Vittoria — Volume 6 — Context and Discussion

The Cigar as a Political Object

The cigar is not merely a prop but a charged symbol of allegiance. In the opening scene, the woman’s refusal to serve openly and the mob’s organized cries—'Abasso il zigarro!'—turn a private act of smoking into a public test of loyalty. The narrative notes that Austrian soldiers and subalterns 'puffed the harder' when confronted, using the cigar as a flag of defiance. This motif recurs: later, Vittoria’s letter to Countess Ammiani is described as 'poorly worded,' and Laura Piaveni’s critique of Vittoria’s praise for the king—'this playing with shades allows men to call us hypocrites'—echoes the earlier tension between concealment and sincerity. The cigar, like the letter, becomes a medium through which political stances are performed and judged.

Movement Between Private and Public Spaces

Meredith structures the narrative through rapid shifts between interior scenes and street action. The tobacco shop, with its hidden transactions and whispered warnings, gives way to the open square where 'bands of the scum of the population' gather and cries are exchanged like 'organized file-firing.' Similarly, Vittoria’s disobedience unfolds in domestic spaces—her letter-writing in Turin, Laura’s scrutiny—but its consequences are felt in the clamorous streets of Brescia, where Carlo reads her words amid 'all Brescia clamouring indignantly.' The volume’s chapter titles—'The Tobacco Riots,' 'The Five Days of Milan,' 'Vittoria Disobeys Her Lover'—underscore this oscillation between intimate rebellion and collective upheaval.

Feminine Perception vs. Masculine Action

The excerpts highlight a gendered contrast in how characters interpret political reality. Vittoria is described as 'petting her idea of the misunderstood one' and 'thinking that she divined the king’s character by mystical intuition,' a mode of understanding that the narrator calls 'maternally apprehended.' Laura, more cynical, dismisses this as 'playing with shades.' Meanwhile, Carlo, reading Vittoria’s letter in Brescia, reacts with 'insufferable anguish' and a demand that her words be 'the echoes of my soul.' The narrative aligns Vittoria’s intuitive, embodied knowledge with the feminine, while Carlo’s response—'the fury of action transformed the gentle youth'—represents a masculine drive toward decisive, often violent, engagement. This tension is not resolved but dramatized through the characters’ conflicting loyalties.

Recurring Imagery of Waiting and Impatience

The volume opens with Anna von Lenkenstein, 'one who could wait for vengeance,' in contrast to Lena, who 'punished on the spot.' This opposition between patience and immediacy threads through the episodes. The tobacco mobs act with spontaneous fury; the polizia 'took counsel and shrugging, evidently too anxious to avoid a collision.' Vittoria’s disobedience is itself a form of waiting—she declines to leave Turin despite Carlo’s command—while Carlo’s response is to 'dash hasty lines' demanding her immediate compliance. The death of Rinaldo Guidascarpi, announced in the chapter title, suggests a culmination of this pattern: the cost of impatience or delay in a revolutionary moment. Meredith uses these temporal contrasts to structure the narrative’s emotional rhythm.

Readers attentive to the volume’s structure will notice how Meredith uses recurring objects—cigars, letters, umbrellas—as nodes where personal and political tensions converge. The movement between interior monologue and collective action is not seamless but deliberately jarring, mirroring the volatility of the 1848 uprisings. This volume rewards close attention to the staging of scenes: the way a character’s gesture (arms under an apron, a tossed cigar) can carry the weight of an entire political stance.

Reading about Vittoria’s stubborn pulse against Carlo’s will, I remembered pacing my own room over a heroine’s choices in The Wanderer; or, Female Difficulties (Volume 5 of 5) — Inside the Classic. Both women move through streets brimming with danger, yet the real rebellion is interior—a quiet refusal to be possessed by love’s demand for obedience. That ache felt familiar, like an old scar warming in rain.