The Little Virtues - a collection of lessons

         Natalia Ginzburg’s book, The Little Virtues, is composed of a collection of essays to teach children and educate them on not the little virtues in life, but of the great ones (97). To live life we as people need to experience specific events, in which we grow and evolve. Children start at the bottom of the mountain and need to climb, get lost, be scared, frustrated and determined to get to the top and conquer what the excursion brings to the surface. In each of the 11 essays Ginzburg teaches the reader and specifically, the children, about the larger attributes to life, which she refers to as the great virtues. She says life is, “Not thrift but generosity and an indifference to money; not caution but courage and a contempt for danger; nor shrewdness but frankness and a love of truth; not tact but love for one’s neighbor and self denial; not a desire for success but a desire to be and to know” (97). Each essay addresses these great virtues that Ginzburg wants the reader to draw and take away from reading this collection. Every story is different, but its skeleton is the same.

            The opening story, “Winter in Abruzzi” the reader enters into the author’s life when she and her husband live in the countryside. Here, everyday is unpleasant and drags. In this time in her life, the author is struck with harsh reality. Dreams are just dreams. They are not the reality in which people live. The essay concludes,

       Our dreams are never realized and as soon as we see them betrayed we realize that the intensest joys of our life have nothing to do with reality. No sooner do we see them betrayed than we are consumed with regret for the time when they glowed within us. And in this succession of hopes and regrets our life slips by.  (8)

Dreams are only dreams and reality is the space where we must live. In this time in the author’s life she was confronted with multiple deaths and poverty. She had no other choice than to live in this part of the world at this time. She could hope, but in these hopes she is saying that life will go on despite the dreams and wishes people hope for. In this essay she is attempting to demonstrate for the reader that they should not have a desire for success and to be known, but instead they should have a desire to live in the moment where frankness is recognized and the truth is seen. The individual should have courage living in this world to continue living in the present instead of in his or her dreams. A person should not care about the money, but should care about what he or she does have and what others are sharing with them. I have listed a few of the great virtues that Ginzburg mentions in the concluding essay and the reader can perceive that all of the virtues are apparent in each individual story.

      While reading this collection the reader in part one is reading the author's experiences and cannot relate directly, but in the last two essays Ginzburg narrates mostly in second person. However, most of part two allows the reader to step into the story and see him or herself in it. This allows the reader to put him or herself into the essay giving the reader the opportunity to learn these lessons. It is an easy book to read because the stories are short, relatable and the reader takes something away.