Chapter II
The Novel
Il Gattopardo · 1958
Overview
The Leopardis a short novel — barely 250 pages — set in Sicily between May 1860 and July 1883, with a final epilogue set in 1910. It traces the decline of Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina, as Garibaldi's revolution sweeps through Sicily and the old feudal order gives way to a new political class. The novel is divided into eight chapters, each capturing a distinct moment in the Prince's life and the transformation of his world.
What makes the novel extraordinary is not its plot — which is quiet, observational, almost plotless by conventional standards — but its sensibility. Lampedusa writes with the eye of a man who has lived inside the world he describes. Every page carries the scent of Sicily: the dust, the orange groves, the oppressive heat, the faded velvet of a palazzo drawing room. It is a novel about loss, but without self-pity; about change, but without illusion.
Chapter by Chapter
May 1860 — The Rosary
The novel opens in the Salina family chapel during evening prayers. We meet Don Fabrizio, a towering figure with a leonine appearance (the source of the family nickname "The Leopard"), his wife Maria Stella, and their children. News arrives that Garibaldi has landed at Marsala. The Prince is skeptical — he sees the revolution as a nuisance, not a transformation. His nephew Tancredi, however, has already joined the rebels.
August 1860 — The Visit to Donnafugata
The Prince travels to the family estate at Donnafugata to assess the situation. He finds the local notary, Don Calogero Sedara, has become the new power in town. Sedara is coarse, cunning, and rich — the embodiment of the new class rising to replace the old aristocracy.
October 1860 — The Plebiscite
A rigged plebiscite is held to annex Sicily to the new Kingdom of Italy. Don Fabrizio is pressured into voting "yes," though he knows it is a farce. The scene is darkly comic — the results are announced before the vote is even counted. Sicily becomes part of Italy on paper, but nothing changes on the ground.
February 1861 — The Ball
The famous ballroom scene. Don Fabrizio attends a lavish ball in Palermo. As he watches Angelica Sedara — now engaged to Tancredi — dance, he is overwhelmed by a vision of decay. The music, the chandeliers, the beautiful women — all seem to him like a dying constellation. It is one of the most celebrated passages in modern literature.
November 1862 — Father Pirrone's Visit
The Prince's Jesuit confessor, Father Pirrone, visits his home village and reflects on the changes. This chapter shifts perspective, showing how the Risorgimento looks from below — to the peasants and priests, not just the aristocrats.
September 1866 — The Journey to Naples
Don Fabrizio travels to Naples to meet with government officials who want him to take a Senate seat. He refuses, seeing clearly that the new Italy will simply reproduce the old corruption. He visits a brothel instead — a scene of melancholy sensuality that underlines his loneliness.
July 1883 — The Death of the Prince
Twenty years later. Don Fabrizio is dying in Palermo, surrounded by his daughters and a priest. In his final delirium, he imagines himself at a vast celestial brothel, where the planets themselves are women. He dies as he lived — a man of intellect and desire, out of step with his time.
1910 — Relics
Decades after the Prince's death, his spinster daughters Concetta and Caterina sort through his belongings. They discover that an old, beloved relic — the stuffed carcass of the family's dog, Bendicò — is actually a fraud, a replacement for the original. They throw it away. As it falls, the novel's meaning crystallizes: everything has been a copy of a copy, and the real thing was lost long ago.
Principal Characters
Don Fabrizio Corbera
Prince of Salina
The protagonist. A towering, leonine aristocrat with a passion for astronomy and a melancholy awareness that his class is doomed. He is intelligent, sensual, and resigned — a man who sees clearly but does nothing to change what he sees. He is modeled on Lampedusa's great-grandfather, Giulio Fabrizio Tomasi.
Tancredi Falconeri
The Prince's nephew
Charming, ambitious, and opportunistic. Tancredi joins Garibaldi's rebels not out of conviction but because he understands that the old order is finished. His famous line — "If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change" — is the novel's thesis. He marries Angelica Sedara for her money, with the Prince's quiet approval.
Angelica Sedara
Daughter of Don Calogero Sedara
Beautiful, sophisticated despite her provincial origins, and utterly pragmatic. She represents the new class that will inherit Sicily — money married to title. Her engagement to Tancredi is the alliance between old aristocracy and new wealth that defines the post-Risorgimento order.
Don Calogero Sedara
Mayor of Donnafugata
The new man. Coarse, uncultured, and shrewd. Sedara has grown rich by buying up Church lands and exploiting the confusion of the transition. He is everything Don Fabrizio despises — and everything that will replace him. Yet the Prince recognizes Sedara's effectiveness, even as he recoils from his manners.
Concetta Corbera
The Prince's daughter
Devoted to her father, quietly in love with Tancredi, and ultimately betrayed when he chooses Angelica. In the epilogue, set decades later, she is the keeper of the family's fading memories — the last witness to a world that no longer exists. Her final act of discarding the stuffed dog Bendicò closes the novel.
Father Pirrone
The Prince's Jesuit confessor
A shrewd observer who understands both the Prince's nature and the social forces at work. His chapter (V) provides the novel's only shift away from the aristocratic perspective, showing how the changes look from the village below.