the current world.

Women submissive to men

In this setting where toxic pressures are exerted on women, the author lifts the veil on the way in which they depend, despite themselves, on the gaze of men. By becoming the mistress of Baron Personè, Caterina attracts the wrath of the malalegna, these incessant slanders of the women of the village: “Shame, like backbiting, was everywhere. It pierced the skin, it left scars that sometimes reopened, like snails that come out after a storm“, we can read. In reality, shame is unfortunately not on the right side …

If the Freedom at the foot of the olive trees explores a reflection on superstitions and our fates more or less written in advance, the book says a lot about how the ambitions and future of women are governed by the power of men. Much more than a family saga, Liberty at the foot of the olive trees is a sensitive and powerful portrait bringing a female perspective on the world.

Freedom at the foot of the olive trees, by Rosa Ventrella, released on April 1, 2021 in the Pocket Edition.

Article produced in partnership with Pocket.

Melanie Bonvard

Mélanie deciphers pop culture from a societal angle and questions the female gaze in films or even series, because everything is a question of gaze, she …