Delle donne non facesti menzione

In a famous poetic story by Muriel Rukeyser, Oedipus asks the Sphinx why she did not recognize his mother in the woman he married. “Because your answer was wrong,” the Sphinx replies. “When I asked you the riddle—what walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening—you answered ‘man.’ You made no mention of women.” “But when we say ‘man,’ we also mean women,” protests Oedipus, “everyone knows that.” “That’s what you think,” the Sphinx answers.

Erica is a forty-year-old woman who decides to leave her husband and children to start over. For two weeks, she believed she had little life ahead due to a misdiagnosis. Then she was given a future back, but the innocent outlook of her past is lost. She sacrificed all her own aspirations for her children and to keep the family together, while her husband was unfaithful. Now she feels awakened and can no longer pretend: the hypocrisy on which her life was based has ended.

She must start from scratch, rekindling desires set aside after having two children, and rebuilding relationships with authenticity. Into her thoughts and days now come men, friends, colleagues, and a father from whom she had distanced herself, with whom she can rediscover tenderness and the memory of her mother who is no longer there. Even her city, Genoa, surprises her at every turn as she wanders, intoxicated by her newfound freedom. Yet leaving the home where her children sleep is a wrenching act for any parent. On a mother, moreover, centuries of prejudice weigh heavily. “If this woman were a man, he would be just a man leaving—a case of the universal,” writes Michela Tilli. “But this individual is a woman, and so you think you know a lot about her: the universal has already shrunk. And not only is she a woman, she is a mother. A mother who leaves: what more do you need to pass a judgment of condemnation?”