The Charterhouse of Parma

Having narrowly escaped the singer’s lover, Fabrizio remains wanted for the murder of Giletti. The Marchesa Raversi and Chief Justice Rassi collaborate to sentence him to prison. Upon hearing this news, Gina intends to depart for Florence after first visiting the Prince. She subverts the usual protocols in her audience with the Prince, who is at once charmed and provoked by her impertinence. The Prince declines to intervene in Fabrizio’s sentencing owing to his trust in his judges, whom Gina derides as “infamous assassins” (290). Despite her allusions to his severe rule, the Prince is determined to make Gina his mistress. Mosca enters the meeting to learn of Gina’s departure and is wounded by her vocal disdain for the State of Parma, of which he is so central a part. When the Prince implores Gina to remain as the jewel of Parma society, she requests that he promise not to sign Fabrizio’s sentence. The Prince agrees, and Mosca writes a promissory note but omits a phrase suggested by Gina—namely, that “this unjust procedure will have no future consequence” (294).

Gina reflects on the five years she has spent with Mosca, admiring his sincerity but regretting his “courtier’s soul” (293). Enraged by Gina’s impudence, the Prince orders Fabrizio’s immediate arrest. Justice Rassi relishes the task as “the perfect courtier: without honor and without humor,” while the recently exiled Marchesa Raversi revenges herself on Gina by forging a letter to Fabrizio, whereby she orchestrates his capture by Parma police (301).

Fabrizio is escorted to prison, where he encounters the jailer Fabio Conti and his daughter, Clélia, whom he had previously met among police. The clerk who writes Fabrizio’s report provokes him and a fight erupts. Stirred by sounds of the fight, Clélia recalls her first acquaintance with Fabrizio and the rumors surrounding his relationship to Gina. When Fabrizio is led to the tower, he notices Clélia and is struck by her “angelic countenance” (312). He greets her, but Clélia makes no reply, to her immediate regret. As he is led to his room in the prison’s Farnese tower, Fabrizio “completely forgot to be miserable” in thoughts of Clélia (315). The narrator compares Clélia’s reserved beauty to that of Gina’s as “the known beauty of the ideal” (316). Clélia pities Gina as the latter learns of Fabrizio’s arrest.

A fitting abode for Clélia’s reserved nature, her lofty apartments look out upon the Farnese tower. She blocks the view with orange trees but is able to see Fabrizio’s room from her aviary. “Both alone here and so far away from the world,” the pair begin to communicate in gestures across windows which are less than 30 feet apart (367). On Conti’s orders, workmen affix boards over Fabrizio’s window, but he chisels a hole through the boards with an iron cross.

Gina despairs over Fabrizio’s imprisonment. She blames Mosca for omitting her phrase in the Prince’s promissory note and for serving such “monsters of vanity” (333). Gina feels herself as imprisoned as her nephew, as she bemoans the provincial absolutism of Parma, where a tyrant such as the Prince “knows every one of his victims” (328). Over the course of a sleepless night she decides to part with Mosca in order to devote herself to Fabrizio’s escape without compromising him. She offers reflections on post-Napoleonic Italy in her understanding of the dangers facing Fabrizio as deriving from schemes to depose Mosca and from the caprices of a threatened monarchy. Like the other characters, Gina believes that Fabrizio’s murder has been labeled a crime for political reasons.

For all her power in court, Gina’s ability to help Fabrizio seems limited to her becoming a mistress. The Prince redoubles his efforts in this regard. Gina resists but provokes the attentions of Raversi’s lover, who keeps her apprised of her enemies’ intentions. Mosca offers Rassi promotion to the nobility in exchange for information about the Prince, who desires Fabrizio’s death in revenge against Gina but is aware of Mosca’s power and thus feels himself cornered. In order to secure his power in Parma apart from the Prince, Mosca pays court to the Princess Isotta. He learns from informants that Conti would not hesitate to poison Fabrizio. Outside of court, townspeople blame Gina for an apparent coldness toward Fabrizio and are outraged by the prospect of Fabrizio’s death.

When Gina breaks with Mosca, she echoes Fabrizio in complaining that she has never loved. Yet Fabrizio meanwhile realizes the source of his strange happiness in prison not in the greatness of his character, as he had previously thought, but in Clélia. Built some time ago in order to imprison a Crown Prince who had seduced his stepmother, the Farnese tower stands as a symbol of the politics and incest which have surrounded Fabrizio’s life. Once trapped in the tower, Fabrizio is free of them. He delights in a view “freer than court” and explains to a guard that he is in prison for killing a man, “but that won’t stop me from living the best life I can while I am your guest” (365). The fulfillment of Fabrizio’s most feared prophecy ends happier than the time spent evading it. Clélia is meanwhile torn between loyalty to her father and her own antipathy for what he stands for. Her liberal sympathies are stirred by her attachment to Fabrizio, over whom she grows jealous of Gina.