Amalia, the hysteric sister (I. Svevo, Senilità, 1898)

The essay is dedicated to Amalia Brentani, the sister of the protagonist of Senilità (1898), by Italo Svevo. She is, in fact, a crucial figure: because of the narrative and symbolic symmetries between the two siblings; because of the continuous expression of a desire sometimes missed, sometimes denied desire, sometimes affirmed in the form of physical and psychic discomfort. Hysteria is the main device used to develop her identity, but it is not just a theme: it becomes a real character in the plot. It hides the narrative truths unveiled by the rhetoric of the text. Amalia is not a person in flesh and bones, nor she is a real clinical case: she is a literary character born from the imagination of an author who belongs to his time, or even resambles it. In particular, it is the time when experimental psychology begins to tackle the complexity of the human soul (and therefore also of desire), first and foremost interrogating the psychophysical oddities of female nature.