this is not a love story

Italian seduction be damned, when taking into account the “lovers” and their love affair (which, according the back flap of the novel, is filled with “intense yearning and surprising responses”. I disagree), the best that can be said about the cavalier summer fling was that it took place in a state of delusion, one in which the characters happily resided, confident in their affection of each other.

How did this story end again? A series of events and, oh, right, the obviously impending breakup of summer love. Perhaps under a different light can Tancredi and Sophie’s relationship be deemed sweet and tragic – maybe if Tancredi wasn’t a man on the rebound from a divorce with blatantly sexist ideas and a particular fondness for a challenge when it comes to women who outwardly do not care for his frivolities “and even now he wondered how, and if ever, he might tap the spring of a passion sometimes discernible in her expression and gestures” (Hazzard 42). For Tancredi, having Sophie as a lover would merely maintain the status quo, making sure that he would forever come off as “a personable man with a woman who did him credit – his vanity was satisfied” (33).

Let us not forget about Sophie. At the beginning of the novel, she is determined to stick to her guns and make through her vacation without complications or romance, and actively seeks to avoid Tancredi’s advances. In fact, the first time Tancredi displays his disregard towards a woman’s opinion is when he is picking out a frame with her help – her choice, of course, is “absolutely perfect” (36), of course, but he still doesn’t utilize her choice, instead going with something “slightly different from the one he had suggested” (36), which does not go without notice by Sophie, who is appropriately irked. Also, as opposed to Tancredi’s flashy and pompous manner, Sophie claims to despise “public spectacles” (57). Despite this, she is easily brought into them, “like someone who, lacking the strength of will to become a conscientious objector, reluctantly participates in a war” (57). Such a weak willed character would of course release her tenuous grasp on her convictions and fall prey to the romanticized idea of a love affair in Italy.

The irony in this story? Tancredi, who so thrives on being in control and determining the results of a situation winds up being prey to Sophie’s version of an idyllic romance – short and sweet, without time to turn up flaws and faults in a relationship. In the end, Tancredi has lost his game as well as a woman for whom he had tentatively began feeling the pangs of love for, and Sophie lost her sincerity as well as a sense of purity, as she changed from a woman who wanted nothing more than to finish her vacation in peace to one who swung a relationship back and forth based upon her own whims and desires.