“You aren’t ill: it is just that you are made of second-rate materials.” -Natalia Ginzburg

Theresa and I call it double-dipping when some of our research for other projects works well for a Nasty Women Writers blog post, too.

This happened while researching the Abruzzo region of Italy, and discovering an essay by Natalia Ginzburg titled “Winter in the Abruzzi,” written in 1944. This masterful piece provides a look at those living in that mountainous region, along with a slice of insight about life. This seems to be Natalia’s way. The scenarios, the day-to-day experience of living in exile, or the worn-out shoes one puts on each morning, become a means to a message you’ll want to hold onto.

As Andrew Martino, a translator and professor at Salisbury University, Maryland, says:

“Natalia Ginzburg is one of those voices that struck a chord that continues to vibrate within me. Reading Ginzburg goes far beyond the pleasurable. It’s as if her writing comes to us from somewhere far below the surface, revealing what is inherently human.”

The Glow of Hope

“Winter in the Abruzzi” is described by New Yorker staff writer Joan Acocella as “maybe the most beautiful piece of work Ginzburg ever produced.” It details the daily life of Natalia and her husband, Leone Ginzburg, with their three young children, while living in internal exile in the mountains. This exile is due to their involvement in the anti-Fascism movement and their being vulnerable as intellectuals and Jews. Natalia writes of her winter walks with the children and her evening strolls with Leone. She describes those who live in the small village of Pizzoli, their looks and habits, their generosity and disapproval. Being in exile delivers its own brand of homesickness, along with seasons that seem to stretch on forever. But she and Leone share hopes and dreams along with their altered reality. When they return to Rome in 1943, Leone is imprisoned, tortured, and killed. Natalia realizes that the “glow” of their shared future, along with the daily walks, the warming fires, and the oranges from Giro’s, made for the happiest days of her life:

“At that time I believed in a simple and happy future, rich with hopes that were fulfilled, with experiences and plans that were shared. But that was the best time of my life, and only now that it has gone from me forever – only now do I realize it”(9).

Natalia (Levi) Ginzburg and Leone Ginzburg.

Dreams and desires that lie beyond the day-to-day burn as a flame within, that once doused, are longed for and missed. Until another is ignited:

“Our dreams are never realized and as soon as we see them betrayed we realize that the intensest joys of our life have nothing to do with reality. No sooner do we see them betrayed than we are consumed with regret for the time when they glowed within us. And in this succession of hopes and regrets our life slips by”(9 ).

The Little Virtues: Essays

“Winter in the Abruzzi” is the first essay in The Little Virtues collection, and the last is “The Little Virtues,” essay itself. All the stories in the collection were written between 1944-1962.

“The Little Virtues” is one of the most powerful prose pieces I’ve ever read, and some of the best parenting advice I’ve ever considered. It resonates deep down, taps into what we know to be timelessly true.

Immediately, Natalia dives into the deep end by extolling that it’s not the little virtues we should teach our children, but the big ones.

“Not thrift but generosity and an indifference to money; not caution but courage and a contempt for danger; nor shrewdness but frankness and a love of truth; not tact but love for one’s neighbour and self-denial; not a desire for success but a desire to be and to know”(121).

Big virtues: generosity, an indifference to money, courage, a contempt for danger, frankness, a love of truth, love for one’s neighbor, self-denial, a desire to be, a desire to know.

By default, little virtues: thrift, importance of money, caution, shrewdness, tact, and a desire for success.

Natalia differentiates between the two:

“The little virtues also arise from our deepest instincts, from a defensive instinct; but in them reason speaks, holds forth, displays its arguments as the brilliant advocate of self-preservation”(122).

The big or great virtues:

“The great virtues well up from an instinct in which reason does not speak…And the best of us is in that silent instinct, and not in our defensive instinct which harangues, holds forth and displays its arguments with reason’s voice”(122).

She shares what she sees as the pitfalls of relying on the little virtues only:

“I believe that a climate which is completely pervaded by a respect for the little virtues will, insensibly, lead to cynicism or to a fear of life…Not that the little virtues are in themselves contemptible; but their value is of a complementary and not of a substantial kind; they cannot stand by themselves without the others, and by themselves and without the others they provide meagre fare for human nature”(122).

Natalia’s suggestion is to lead with the great virtues, otherwise, we risk living lives of more pettiness than greatness:

“Besides, the great can also contain the little, but by the laws of nature there is no way the little can contain the great”(123).

The Limitations of Money

Natalia writes much about the overcomplicated concept of money and how and when to teach its true value: “not too soon and not too late; the secret of education lies in choosing the right time to do things”(127).

