Crime, Individuality, and Historical Trauma in The Conformist
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In 1951, six years after the end of the Second World War and the execution of Benito Mussolini, Alberto Moravia published the novel The Conformist. In the book, Moravia recounts the life of an ordinary Italian in the shadow of Fascism. Born in a fallen aristocratic family, the protagonist, Marcello Clerici, has an unfortunate childhood. Neglected by his parents, he experiences school bullying and sexual abuse. When he grows up, Marcello joins the fascist party and becomes a political policeman. He is sent to Paris to secretly investigate his former professor Quadri and cooperate in an assassination attempt. In the course of the operation, Marcello and his wife Giulia develop a complicated emotional relationship with Quadri’s wife Lina, yet the mission ends successfully with the murder of the Quadri couple. In the epilogue, after the war, Marcello and his wife and daughter are caught up in the fear of being purged and are eventually killed by debris from a plane crash. The Conformist made Moravia one of the most famous writers in modern Italy, and it became his most iconic novel, for it is filled with Moravia’s introspection on a bygone era, as well as reflections of his own experiences. In The Conformist, Moravia condemns the Fascist regime for subverting the definition of crime and the methods used to commit it, as well as suppressing individuality and sexuality. He also reveals the historical trauma that the fascist regime inflicted on Italians by exaggerating some historical facts.
Fascism subverts the definition of crime, so that people’s usual criminal behaviors are not considered crimes under the regime. The major aberrant comportment in the book is the political murder, that Marcello volunteers to murder his former professor Quadri and his wife Lina as an act of loyalty to the government. Murder and attempted murder are considered crimes under modern society’s fundamental values and legal system, but Marcello’s participation in the mission is not considered criminal behavior. Instead, under the fascist government, it is an official and correct strategy to prosecute political oppositions. In order to consolidate the rule and ensure the infiltration of fascist ideologies, the fascist government constructed the police system that aims to surveil inside and outside for anti-fascist actions, and opposition leaders and activists from the socialist, communist and liberalist parties were arrested, imprisoned, and murdered[1]. Marcello takes action that benefits the regime and helps eliminate political opposition. Therefore, although he is an accomplice to murder, he is still not considered a criminal. Moravia demonstrates the fascist regime’s failure to criminalize aggression and harm to others, and such subversive definitions have adverse effects on both society and individuals, as exemplified by Marcello’s behaviors during his mission.
Although Marcello’s mission ended with the murder, he proved too cowardly to commit the crime. He is conflicted when Professor Quadri asks him to secretly post a letter for him on his way back to Italy, and Marcello refuses because he thinks that murder is against his nature and conscience. This action gains the trust of Quadri because Marcello does not directly report the secret letter to the fascist authorities. However, Marcello struggles with the fact that he will expose himself as a “traitor” to the regime if he does not help with the mission, because it is a criminal action not to commit the murder under fascism. Between the regime he is allegiant to and his natural instinct about the definition of crime, Marcello chooses the fascist regime. He confirms Quadri’s identity as a member of an anti-fascist organization to Orlando, which results in the murder of Quadri and his wife Lina. Marcello’s struggle and the choices he makes in the end reflect the fact that the fascist definition of crime defies perceived common sense and is inhumane.
The plot for the murder mission demonstrates that normally considered criminal behaviors that benefit the fascist government are not crimes under the regime, and the chapter about Marcello’s confession in the church demonstrates that actions against the fascist government are considered crimes. When Marcello makes a confession in the church before his marriage with Giulia, he feels that the priest is probing his political stance. Marcello is prepared to confess that he “killed” Lino, which should be considered the most serious sin in the Bible. However, the priest “exclaimed keenly, but without any indignation or surprise, ‘You’ve killed a man, and you haven’t felt the need to confess.’”[2] It shows the priest’s indifference about Marcello’s criminal behavior, which echoes the definition of crime in the fascist regime, which also ignores killing and murdering as parts of crime. In contrast to the indifferent tone he used for the reaction to murder, the priest “said in a conclusive tone, as if asking the final and definitive question: ‘And tell me, son… Are you now, or have you been, part of any subversive group or sect?’”[3] At this point, the confessor is instantly transformed from a clergyman who is supposed to be irrelevant to the secular world into a secret policeman working for the fascist government. It is only when Marcello reveals that he belongs to the inner circle of the fascist government that the priest is relieved and continues to listen to Marcello’s confession.
The confession demonstrates that opposing the fascist government is a serious crime, even in the view of the church, which used to severely criminalize murder. This part of the book is also highly satirical because it reveals the falsity of the religious belief system. Under the threat of the police system, the Catholic Church became the symbol of a fascist government. Catholicism, which was the highest faith of most of the Italians, was the solace of the people, and the holiest part of their hearts, but when the fascist police system penetrated upwards into the Church, the people had to face the test of “correct” political beliefs in order to face God. The ignorance of criminal violent behaviors by the fascist government and the unsuitable penetration of the fascist police system into the Catholic Church proved the failure of the fascist criminal system and the serious centralized violence under Fascist Italy.
