Mothers and Daughters (Part 2)

As Jane Austen often noted with chagrin, sometimes a woman’s beauty is all she has to secure herself a comfortable future. This has remained true throughout the centuries despite women’s emancipation and liberation. Thankfully, we have more opportunities at our disposal these days, but in my grandmother’s day, Ms Austen’s observation was a very real advantage, especially for a young woman with few other means to improve her lot in life.

Unlike my great-grandmother’s history, my grandmother’s life story is less of a mystery to our family, although no less dramatic. As a young girl, my mother would tell me about my grandmother, about what kind of person she was and the aspirations she’d had for her life. Living on the other side of the world, I had little opportunity to get to know my grandmother personally, meeting her only on a few occasions, and so my knowledge of her and the kind of person she was is informed solely by her behaviour and actions towards the people in her life. And, believe me, these actions speak volumes!

Born in the same mountaintop town as her mother, into the same godforsaken poverty, just before the explosion of WWI, my grandmother Irma was not likely to have a bright future ahead of her. Without a father around to provide for the family (although ostensibly working hard to build a future for them in America), Irma’s childhood was short-lived – no doubt, just like most of her contemporaries. 

As she grew into adolescence and young womanhood, however, Irma’s glamorous looks set her apart from the other girls – and she was not unaware of it. The girl, you see, was street smart and ambitious. She did not know by what error of fate she had been born into her situation in life, but she knew it was not where she belonged. Indeed, she could have been a movie star, if only her narrow-minded, stubborn and infuriatingly simple mother hadn’t run her father out of town when he turned up after years of absence to take them all to America with him. 

Fortunately for Irma, however, her good looks caught the attention of Mario, the son of the local jeweller and the town’s richest family. If she played her cards right, her ticket out of misery was at hand. It wasn’t difficult to fall in love with Mario, he represented everything she thought of as beautiful. Their relationship, however, was to be a secret, Mario’s parents were very strict and would not be happy if they knew he was seeing a girl - so he said. 

She was sure he loved her. His passion was overwhelming and she fought hard to keep him at bay. She wasn’t naïve, she knew what happened to young girls who gave it up too quickly. She was adept at keeping him keen enough without compromising her chastity, and planned to do so until his commitment to her was irrefutable. She knew it couldn’t be too long and in due course – moved by the heat of his love for her – he announced that he wanted them to marry. Only then did she concede.

Her life was finally heading in the right direction. She would shed the shackles of her lowly and shameful past, become the envy of all the girls, and live the life she had always known she was born to live. But one tiny little problem threatened it all – her one concession had left her pregnant. She was worried at first but surely this news would secure Mario’s commitment to her. And so it seemed when, on learning the news, Mario promised to arrange for the priest to marry them the next day.

Irma was arrogant in her vindication. None of her girlfriends believed Mario would actually marry her. She couldn’t wait to see their faces when they found out. In fact, she decided to tell one of her friends immediately – how satisfying it would be, how smug she felt.

Sadly for Irma, she did not calculate the extent to which jealously could ruin her, and how her own conceitedness would be the very thing that undid her carefully laid out plans. The so-called friend had felt it her immediate civic duty to reveal the secret nuptials to Mario’s parents, who in turn made sure that neither the priest nor their son presented themselves at the church the following day - money has always been a powerful tool. And clearly, Mario was neither a man of honour nor a man with balls.

But it was only when standing at the door of his parent’s house – the sound of it slamming shut in her face still bouncing off the walls of the surrounding buildings – did the horror of her situation finally dawn on Irma. She was a 27-year-old unwed pregnant woman from a poor family, with a dubious parentage to boot. The father of her child would never be permitted to acknowledge her or their baby. She would never outlive the shame and humiliation, she would be tainted forever with the kinds of nefarious titles that so often befell young women in her state. She would not be able to stay in Isernia.

And she would certainly not be able to keep this noisome burden which had ruined her chances of a better life.

…to be continued…