Giana Anguissola, "Violetta la timida"

Giana Anguissola (Travo, Piacenza 1906 — Milan 1966) began writing at the age of sixteen, collaborating with the “Corriere dei Piccoli” in which she published novels and short stories. Her most famous novel is “Violetta la Timida” from 1963, which won the Bancarellino award.

Violetta is nicknamed by her schoolmates “tame violet”, she walks with downcast eyes and her ears are perpetually on fire, because she suffers from “acute rabbit disease”, what a psychologist today would probably define as social phobia.

“Signorelli, a girl who is the complete opposite of me: energetic, nice, important, relaxed, with a beautiful last name… I mean, it’s not like Signorelli is a great last name: it’s mine that’s ugly: Mansueti, so every other surnames seems beautiful to me. And then my name is also Violetta who, put together with Mansueti, could only result in a rabbit. In fact, I’m very shy.”

One day she is called by the school principal: the journalist Giana Anguissola herself is looking for a girl who is good at writing and Violetta is, she is studious, creative, intelligent, ambitious, but awkward and clumsy like all shy people.

“The first thing I did, of course, was to trip over a large blue carpet and risk falling sprawled in front of the principal’s desk. So, as soon as I regained my balance, I stood there with downcast eyes, with my cheeks cooking like two cutlets, without even having had time to look around.”

Anguissola — who from that moment on Violetta will call Mrs. A. — asks her to write pieces for teenagers in the “Corriere dei piccoli”, recounting her simple life as a normal girl, between home, school, parents, the grandfather Oreste, his fat and awkward friend Terenzio, his obnoxious companion Calligaris, the first little girls’ parties. Immediately realizing how shyness and anxiety invalidate every performance of Violetta and condition her life, Mrs. A. advises her, or rather imposes her, to do everything that scares her, facing obstacles, freeing herself from the syndrome of chronic avoidance.

“For this other time and forever, your job, I’ve already told you, is to face any situation that intimidates you, unless it’s a lion, you will be cured of shyness.”

Thus it will be that Violetta, from being inhibited, will almost turn into a bully, founding the “shy club” (today it would be a Facebook group) to help those who have the same problem as her. Here is an army of unsuspected people — including her friend / aspiring boyfriend Terenzio — who join her club and invade the city, an army willing to do anything to overcome anxieties and fears.

Apart from the improbability that such a miraculous healing takes place, especially in the case of social phobia, if the book captivated us at the time for its fun, breezy, ironic style, a rereading today offers us an insight into the educational world of the early sixties, who considered themselves modern and progressive but were, in reality, still rigid, influenced by the Catholic church and the ministerial programs of the then prevailing DC, a school where religion was spoken almost every day, where stories of saints and martyrs were told.

“Miss Carbone, then, seeing that you even disfigured faces already perfectly painted by the good Lord, she had a thousand reasons to be indignant and send you to wash!”

In the brief introduction to the life and work of the author in the Mursia edition of 1970, we read, in fact, that Anguissola:

She “helped fight comics and re-educate kids to healthy and artistically valid reading.”

The edifying intent is evident and disseminated everywhere, especially at the end of each chapter, which serves as a life lesson:

“It would be a mistake on the part of the adolescent to still follow the instincts of childhood that are extinguished and a worse mistake would be to already follow the instincts of youth that arise. Because if the adolescent who lingers to play can inspire a smiling indulgence, the adolescent who precociously poses as a woman or a man, I mean in his outward manifestations such as dressing like one or speaking or smoking like another, inspires a pity mixed with repulsion.”

However, that was a clean world, full of hope, where everything seemed to be advancing towards an improvement in society, where the adjective “modern” was synonymous with progress and civilization. The economic boom corresponded to ever higher expectations, mass schooling, means of transport for everyone, holidays, refrigerators, cars, supermarkets, industries that hired on a daily basis, emigration from the countryside to the city. (And the difference between the city and the countryside will be the subject of the sequel, “The extraordinary holidays of Violetta”.)

I like to turn to that distant and disappeared world every now and then and remember it as the only season of total hope experienced by my nation.