Analysis of the novel Le ragazze di Sanfrediano
Circumstances of the composition. Le ragazze di Sanfrediano, written during 1948, first came out in a magazine ("Botteghe oscure", Notebook III, autumn 1949), and only some years later, in 1954, it was gathered in a volume, by the publisher Vallecchi. The work represents a book in itself in Pratolini’s production, and it is shaped as a polite and wise literary divertissement, placed as a pause between the preceding search (culminated in Quartiere and in Cronache di poveri amanti) and the vast historical fresco of Metello, that will be published in the ' 55.
The book, in a certain way, makes pendant to Quartiere: the works are both choral representations of the life of a popular neighborhood in Florence, and they have some young people as protagonists; but while the first story is developed on the dramatic register and it is provided of its intrinsic political dimension, Le ragazze di Sanfrediano is developed on the playful slope, as the call to the ancient short stories and the chronicles testifies, made by the author in opening of thr book. After all, it is not a case that, at this point of his job, to write an" adventure of our days", Pratolini has left his district, that of Santa Croce, to bring a freest and detached look on a neighborhood to which he had not been tied with too much intimate and suffered memories, just that of Sanfrediano.
The story. A beautiful youth, Aldo Sernesi, called Bob, for the similarity with the actor Robert Taylor, lets beat all the hearts of the youth of Sanfrediano. Profiting of his attractiveness, at the same time masculine and graced," the young man with the beautiful eyelashes" holds up contemporary many flirt, giving to intend to every " fiancées " naturally to be the only one loved. For this" bewitching of district", to flirt constitutes a sport and a rite, and, in conclusion, a deep reason for life. Everything seems to be booming, but one of the person in love, the cunning Tosca, made suspicious, discovers the game of Bob, and she plans with the other beautiful girl a conspiracy that will be concluded, in Boccaccio’s way, with a cruel hoax against the gallant, in a night of moon, on the lawn of the Cascine.
Structure and style. Justly, Arnaldo Bocelli has observed that Pratolini returns here" to his motives with a light mind and he wants to give us, once at time, not the dramatic, but the comic aspect of that environment, of that life, referring to a tradition, all Tuscan and Florentine, and not fiction but theatrical, of the mockery and of the prank, of the local pride, especially about women’s beauty and men’s vigor, of astuteness and of boldness". Joke, rapid and playful rhythm of the action, theatrical cut of the dialogues, often winking to the Florentine vernacular, thin serpentine irony also in the most serious parts of the work: these are the characteristics of the story that, in the limited circle that it knowingly wants to cover, can certainly enter among the results of Pratolini’s production.
They have wanted, some critics, to put in prominence the essay element that would hamper the free course of the circumstance negatively. But Pratolini’s essays, that here expounds itself especially in the psychological portraits of the characters, makes already part, apart some slack pages, of the action and it is an integral part of the work.For example, pay attention to the pages in which Bob is described. The characterization is exhaustive, either from the physical point of view and from the moral one: the author is as fascinated by his character, even if he seems to attack furiously to bring in full light its intrinsic insubstantiality and poverty. But the perfect adaptation to a part, in this case that of the beautiful heartbreaker, has always its enchantment; and it is necessary to say that Pratolini put in the count, when they did’t talk about it yet, the mediator role of the cultural industry; and then if the Gobbo was Rodolfo Valentino, Aldo is Bob (Taylor), and his successor, Fernando, will be Tirone (Power). Timelessness of the district, it is said: but its fundamental historicity, thought on the superficial register of the custom.
If on one side Bob is a degraded Don Giovanni, a" Casanova of suburb", as Pratolini says (that maybe has bearen in his mind the essay of Gregorio Marafion on the donjuanism, and to insist on the cowardice, the intimate frailty and the ill-concealed effeminacy of the protagonist, lets think about this reference); on the other hand, for his union with Gina, his " accomplice " and only lover, he lets think him, even if in passing, to the Liaisons dangereuses, and to perceive in Bob a Valmont of district and in Gina a harmless Merteuil. Aldo-Bob is however the real center of the story, even if this is entitled by the author to the girls. The effective protagonist is the youth, the young girl are only second leads, well revealed, but quickly outlined in the psychology, as if their function was that to start and to conduct the story to the breakup, with the classical prank. We have to say about this that it is orthodox in the form, it is modern in the substance, for the uneasiness, the suffering that conducts in the protagonists, for that not withdrawing in itself and looking out upon the future of Bob inserted again, after the shame, in the district and fiancé with Mafalda. The novel is composed of fourteen brief chapters, everyone bearing a title in gnomic or ironic sign. The "playful" element of the work is also reflected, and it is natural, in the style, that reaches a happy compromise between wise literariness and vernacular despising; and that accents the character of joke, of divertissement, that we signalled at the beginning of this note. Device climbed on with notable fancy and skill, the story, after twenty years from his composition, doesn't have lost anything of its primitive enchantment.