LULU’S TRIUMPH
LULU’S TRIUMPH
BY MATILDA SERAO
ideco2-p386
Matilda Serao was born in 1856 at Patras, Greece. She is Italy’s foremost woman writer, adopting a career very unusual with her countrywomen. Up to her thirtieth year she contributed sketches to periodicals.In her early work she distinctly shows the influence of French realists like Zola. Few writers know Balzac as she does. Later she developed a liking for the psychological problem novel, and later still, in “Christ’s Country,” she seems to have joined that neomystic school represented in Italy by Fogazzaro, especially in his “Saint.” Her style is slovenly, and, though not strong-minded, more like that of a man. But her stories are told with great spirit. The heroine of one of her very latest stories is an American, but she does not at all sympathise with the American reader’s “absurd wish for happy endings.” “Lulu’s Triumph” combines the singular merits of a “happy ending” according to the American idea, with a sad ending according to the author’s.
Matilda Serao was born in 1856 at Patras, Greece. She is Italy’s foremost woman writer, adopting a career very unusual with her countrywomen. Up to her thirtieth year she contributed sketches to periodicals.
In her early work she distinctly shows the influence of French realists like Zola. Few writers know Balzac as she does. Later she developed a liking for the psychological problem novel, and later still, in “Christ’s Country,” she seems to have joined that neomystic school represented in Italy by Fogazzaro, especially in his “Saint.” Her style is slovenly, and, though not strong-minded, more like that of a man. But her stories are told with great spirit. The heroine of one of her very latest stories is an American, but she does not at all sympathise with the American reader’s “absurd wish for happy endings.” “Lulu’s Triumph” combines the singular merits of a “happy ending” according to the American idea, with a sad ending according to the author’s.
ideco1-p386