A Room of One's Own

My first book read in 2024 is the delicious novel Forbidden Notebook (2023) by Alba de Cespedes. The Forbidden Notebook was originally published in serial form in 1951 and as a book, Quaderno probito,  in 1952. Recently rediscovered, it has been newly translated by Ann Goldstein and published by Pushkin Press with an introduction by Jhumpa Lahiri.

Valeria Cossati buys a black notebook on a whim. Upon bringing it home she searches for a place to hide it: the linen closet; under a pile of mending; where she stores her cleaning supplies; a disused suitcase. She moves it every few days as she does not want it to be found by her husband of 20+ years, Michele, or by her young adult children Riccardo and Mirella. At night, after the family is asleep, Valeria snatches moments to write - recording her observations and thoughts, anxious that this rebellious act of writing will be discovered and she will be ashamed for having her own thoughts.

Through her diary entries we learn that Valeria married Michele at age 21, moved into a small apartment in Rome and had two children. Now at forty-three years old, she questions the life she has been living, obeying conservative gender norms, and worries that she is getting old before her time.  She reflects on the early days with Michele, their courtship, their correspondence while he was off at war, and contrasts this with the present day where they coexist but have lost that spark of early love.  Since the children were born, Michele has called her 'Mamma', but she longs to be called by her name and be seen as a woman not just a mother. 

The diary is written from December 1950 to May 1951 when Italy is recovering from World War II and the oppression of the Mussolini years. It is a period of change, and through her daughter Mirella she tries to reconcile her conservative upbringing and the new social mores that her daughter subscribes to - going out at night with an older man, taking up a job in his law firm. She also sees the scorn of their poverty, when her daughter longs for beautiful things her parents cannot afford. She records in the diary her feelings toward her son - once the apple of her eye, now determined to run off to Buenos Aires with a girl Valeria feels is not worthy of him. Through her children's actions, she questions the choices she has made.

Valeria links the disquiet in her mind to when she began writing in the notebook. She writes:

'I am increasingly convinced that this anxiety took possession of me starting the day I bought the notebook: an evil spirit, the devil seems hidden in it. So I try to neglect it, leave it in the suitcase of the closet, but that is not enough. And in fact the more tightly bound I am to my duties, the more limited my time, the more urgent the desire to write becomes.' (p 124) 

But the notebook is a necessary vehicle for Valeria to process her thoughts. Even in her own house, she has no place of her own. While the children can each escape to their rooms, and Michele can withdraw to the chair where he reads the papers and listens to the radio, Valeria has nothing of her own. Gradually she begins to understand that she needs the notebook as she has no other confidante. She writes:

'It's strange: our inner life is what counts most for each of us and yet we have to pretend to live as if we paid no attention to it, with inhuman security.' (p 199)

Through her notebook, readers are transported to a different time and place, where women's place in domestic life is narrowly defined. The transgressive act of writing this diary, doing something for herself, opens Valeria's world to new possibilities and different choices, the potential to free herself from the role she has been given.

I am so pleased to have read this book, finding it in the City of Sydney Library.  I became interested in this book in December 2023 when I read an article in the New York Times about it and was intrigued by this photo of the author, Cuban-Italian writer Alba de Cespedes. She worked as a journalist and was jailed in 1935 for anti-fascist activities. Two of her novels were banned and moved to Paris after World War II. I hope that more of her writing is translated and reaches a wider audience, as de Cespedes deserves to be read.