Marianna Ucrìa 

A special woman lives in eighteen-century Sicily, her disablement is that she is deaf and dumb which makes her  disadvantaged in people’s eyes; but in reality, by developing  mostly all her other senses, she elaborates more sensitive thoughts towards the outer world. Through Marianne we understand an ancient and backward world, we see difficulties, joys and sorrows and also, unfortunately, abuses towards the weakest who have always characterized the human society, at every age. The young Marianne, the “mute”, due to her physical condition, grows up looking round carefully and often seems to hear what the next person thinks; she is a smart and intelligent girl who learns the alphabet, reads a lot and learns how to write, out of necessity,  leaving her own thoughts on pieces of paper. Marianna’s dumbness, metaphor of the oppressed woman’s condition, and being deprived of the use of  words,  becomes an expression of redemption. The protagonist comes across as both a fragile and strong character, victim of the mentality of others, but sure of herself. She can find the way to rise in reading and in knowledge above a closed mentality which would like to see her segregated in as a barren and unhappy life. Over the years she will perform the gestures of every woman, she will rejoice and suffer, she will question her marriage and her husband who never gives her the slightest tenderness and, when she least expects it, she will experience the feeling of love she will live with a desperate desire to love and to be loved. Marianne is a woman who will never let herself be broken and will be able to face life with that passion which is inside her, dormant but ready to come out at the right time.