Not a Tourist, Not a Traveler

Palazzo Publico, Siena “She wished she were an authentic tourist – an Englishman come to flaunt his reticence, an American secretly hankering for gift wrapping and matching towels. She did not really know where she most belonged. Even those places to which she felt most drawn were mere approximations of home.” (43)

The distinction between tourist and traveler is brought up a few times during The Evening of the Holiday. Sophie seems to struggle with her own place within these two categories. Because she is half English and half Italian, she does not really belong to one or the other and instead exists in a sort of free float between the two.

As Sophie becomes move intensely involved with Tancredi the narrator notes that “in his company, she was like a traveler.” (58) It is interesting to think that one can change from a tourist to a traveler merely by associating with different people. By complimenting her Italian half with Tancredi’s native Italian nature she is able to transcend the feeling of living without a true sense of home. While they are together, Tancredi becomes Sophie’s home. Without Tancredi, she exists in a place between belonging and being an outsider.

Throughout the story Sophie and Tancredi travel to different locations on day trips. It seems that even though they go on these trips to be together, they do not learn much about each other during their relationship. Even though they are engaged in a passionate affair, they do not seem to know much of each other’s personalities or lives. In a sense they are navigating their relationship as tourists, looking at their surroundings in a superficial way that does not allow the permeation of deeper meaning or understanding.

In the final pages of the novel, Sophie again feels like a tourist walking around the town. “She went along slowly, like an unseasonable tourist, eyeing the buildings as if she had not seen them before but had heard a great deal about them.” (134) Without Tancredi she has fallen back into the position of the slightly out of place tourist trying to connect with the world around her. Instead she is left again with the feeling of not belonging in any specific place, without any true understanding of the places she inhabits.

“She stopped and looked back down the sloping street, and again gave the impression of seeing all this for the first time, or of saying farewell to it after a long acquaintance – which is sometimes the same thing.” (135)