Exacerbating Sicilian disillusionment in the post-Unification years was the government’s decision to favor northern industrial interests at the expense of the southern masses. Rome’s failure to deliver on political promises strengthened the mafia’s hold, provoked hostility among impatient Sicilians, and incited violence across the island that horrified even the most sympathetic northern Italian observers. The brutal suppression of Sicilian workers’ movements (i fasci siciliani) and subsequent imposition of martial law in 1894, capped male estrangement from the political order. As late as 1912, nearly 70 percent of Sicilian men were still ineligible to vote due to land ownership and literacy requirements (Astorita 2005, 287). Understandably, a sense of fatalism or destino, dominated the Sicilian psyche, a reflection of ordinary Sicilians’ inability to control the direction of their lives.

On the surface, the formal abolition of feudalism in 1806 and the dissolution of church holdings in 1860 had aimed at a more equitable distribution of lands. However, a new landed elite, anxious to expand their holdings, blocked attempts to redistribute this wealth. Savvy alliances between local landowners and government officials in Rome ensured that little would change despite ostensibly comprehensive reforms. Taxes remained disproportionately high for those least able to pay, and usury was rampant. Owners of smaller plots, shopkeepers, and artisans (the most frequent subjects in Maria Messina’s artistic lens), feared losing their financial footing in a climate resistant to social change.

Historian Denis Mack Smith estimates that the average provincial town of 10,000 residents at the turn of the century contained approximately one hundred families of galantuomini, gentlemen property owners who constituted the resident ruling class (1968, 427). Mistretta, which serves as the backdrop for a number of Messina’s short stories, was typical in this regard. As Smith notes, these men took the title of don, spent their days at gentlemen’s clubs, and claimed membership in the civili, or “civilized class,” thus distinguishing themselves as individuals who made their living from the labor of others. Although a mutual dependency between landowners and the lower classes existed, maintaining social distance from their inferiors and keeping them uneducated remained two of the primary objectives of the civili (Foerester 1924, 100).