54 pages • 1-hour read
The Shoemaker's Wife
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Part 1, Chapters 1-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of illness, death, and child death.
Part 1: “The Italian Alps”
Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary: “A Gold Ring”
After the death of her husband, Carlo Lazzari, Caterina Lazzari decides to send her sons, Ciro and Eduardo, to the local “convent of San Nicola” (5). She can’t afford to support them on her own. Before leaving home for San Nicola, she gives Ciro the gold ring that Carlo gave her.
At the convent, Sister Domenica guides Caterina and the Lazzari brothers inside and shows them around. Along the way, Ciro gets distracted by the smell of food. In the kitchen, they meet the cook, Sister Teresa. She’s young for a nun, and Ciro hits it off with her immediately. He boasts about his father, convinced that he’ll return someday. He has few memories of Carlo and doesn’t understand that he’s gone, as Carlo left the family to work in the US years ago.
Meanwhile, Enza Ravanelli lives in Schilpario, a village just up the mountain from the convent, with her father (Marco Ravanelli), her mother (Giacomina), and five younger siblings. Marco drives a coach, and Enza helps the family with everything. One day, Marco informs Enza that he’s leaving for a few days to run an errand for their landlord for three lire. Enza sadly begs him not to go, but Marco says he needs the money for rent.
Marco drives to Vilminore and collects Caterina from the convent. Ciro watches his mother disappear into the distance, overcome with sadness. Eduardo tries to comfort him, but Ciro wants to run away. That night, Eduardo sleeps on the floor by Ciro’s cot and reassures him. Eduardo promises himself that he’ll always protect his brother.
Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary: “A Red Book”
Marco gives Caterina a ride. They stop along the way, and Caterina tells Marco about her troubles and the sons she left behind. Meanwhile, Enza takes care of her family at home. When Marco returns home, he announces that he paid their landlord, Signor Arduini, the rent on his way home. He then tells them about Caterina and her 10- and 11-year-old boys at the convent, wondering if they should take them in. Enza reminds Marco that they already have enough mouths to feed. For the rest of the evening, she reflects on her life in the mountains. She loves her family and is thankful for everything they have.
Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary: “A Silver Mirror”
Six years later, 15-year-old Ciro and 16-year-old Eduardo are now integrated into convent life. Eduardo is gentle and scholarly, and Ciro is attractive, strong, and flirtatious. Caterina promised to come back for them, but she never did. Eduardo is more committed to her memory than Ciro, who is preoccupied with thoughts of love. He does his duties at the covenant faithfully, but he dislikes the parish priest, Don Raphael Gregorio, who often chides Ciro even though he’s always careful about his work.
Ciro creeps into his and Eduardo’s room in “the garden workhouse” (35). The brothers talk about their days, sharing their frustrations and desires. Eduardo teases Ciro for being too distracted by girls. Eduardo is more interested in the holy life.
On Fridays, Don Gregorio leads mass for the convent schoolchildren. One Friday, Ciro notices a girl his age named Concetta and privately vows to make her his.
Spring comes to the mountain, and the beauty of the season delights Enza. She does her chores faithfully, always caring for her family and looking after her youngest sister, Stella. One day, Enza reads a book and wonders who she’ll become when she grows up. Afterward, she and her siblings have lunch and play outside. While splashing in the stream, Enza notices bruises all over Stella’s body. Her other siblings (Eliana, Battista, and Vittorio) don’t know their source. Panicked, Enza rushes Stella home, fearing the worst.
Part 1, Chapter 4 Summary: “A Pot de Crème”
The following night, Enza notices how strange the moon looks outside the window. She and her parents are hovering over Stella’s bed. She has fallen terribly ill. The family prays at her bedside and calls for the doctor. Nothing seems to improve her condition. Enza’s mind races. She blames herself for not taking better care of Stella and for letting her catch a fever. She can’t imagine life without her youngest sibling, whom she has loved best of all her siblings.
Giacomina is overcome with sorrow at her daughter’s ever-weakening condition. She throws herself over Stella’s body as she takes her last breath. She used to see Stella as an angel, but now she’s gone at only five years old.
