Everyone Wants Her as an Aunty

Natalia Ginzburg "Sagittarius".

For women the first half is preloaded with obligations: be a good daughter, a tolerable wife, and naturally - a mother. Biology and society clap politely while they ticks the boxes. And then, unexpectedly, the list runs out.

Young enough to hope, solvent enough to try

Natalia Ginzburg tells a story of such a woman, firmly planted in the “second half” of her life. She has money to spend, time to waste, and an explosive amount of energy to finally pursue her long-delayed dream: becoming part of an artistic circle.

Armed with enthusiasm she buys a house and moves to a suburb, convinced that culture will simply notice her. The gallery will open. The artists will come. Intimate dinners will magically materialise. Reality, however, proves less accommodating. No one rushes to meet her. Invitations fail to arrive. Even her own family sees no value in her carefully imagined art gallery. Rude.

Sagittarius is narrated by her younger daughter, who clearly disapproves of nearly everything about her mother: her behavior, her clothes, her ambitions, her existence. The tone borders on mockery. The daughter doesn’t just observe; she judges, relentlessly. Sympathy is in short supply.

Just when hope is almost extinguished, Scilla appears. Exotic. Eccentric. Self-proclaimed artist. Scilla offers exactly what the widow has been craving: validation, encouragement, and the illusion of belonging. Naturally, the mother clings to her. A second life seems to bloom within her half-formed ideas.

From a 21st-century Western European perspective, we might instinctively cheer for the mother. Finally, a woman choosing herself. Finally, a late bloom. Except the setting is a small, post-war Italian town where ambition is suspicious and independence is not a charming personality trait. Narrator's mother has never run a business, never worked, never organised anything beyond a household. Her confidence, therefore, is not empowerment - it is naïveté.

For the reader, the tragedy announces itself early. But for the mother, confident yet inexperienced in the ways of the world, the coming disaster is like the Titanic hitting the iceberg: sudden, unthinkable, and utterly catastrophic.

Sagittarius is, at its core, a small family drama. It charts the unraveling of a mother-daughter relationship alongside the mother’s rapid downfall. And despite everything, it is impossible not to admire this woman, bursting with life in a town that feels populated by ghosts.

Everyone else appears drained of color. The older daughter Giulia passively watches life drift by. Giulia’s husband functions mechanically, as if following instructions. Compared to them, the widow who refuses to sit quietly looks almost heroic.

And yet, the cracks are there. Her expectations for her daughters to marry better, live better, be better - are wildly unrealistic given the circumstances of their lives. Her social ambitions are obvious, but she seems utterly incapable of understanding her own place, or how far her daughters can realistically rise in the society she inhabits. She imposes one of her fantasies onto them, as if hope alone could bend the world to her will. It is no wonder the younger daughter chooses distance.

So what, exactly, is the crime here?

Is a woman in her later years not allowed to enjoy herself? Why shouldn’t someone who has lived her entire life in the shadows enjoy her money however she pleases, take risks, be bold?

The problem is that she is not pursuing freedom; she is chasing a fantasy. While outsiders can see the impending failure clearly, she walks into it with open arms and blind faith. There is no calculation, no awareness of risk, only hope and misplaced confidence that the life owns her, that now it is her time.

Instead of becoming the strong, defiant woman who claims her space unapologetically, she ends up wanting:

nothing more than to be left alone, to retreat softly into the shadows.

Not exactly the triumphant ending one was rooting for.

We want her to be a breakthrough figure, a woman who raises the bar and smashes barriers for those who follow. What we get instead is a broken older woman who miscalculated badly and trusted too freely.

That is why she works best as a distant, slightly unhinged aunty. The kind who lives in another country, whose misfortunes you hear about secondhand. Close enough to fascinate. Far enough to survive the weight of her bad decisions.