�NOVELLA GRECA.� ?. SERAO�S 19TH CENTURY GREECE. ITS REALITIES AND ITS ANTITHESES

Abstract

In the short story Novella Greca, in her book: Fior di Passione, 1888, the author M. Serao narrates the true story of Calliope Stavro, the heroine (Calliopi Stavrou in Greek), in Leucade - Santa Maura (Lefkada - Agia Mavra in Greek), an island of the Ionian Sea, in 19th century Greece. At that time, the country was just freed from the Turkish occupation, trying to recover from more than 400 years of slavery and subjugation to the Ottoman Empire. Calliope Stavro represents the woman of her time, imprisoned in the small society of her island, suffocated, asphyxiated, disillusioned and unfulfilled. Thus, she decides to commit suicide not having a way out in her island, which although it is a naturally beautiful place due to its greenery, it is a barren rock �thrown� into the Ionian Sea without any promising future for its inhabitants. Serao realistically exposes the true story of the heroine�s female identity, whose death signifies her suffocation within the patriarchal society of her time. The writer presents the outlets of human existence, the small society of the island, the negative influence of the heroine�s microcosm, which mostly depends on the raisin trade, its production and export, with which almost all the males of the island are preoccupied, since it provided a profitable income in that time. Faced with the crushing reality of her life, the non-existence of love, no romance, male dominance, and indifference, even misogynism, she chooses death, she surrenders to her doomed destiny and the futility of existence, because she is not allowed to live a free life according to her will. Her fatal fall from Lefkata�s cape, where in ancient times there was a temple of god Apollo, god of music, light, and patron of the arts and divination, signifies the death of the gods of Olympus. Their place has been taken by a harsh reality, the revelation of the demands of the human soul, its desires, and its dead ends. Greece will need and still needs a long way to go to find the place it deserves in history, free from patriarchal structures, prejudices, and the impasses that they entail. The story of Calliope Stavro proves in practice the predicament of the female under the patriarchal standards of her era and the unsatisfied desires of the human psyche, which are sacrificed for the sake of survival, most times with unpredictable, unpleasant and unhappy results.