In a penetrating and comprehensive critique of Messina’s work that underscores its artistic merits, Maria Di Giovanna analyzes the recurring lexicon Messina uses as a corollary to these silences (1989). Arguing for a unifying structure she terms il luogo chiuso (closed space), Di Giovanna systematically traces the spatial imagery of confinement in Messina’s narratives set in Sicily. The psychological and physical isolation of women is mirrored in the restricted space of domestic interiors, suffocating atmospheres replete with faded furnishings, shadowy parlors, drawn shades, and shuttered windows. The outside, natural world—Sicily’s sweeping landscapes and ever-present sea—stands diametrically opposed to the colorless landscape women inhabit. A tangible symbol of the freedom denied them, it is a space relegated to memory, the lone refuge for Messina’s lonely protagonists. Ironically, this escape from an unhappy present into an idyllic past inevitably takes the shape of a return to the casa paterna, remembered not as oppressive closed space (il luogo chiuso) but as a nest or protective space (il nido), underlining once again the fundamentally unresolved contradictions in Messina’s writing.

This type of obsessive and conflicted relationship with Sicily pervades the work of all Sicilian writers. Borgese himself referred to it as nec tecum nec sine te vivere possum (neither with or without you can I live) pervades the works of all Sicilian writers (Sciascia 1991, 3; 524). Rarely is it so apparent than in Messina’s “Cogedo” (Parting Words) that concludes Ragazze siciliane (Sicilian Girls) (1997b). The convoluted language of the passage is at best ambiguous and devoid of harsh denouncements that might have pointed the way to a new direction in the lives of young Sicilian women. Rather, in what amounts to a veiled apology for the larger body of her work, the eminently feminist Messina expresses a vague solidarity with her defeated protagonists, validating their dreams and elevating their suffering without condemning its fundamental cause.

Sicilian girls, or I should say Sicilian young women, since in this book we have met neither girls of the lowest classes nor those of the nobility, but rather the daughters of poor clerks and small shopkeepers … young women who sew their trousseaux and wait for a love that may never come again, once it has passed their way, or that might present itself in the guise of “a proper match.”

Camilla or Bobò, Caterina or Bettina—none live in big Sicilian cities where young women, like their sisters across the sea, prepare themselves for battle.

No. They live in small, far-off, and forgotten towns where habits mark the unchanging rhythm of life, where both novelty and sounds arrive late, like muted voices in the distance. They, too, speak of a desire for freedom, even though they continue to walk in the well-worn ways of those who have come before them, dreaming of babies to rock and houses to govern … humble dreams of which they dare not speak.