For Umbertina, the goat girl of the Calabrian mountains, the bedspread embodies her struggle to extricate herself from poverty and her belief that she does not have to remain one of those with “resignation” painted on their faces, one of “those who have nothing to hope for” (43). It is significant that the bedspread has not been passed down to Umbertina by a mother or grandmother, who could never have afforded such an object. Instead, it has been especially made for and sold to Umbertina by Nelda, the housekeeper of Don Antonio, the village priest. A huge class gap exists between Umbertina’s family and Don Antonio, who enjoys living conditions as foreign to people of Umbertina’s class as the mythical New World to which she sails with her husband and their three children. It is important that Umbertina purchases the bedspread as a beautiful object she has desired, but also—and especially—as the sign of her belief in the possibility of better living conditions. For the same reason, she asks Nelda for rosemary from Don Antonio’s garden—not paying homage to the traditional belief, voiced by Nelda, that women are strong in the houses in which the herb thrives, but rather aspiring to use rosemary as a condiment for the meat that she hopes she and her family will one day be able to eat. Yet Nelda’s words about strong women strike a chord in Umbertina, who the people of Castagna say has had “character right from the womb” and is destined to be “the man of her family” (23). This tradition will be passed down to, and remembered by, her great-granddaughter as she plants rosemary in the garden of her future husband’s family home.