ABSTRACT
As the family story went, Angela's natural beauty had earned the attention of a higher- class suitor, and Gaspare had managed to charm her in turn with his forensic eloquence. In the mid- 1960s the Italian feminist movement was waiting to happen. Having paid their duties to Italian family traditions and Catholicism, Delia and Dario proceeded to worship literature, art, and politics, the three lay religions of her home. At the time Italy had no divorce laws, but she could have gotten rid of him any time through the Vatican annulment process, had she simply and even falsely claimed that he prevented her from giving the autghor's uncle Andrea and her, a Catholic education. As a result, many Italian men practiced nonmonogamy, of the one-way sort. A few years into their marriage, they'd find someone else, and, in the best of cases, pretended they hadn't and carried on.
