Resumen
Resumen de La madre
Para quién es
For readers who love short, intense novels about conscience, faith and family, and anyone curious about Sardinia and Italian writing of the early twentieth century.
De qué trata este libro
The Mother is a short novel by Grazia Deledda, the Sardinian writer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1926. It was first published in Italian in 1920. It is set in a poor mountain village on the island of Sardinia, where the church stands above the houses and everyone knows everyone else's business. The story centres on a young parish priest and the mother who gave up everything so that he could wear the cassock.
Deledda grew up in Nuoro, in the Sardinian interior, and she wrote about the people she knew: shepherds, servants, small landowners and priests. Her books show a world where old custom, church law and private desire pull against each other. In this novel you get a tight, serious drama about duty and love, told with close attention to the land, the weather and the pressure of village eyes. Let us begin with the place and the people, because in this book the setting shapes every choice.
En este resumen
- 1A village under the mountainFree
- 2A mother who gave up everything
- 3A young priest and a hidden restlessness
- 4The mother sees, and the village watches
- 5Duty, desire and the cost of sacrifice
- 6A spare, sober way of telling
Idea clave 1 de 6
A village under the mountain
The novel opens in a remote Sardinian village where the church sits at the top of the settlement. The houses below it climb the slope, and the wind and the rocky land are always near. Deledda treats this place as more than a backdrop. In a village this small, a sound at night or a lit window is soon known to all.
The priest's house stands close to the church, so that the home and the altar seem to share one small world. The people who live in the village are poor, devout and watchful. They respect the priest, but they also watch him, for he stands for something they need to believe in. A priest who fails would shame not only himself but the whole place.
Deledda describes this setting in plain, physical detail. You see the stone, the cold, the narrow paths and the long silences of a place cut off from the wider world. The older Sardinian customs still count here, such as honour, family loyalty and fear of gossip. The church adds its own law on top of them.
This is the pressure chamber of the story. Nothing can happen here in private for long, and every private feeling has to be hidden behind a public role. Keep that in mind as the characters come forward, because the village is always the silent audience of what they do.
That’s 1 of 6 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Who’s who
- Maria Maddalena
- A poor widow and servant, she has sacrificed everything for her son Paulo's priesthood and fiercely guards his honour.
- Paulo
- Maria Maddalena's son is a young parish priest whose feelings for Agnese conflict with his religious vows.
- Agnese
- A woman of the village, she shares a bond with Paulo that troubles his commitment to his priestly vows.
About this edition
Every format is free to start, and print and large print are at cost.
- LengthAbout 46,000 words
- Reading timeAbout 3 h 5 min
- Listening time5 h 5 min
- FormatseBook, large-print eBook, audiobook, 15-minute summary
- LanguagesEnglish and 9 other languages
Questions about La madre
What is The Mother by Grazia Deledda about?
It is a novel about a poor Sardinian widow whose son has become the priest of their mountain village, and about the strain that forbidden feelings place on him, on her, and on the faith that holds them together.
When was The Mother written?
Grazia Deledda published it in Italian in 1920, under the title La madre. It is a work of fiction, though it draws on the customs, landscape and religious life of rural Sardinia that she knew well.
Did Grazia Deledda win the Nobel Prize?
Yes. Deledda received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1926, the first Italian woman to do so. The honour recognised her writing about Sardinian life and its human struggles, of which this novel is a good example.
Is The Mother hard to read?
No. The style is plain and direct. The mood is serious, and the story and its few characters are easy to follow.
What is the main theme of The Mother?
The main theme is the clash between duty and desire, shown through a mother's sacrifice and a priest's inner conflict. Faith, guilt, reputation and the pressure of a close village community also run through the book.