Female masks

Luigi Pirandello's plays for women

Susan Bassnett

pp. 13-25

in: Brian Docherty (ed), Twentieth-century European drama, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1994

Abstract

The more difficult the struggle for life, and the more conscious we become of our own ineffectualness in the struggle, then the need for a universal stratagem of mutual deception becomes that much the greater. The feigning of strength, honesty, sympathy and prudence…of every virtue which seems to have a quality of greatness and truth about it, is merely our way of adjusting and adapting ourselves to the compromise of life…the humourist is quick to seize on these various pretences…he finds it amusing to tear off our masks.2

Cited authors

Pirandello Luigi