Freud would have a field day with “Agostino”

I thought I was the only one that thought of Freud when reading this short novel but after reading a few other blog posts, I’m glad to know that I’m not the only one. I’ll start off with my initial thoughts of the book. I like to go into some reads without knowing what to expect and “Agostino” definitely wasn’t what I expected because I thought that I’d be reading a silly little novel about time spent at the beach. Again, I also wasn’t the only one to think that this novel was quite weird and at times uncomfortable. This was probably due to the sensual descriptions of Agostino’s mother that were visible right from the beginning —even before Agostino’s innocence was taken from him. Weird enough that I sometimes thought I was going delusional and would say, “Wait what?” out loud.

The two largest central themes or ideas I found that the novel contained were impurity staining innocence and the objectification of women. The objectification and sexualization of specifically Agostino’s mother is portrayed through his narration of his extremely complicated and fluctuating relationship with her. To start off my thoughts on this event, something small I noticed that contributed to the idea of objectification was how she was never given a name. This already lessened her value as a person and especially as a woman. In the beginning of the novel, he viewed his mother as dignified and serene and valued her affection. This eventually turned into cruelty as he sees how she acts with the young man and feels confused as to why her affection is being shared and why she was acting different than usual —it almost felt like a betrayal of his perception of her. Along with this cruelty came his awareness of how he began to sensually viewed her, as hanging around the boys tore him away from innocence —exposing him to the reality of sexuality. So not only does Agostino become a prick of a man by blaming his mother herself for his changed perspective but he also uses the “tactic” of only seeing her as a woman to prevent her from being a threat to his desires. He continues to use this tactic even after his trip to Rio and when he’s in a crisis of the new irreversible stage of life he has entered. How I interpreted this tactic was that Agostino viewed women simply as unloveable objects that thus couldn’t be desired. I then found his tactic ironic because he says he uses it to suppress further sexualization and objectification, yet stating a woman is “just a woman” to insinuate that they’re worth no more is the most objectifying thing one can do. So at this point, I caught myself thinking that this kid must be crazy.

I also then interpreted his misunderstood situation with Saro and the boys as a little taste of his own medicine. He realizes the dark period he entered due to how uncomfortable the boys made him by acting corrupted and Saro staying implicit. He unknowingly faces a form of sexualization.

So to conclude and prevent myself from going on too much of a rant of how disgusting objectifying women is, “Agostino” was wild and I wonder what prompted Moravia to write about it. What do you guys think prompted Moravia to write “Agostino”?