The Betrothed – Analysis Chapter 11: the most important elements of the chapter, the crucial events and a complete and extended analysis of the themes.
The Betrothed – Analysis Chapter 11
Analysis of Chapter 11 of The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni
Places: Don Rodrigo’s palace, the village, the road from Monza to Milan, eastern gate (today Porta Venezia) in Milan
Time : November 11-12
The fourth chapter of The Betrothed is divided into two asymmetric macrosequences , divided by a short connecting sequence:
- The first, which comprises two-thirds of the chapter, tells of Don Rodrigo’s reactions to the news of the failure of the kidnapping project and foreshadows his future plans. The connecting sequence reflects on the harsh necessity of telling in succession events that happened at the same time.
- The second one starts Renzo’s adventures in Milan , in a world far from his native village, which will favor the antagonist’s plans.
The chapter thus appears to conclude the night of deception and the start of new adventures in a wider space; after having dedicated two chapters to Lucia’s story and having placed her in a convent for the moment, chapter XI brings together the events of the two male characters who almost face each other at a distance and whose tireless struggle the narrator represents throughout the course of the novel.
Like chapter VII, this chapter is also a narrative hub, built by intersecting different temporal and spatial planes, although the parallel and contemporary events will be described in succession on a single line, forcing the narrator to interrupt a scene several times to go back and resume another.
The return of the bravos and the wait for Don Rodrigo
With a flashback the narrator returns to the night of the deceptions and, after the digression on the nun of Monza, at the beginning of this chapter he takes up many phrases uttered in chapters VII and VIII. The space in which Don Rodrigo moves in the incipit is the mirror of his character and his state of mind: the uninhabited room placed high up is like the emblem of his power looming over the space, the pejorative stanzaccia makes the room bad just like its owner and the adjective uninhabited reveals his solitude and the emptiness of his soul.
Don Rodrigo shows himself as a mediocre person who does not even excel in evil, anxious and restless because he has accomplished the biggest and most risky undertaking he… had yet to undertake, that is, kidnapping a defenseless peasant girl. The narrator makes fun of him by defining him, with an antiphrasis, as the good man.
Don Rodrigo and the Griso
The passage plays on words. Don Rodrigo invents a beautiful neologism ( Signor let me do it ) borrowing it from the words of the braggart Griso, which he now uses sarcastically at the end of a series of climactic insults that transform Griso into the type of the braggart, of Captain Fracassa. For his part, Griso, instead, uses the word dovere with the usual distorted perspective that creates an ironic gap.
Go to sleep, poor Griso….
This passage is an interesting example of metalepsis, an unusual direct speech of the narrator addressed to the character, which undermines the narrative pact and the distance between the narrator, external to the story, and a character of the story itself.
Furthermore, the compassionate tone almost mimics the thoughts that Griso is mulling over within himself, so much so that the speech may seem like the echo of an indirect free thought of the character. With the prolepsis, which closes the passage and demonstrates the omniscience of the Manzonian narrator, the tone becomes serious again and the character is predicted that justice will arrive, sooner or later even in this world and it is implied that perhaps one day he will have justice.
Don Rodrigo and Count Attilio
The comparison between the two cousins gives the measure of the distance between them, who represent the two aspects of nobility. Count Attilio is always ready to laugh and mock others, but becomes serious when it comes to family honor and relationships with power; with his unrefined language, he shows that he knows the distorted mechanisms of politics well and knows how to use them to his advantage, balancing violence and diplomacy. Don Rodrigo, on the contrary, does not know how to laugh at anything, agitated by more serious passions, and always tries to self-reassure.
Reconstruction of the night of deception
The narrator often has fun, with a somewhat aristocratic attitude, at the expense of the common people. Each character, even if a simple extra, behaves in a way that is consistent with their own character, which becomes comical in a situation in which everyone reveals the worst part of themselves. An enraged Perpetua, but cunning as always, hides what concerns her but does not keep quiet about Don Abbondio’s mockery. Her account of the night, in free indirect speech, is made up of antiphrastic expressions: Renzo has not shown himself to be a good young man, Agnese is not a good widow and Lucia only has the appearance of the grieving Madonna. Then begins a long free indirect speech of the crowd, which the narrator makes fun of because it is still tied to superstitions and magical beliefs. The entire passage is an example of realism, polyphony and multilingualism, in which several dens and different linguistic registers alternate.
Spreading the news: The narrator’s long reflective metalepsis on how news spreads in a small town is conducted with a refined style and a tone of a moral treatise, while the content is ironic and the metalepsis turns out to be a play on human irrationality, which even turns a good work into something bad.
Don Rodrigo’s New Plans
The narrator emphasizes the wickedness of Don Rodrigo’s feelings and the character’s indirect thoughts confirm what Griso said about justice (the lord’s best ally) and strength, which serves to strike a victim and not to punish a guilty person. A prolepsis anticipates that it will be Renzo himself who will grant the enemy’s wishes, increasing the reader’s sense of curiosity, who however will still have to wait for the end of the metanarrative metalepsis with the narrator’s intimate tone, in which his role is confused with that of the real author and father of the family.
Renzo in Milan: Renzo returns to the scene, after saying goodbye to the village and to Lucia, in a symmetrical version of that of Farewell, mountains, but as befits the character, less lyrical. Renzo is not only nostalgic, like Lucia, he is angry, he cannot forgive, and yet he regrets such unchristian feelings and finds himself as always in conflict between passion and moral sense. The narrator reveals his omniscience in a particular way when he refers to the present (the road was then) in which he implies that in his time it was no longer like that, and in fact between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the roads had been improved by Napoleon and the Austrians. The register of the language is the informal one best suited to the character and the chiasmus in which the adverb is placed sadly underlines Renzo’s feelings: nostalgia (he stood there for a while looking), but also the need to continue (he turned around).
As soon as he moved, he saw people appearing…
The family scene is taken from the description of the riot in Alessandro Tadino’s Raguaglio, one of the historical chronicles consulted by Manzoni. The portrait of the three members is almost grotesque and caricatural: the floured rags, floured faces… in which the adjective floured placed at the center of the chiasmus becomes the key word of the revolt. The comparison that the style establishes between the family and the peasants similar to Don Rodrigo’s bravos indirectly provides us with the narrator’s judgment on the riots and the choice of a family of three people, closely recalls the holy family, a Christian emblem, whose sacredness appears here reversed.
Refusal of hospitality at the convent
The closing of the chapter interrupts the narration, as often happens in the novel, with elements that create curiosity and suspense in the reader. Renzo is torn between the sacred refuge of the church and curiosity, but then he puts the risk of curiosity before the safety of prayer, orienting himself towards the city that awaits him, full of violence and disorder. The lapidary phrase (the vortex attracted the spectator) that interrupts a speech already underway, makes one think of an invincible natural energy, so the reader cannot help but feel the danger that Renzo is heading towards.