Throughout the story, Moravia portrays the mentality of Marcello, who at all times searches for what he has in common with the majority of society to make himself appear normal. This obsession with normalcy stems from Marcello’s childhood trauma, and under the fascist regime’s suppression of individuality and sexuality, Marcello confuses normalcy with conformity, and became a member of the regime’s complicity. Marcello has a tyrannical and violent father who often neglects his wife, so he has been living under the oppression of patriarchy. According to Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, patriarchy creates a “castration anxiety” in men[4], which creates a fear of possessing femininity in a male. Such anxiety is further exacerbated by Marcello’s experience of being bullied and sexually assaulted. When Marcello is at school, he receives verbal abuse and laughs from his classmates because of his delicate and sweet looks and his “innocent and endearing expression.”[5]. He is even called by his schoolmates “Marcellina”[6], the Italian feminine name for “Marcello”. Then, Moravia describes Marcello’s desire to prove that he does not have feminine characteristics: “He wanted to provide his companions with the proof of strength they seemed to require in exchange for their esteem.” However, Marcello “was at the same time dimly frightened.”[7] From this quote, it is clear that Marcello’s femininity has alienated him from normal school life, which he would have been willing to be a part of, thus reinforcing his castration anxiety. Moreover, what turns Marcello’s anxiety into “fear” is his experience of being sexually assaulted. In describing Marcello’s mental activity when he decides to shoot Lino, Moravia writes that Marcello hates Lino “for his loathsome mixture of sensuality and austerity, repentance and lust.”[8] Marcello sees Lino’s lust for him as Lino’s affirmation of his femininity, because in his perception, man can only have sexual desire for women. These childhood experiences make Marcello think that his femininity is a barrier on his way to becoming a normal person in his society. And when he grows up and his true instincts and desires conflict with the social values he hopes to fit into, he is constantly caught up in the thought process of repressing his true desires.
Marcello grew up in the era of the Fascist regime, where the suppression of individuality was first and foremost the suppression of sexuality. Mussolini practiced the Fascist Pronatalist policies and a distinctive education policy in the regime. He wanted to create a solid family structure in society in which an obedient and virtuous wife served and supported a warlike and violent husband, because this would provide support and strength to the military power and the stability of the regime.[9] Therefore, what was defined as “normal” sexuality in Fascist society had to conform and be integrated into that particular family structure, and the Fascist government made sure that people did not go beyond the framework of “normal” sexuality in every part of society. Returning to the confession of Marcello in the church, the confessor discusses with Marcello not only his political tendencies, but also his sexual life; Marcello mentions that he used to have sex with prostitutes because all the other men he saw went to prostitutes, which he saw as the normalcy he wanted to follow. The confessor simply condemns Marcello, using a frivolous tone: “That’s a sin, too … Hasn’t anyone ever told you, poor boy?” Marcello’s behavior, as he did earlier when he condemned him for “killing,” because in the church, the purpose of sexuality is to reproduce only, and prostituting deflects from that purpose. [10] The confessor’s reaction illustrates two points. First, the Catholic belief system, as a representation of the fascist system, helped the fascist regime to enforce the fascist pronatalist idea by telling people that sexual action must be for the purpose of reproduction and increasing the population. Second, the fact that the Church did not actually condemn or appall Marcello’s prostitution reflects that the act of prostitution, even if it is not a sexual act for the purpose of procreation, emphasizes the objectification of women and the notion of “female subordination to men” within the fascist family structure. This is Moravia’s way of satirizing and denouncing the paradoxical nature of the fascist definition of sexuality.
Furthermore, homosexuality does not fall under the correct definition of sexuality under fascism and is even defined as a sin against virtue. Marcello did not mention the story of his former relationship with Lino to anyone in his adult life, but it became a knot in his heart. When he is having dinner with his fiancée Giulia and her mother, Julia compliments Marcello on being a perfect man. At this point, there is a mental note from Marcello: “If they knew that when I was thirteen, I almost had sexual intercourse with a man and that I killed him.”[11] It can be seen here that Marcello does not actually see Lino’s sexual assault on him as harm but instead sees the relationship as an intimate one, so Marcello is not homophobic by nature. But under fascism, homosexuality is not the correct sexual orientation, and this prevents Marcello from being a normal and perfect man. Therefore, the fascist suppression of sexuality allows Marcello to hide his nature, marry a woman he does not like, and conform with the masses.