At the convent, Ciro is buffing the statues in the garden. His favorite is Saint Michael, the warrior. Ciro’s friend, the convent handyman Ignazio (Iggy) Farino, appears. He and Ciro chat about Ciro’s interest in Concetta. Ciro shares his dreams for the future. Then, Iggy tasks Ciro with burying a young girl up on the mountain per Father Martinelli’s orders. Ciro declares that he’ll use the pay to buy Concetta a brooch.
While waxing the pews in the sanctuary, Ciro runs into Concetta and starts up a flirtatious conversation. He remarks on her beauty and shares his feelings for her. Concetta is skeptical. Shortly after she leaves, Ciro is shocked to discover her and Don Gregorio kissing in the statue garden. Don Gregorio notices Ciro and scolds him. Ciro asserts that he has no right to chastise him in light of his own behavior, but Don Gregorio doesn’t back down.
After Ciro leaves, Don Gregorio promises Concetta that he’ll always care for her. The besotted Concetta believes him. She begs Don Gregorio to ensure that Ciro doesn’t reveal their relationship. The two share another passionate kiss.
Part 1, Chapters 1-4 Analysis
The opening chapters of Part 1 are devoted to world-building. Set in the early 20th century in the Italian Alps, the novel uses a braided narrative structure. The third-person omniscient narrator alternates between depicting episodes of Ciro Lazzari and Enza Ravanelli’s simultaneous stories. After his father’s death and mother’s abandonment, Ciro begins living at the San Nicola convent in Vilminore di Scalve, while Enza resides with her family “[j]ust a few miles up the mountain [in] the village of Schilpario” (13). The two protagonists live in relative proximity to one another but are unacquainted. The narrator links the two young people’s intersecting storylines. The shifts between their seemingly unrelated stories create a parallel between their lives, foreshadowing how their lives intersect in subsequent chapters. Their concurrent storylines also reveal overlaps between their circumstances.
Ciro’s and Enza’s early encounters with loss introduce one of the novel’s themes: Love Enduring Through Hardship. Both their lives are defined by unpredictability and difficulty. In Ciro’s portions of these chapters, his father dies, his family becomes impoverished, his grieving mother leaves him at the convent, and he later gets in trouble with the parish priest for discovering a salacious secret. These hardships challenge Ciro to be strong and capable, even though he’s an inexperienced child. From a young age, Ciro becomes intimate with abandonment, loneliness, and fear. When Caterina takes him and Eduardo to the convent, all that Ciro can see is “his mother’s choice to ride away from him, to leave him there like a broken chair on the side of the road waiting for the junkman” (19). The broken chair simile conjures notions of worthlessness and disposability, which mirror Ciro’s emotional state. Because he’s powerless to change his circumstances, he must learn to rely on his older brother. The image of Eduardo sleeping on the floor near Ciro’s cot creates a reassuring mood: “Even when he grew to be a young man, Ciro would never forget this small act of kindness, which Eduardo would repeat night after night for months” (21). Eduardo is young and grieving, too, but he sacrifices his own comfort to care for his brother.
Enza has similar encounters with hardship as a young woman, most notably her family’s financial insecurities and her sister Stella’s death. Despite the Ravenellis’ economic depravity, Enza maintains a happy heart. She’s a positive light within her family, as she can always see “how lucky she [is], and how sad it [is] that everyone on the mountain [does] not share that luck” (29). To Enza, contentment is simple: It means being with her family and enjoying the beauty of mountain life. When Stella becomes ill and dies, Enza’s hopeful nature deflates: “There was an especially deep bond between the eldest and the youngest. Enza and Stella were the beginning and end, the alpha and omega. The bookends that held all the family stories from start to finish” (45). Their connection mirrors that of Ciro and Eduardo. Much like Eduardo has for Ciro, Enza has always taken responsibility for her younger sister. She blames herself when Stella dies because she feels that she has failed the person she loves most in the world. However, Ciro’s parallel storyline subtextually implies that Enza may still find hope even after her sister’s death: Her family’s love might buoy her through this hardship.
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