“Being moderate with oneself and generous with others; this is what is meant by having a just relationship with money, by being free as far as money is concerned. And there is no doubt that it is less difficult to educate a child so that he has such a sense of proportion, such a freedom, in a family in which money is earned and immediately spent, in which it flows like clear spring water and practically does not exist as money. Things become complicated where money exists and exists heavily, where it is a leaden stagnant pool that sticks and gives off vapours”(127).

Rewarding children for doing chores and performing well in school with money may be misleading or a disservice:

“The money we give our children should be given for no reason; it should be given indifferently so that they will learn to receive it indifferently; but it should be given not so that they learn to love it, but so that they learn to not love it, so that they realize its true nature and its inability to satisfy our truest desires, which are those of the spirit”(131).

As I read and reread this essay, I am haunted by an inner voice that says that nothing about this is realistic. That much of what Natalia recommends does not jive with our cultural ways, and never really would have. But I resist this admonishing voice, especially when it’s apparent that our reliance on the small virtues has led to much confusion and pain.

Natalia Levi Ginzburg was born in Palermo, Sicily in 1916 and grew up in the northern city of Turin, Italy. Her father was a professor at the University of Turin, as was her first husband, Leone Ginzburg.

The youngest of five siblings by seven years, Natalia often quipped that she wrote succinctly because she had to speak so quickly as a child to get a word in edgewise! Natalia remarried after Leone and was the mother of five children. She was a writer when “Italian literature was still largely a men’s club,” and says she therefore tried to write like a man. Joan Acocella says that even though Natalia’s life embodied much tragedy, she was able to “convert the grief into some sort of beauty.”

Natalia wrote numerous novels, short stories, dramatic works, and essays. She continued writing well into her seventies. Always an activist, she was elected to the Italian Parliament in 1983 as an Independent (Acocella).

Natalia goes on to address what is touted as success and parents’ over-investment in their children’s achievements.

“We usually give a quite unwarranted importance to our children’s scholastic performance. And this is nothing but a respect for the little virtue of ‘success’…we want success from them, we want them to satisfy our pride”(132).

Shifting from strictly scholastic achievement to honoring what emerge as true interests, that which calls from within:

“What we must remember above all in the education of our children is that their love of life should never weaken…And what is a human being’s vocation but the highest expression of his love of life? And so we must wait, next to him, while his vocation awakens and takes shape”(134).

Us, wait? I fear that is not something we do well, or much at all! To wait is to miss out, be left behind, to be viewed as lazy and unproductive. But don’t we know deep down that this is not necessarily true?

So many adults in mid-life and beyond strive to get back to their calling or passion. They feel compelled to reclaim their purpose and are hard-pressed to recover it all those years later. How much better to never have buried or abandoned it?

“A vocation, an ardent and exclusive passion for something in which there is no prospect of money, the consciousness of being able to do something better than others, and being able to love this thing more than anything else…A vocation is man’s [sic] one true wealth and salvation”(135).

The Importance of Silence

“Our relationship with our children should be a living exchange of thoughts and feelings, but it should also include deep areas of silence; it should be an intimate relationship but it must not violently intrude on their privacy; it should be a balance between silence and words”(135).

Silence is often interpreted negatively in relations with our children, that they don’t want to talk to us, or that they’re hiding something. Yet, guided by the great virtues, this sacred silence, like the waiting, need not be feared or unexpected.

The onus, as it should, falls on adults. How much do we love life and demonstrate this through our vocations, our highest expression of our love of life? To what do we devote ourselves? Or do we expect our children to be an extension of our lives, to offer something we have been unable or unwilling to provide for ourselves?

“And if we ourselves have a vocation, if we have not betrayed it, if over the years we have continued to love it, to serve it passionately, we are able to keep all sense of ownership out of our love for our children”(136).

Ever the optimist, we might check ourselves and be honest. If we find we can do better and differently now, even if our children are grown and well on their way, how might an intentional shift to the great virtues feed our souls and, in turn, impact theirs?

“This is perhaps the one real chance we have of giving them some kind of help in their search for a vocation – to have a vocation ourselves, to know it, to love it and serve it passionately; because love of life begets a love of life”(137).

Natalia Ginzburg is a brave and wise Nasty Woman Writer.

© Maria Dintino 2025

Works Cited

Acocella, Joan. “Rediscovering Natalia Ginzburg.” The New Yorker, 22 July 2019. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/07/29/rediscovering-natalia-ginzburg

Ginzburg, Natalia. The Little Virtues. Translated from the Italian by Dick Davis. Arcade Publishing, 2015.

Martino, Andrew. “A World Filled with Echoes – Natalia Ginzburg’s “The Little Virtues.” Reading in Translation, 22 February 2021. https://readingintranslation.com/2021/02/22/a-world-filled-with-echoes-on-natalia-ginzburgs-the-little-virtues/