LA MONACA DI MONZA

Tesi: non è una monaca come le altre

Argomentazioni:  

• aspetti stonati e sconcertanti (perché viene definita “signora”; “bellezza sbattuta e sfiorita”)
• contrasto bianco e nero nell’abbigliamento
• sguardo non chiaro: particolare degli occhi

Testo

Today I’m going to analyse the passage “The Nun Of Monza taken from “I Promessi Sposi”, written by Alessandro Manzoni. In particular I’m going to outline the reason why the nun is not like the others.

First of all the writer defines the nun “lady”, which usually refers to a woman as a gender or to a rich one. So, if the woman is a nun, that is her social status, why is she defined “lady”? Maybe because she wanted to do something else in life, maybe because her desire was not to become a nun. Indeed she hasn’t got any role in the convent and she is not part of the hierarchy of female clergy.

Right from the start the writer find the difficulty of saying exactly who that woman is. He says that her beauty is “faded” and “slammed”, to convey the idea of something sick, not plain and not clean.

She does not convince all the way even as regards clothing, where the black-white contrast is very evident. The sash is white, symbol of purity, chastity, indulgence and spontaneity, while the habit and the veil are black, symbol of dirt and sin. Moreover the sash is made of linen, which means that the nun use to dress valuable fabrics and that she takes care of the details of her clothing. Thus appearance is very important to her, even if she is a nun.

In addition to his way of dressing, also his gaze is not easy to decode. Her eyes, very black, sometimes look at others with “superb investigation”, because she feel powerful and able to subjugate others. Other times, instead, they bend down, meaning that she feels guilty and so tries to look away. Through his eyes it is also possible to understand that she is very intelligent and shows indifference towards people, despite having something inside that torments her a great deal.

To make the reader understand the diversity of that nun, Manzoni uses the technique from the general to the particular, also in order to keep up the horizon of expectation and curiosity of the reader.