SOURCE: "The 'Pirandellian' Character," in Canadian Journal of Italian Studies, Vol. 12, Nos. 38-9, 1989, pp. 1-9.

In the essay below, Mariani examines how figures in Pirandello 's plays create their own "subjective realities. "

"Ogni fantasma … deve avere il suo drama."

(Preface to Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore)

In the structure of the most representative works of Pirandello, the major works of his maturity, a fundamental opposition recurs with increasing clarity between those characters who endure, question, or reject the values and conditions to which their society is determined to bind them—with its customs, its prejudices, its philistinism, its definite claim to wisdom, knowledge, self confidence—and the representatives and supporters of that society. This is the opposition through which the Pirandellian character reveals itself. The "Pirandellian" character, therefore, is not any charater in any work by Pirandello, but mat character who rebels against the pretensions of social forms...