In 1945, the fascist regime ended with Mussolini’s execution. However, the era of centralized violence and the suppression of individuality left Italians with historical trauma. 1951, the publication year of The Conformist, was at the end of the Second World War and the beginning of the Cold War. The Italians lived under new political ideologies from the Christian Democratic Party and the Communist Party, with the absolute prohibition and a fear of fascist ideas and policies.[12] Many people who had worked for the fascist government were denounced and discredited. In the epilogue, Marcello and his wife also fell into the fear of being purged. Marcello undeniably performed many inhumane missions for the fascist government, with Professor Quadri’s murder mission being one of them. However, like Marcello, the people who worked and lived under the fascist government were compelled and implicitly oppressed by the fascist regime to do its bidding. Fascism’s repression of people’s individuality had the effect in society of making people obsessively try to fit in with others and gradually embrace the fascist regime. When the regime collapsed, the people who had been completely conformed to the fascist ideology immediately lost their political faith and were confused to realize that the promises made to them by Mussolini and the fascist regime were lies. The collapse of faith not only left them with lasting historical trauma, but it even led them into the fear of being sanctioned and purged.
As a part of the Italians who had been through the fascist regime, Moravia’s experience of living under the fascist regime and his feelings about that time triggered him to write The Conformist. There are many elements in the book that reflect Moravia’s feelings and experiences. The first is about religion. As mentioned earlier, under fascism, religion and the entire belief system were just symbols of the fascist system, and confession and praying were transformed from sacred rituals into tools for the fascist government to monitor people’s political tendencies and oppress their individuality. Moravia, an atheist whose mother was Catholic and whose father was Jewish, was able to gain insight into the effects of the falsity of religion in his life[13]. In his book, he draws on Marcello’s view of Catholicism with his involvement in religious activities to criticize the falsity of the church. In Moravia’s view, religion is only an illusory solace to cover up the guilt of conscience. Then, Moravia’s entire writing uncovers the values of fascism. Mussolini’s fascist regime was an oppressive yet dispassionate one, and in Moravia’s writing, his indifference, calmness, and even-handedness in telling the story of Marcello’s innumerable inner struggles reflect the fascist society’s erosion of human individuality and passions.
Nevertheless, The Conformist was criticized by some people who lived around the end of Fascist Italy. A book review was published in the Sunday Times in 1952, a British Sunday newspaper. The author claimed that “Signor Moravia writes with such gravity and depth of feeling that he can, so to speak, get away with almost anything. But the conception behind this book is false and does not stand any serious examination”[14] He was saying that there is historical inaccuracy in the novel, that Moravia exaggerated the suppression and centralized violence on Marcello, which is “an abstract attempt to create the kind of man who became a Fascist.”[15] Admittedly, Moravia’s detailed psychological portrayal of Marcello amplifies his eagerness to be normal in the fascist society, and at the same time amplifies the oppressive and centralized violence of fascism. However, it is a reasonable exaggeration, because Moravia intentionally reveals the atrocities of fascism and exposes its impact on Italians. In the book, Moravia’s portrayal of Marcello is not just a representation of one man who lived under the fascist regime. He has a deep childhood trauma, inner struggles, and a tragic end, which are all typical experience of Fascist Italians. Therefore, in essence, despite the criticism regarding historical accuracy, Moravia’s portrayal of Marcello serves as a poignant representation of the collective trauma endured by countless Italians during the era of Fascist Italy.
In conclusion, Moravia portrays the mental process and the experience of Marcello to gain conformity. He is haunted by his childhood trauma and the fascist suppression of sexuality. He is eventually “abandoned,” like countless others who lived under fascist regimes, by the government he has once been loyal to and trusted. This shows fascism’s arbitrary distortion of the definition of crime, oppression of individuality, and infliction of historical trauma on post-war Italians. Moravia’s personal experiences during Fascist Italy made him aware of the damage done to people by the fascist government, so he made a choice of exaggerating historical fact to emphasize on harms. Ultimately, The Conformist has become an essential literature in exposing the atrocities of fascism.
Reference
[1] Duggan, Fascist Voices, 148-178
[2] Moravia, the Conformist, 110.
[3] Moravia, the Conformist, 114.
[4] Freeman, “Psychoanalytic Concepts of Fatherhood,” 121.
[5] Moravia, the Conformist, 32.
[6] Moravia, the Conformist, 36.
[7] Moravia, the Conformist, 35.
[8] Moravia, the Conformist, 62.
[9] Duggan, Fascist Voices, 113-147.
[10] Moravia, the Conformist, 112.
[11] Moravia, the Conformist, 100.
[12] Forlenza, “Sacrificial Memory and Political Legitimacy in Postwar Italy.”
[13] Foster, “Alberto Moravia,”225.
[14] Snow, “Unusual Quintet.”
[15] Snow, “Unusual Quintet.”