While reading Agostino, I kept having this strong feeling that the novel is full of GAZES. It never explicitly talks about “looking” or “being seen,” yet almost every uncomfortable moment in the story seems to come back to it.
Even the setting already hints at this. The story took place on a beach, which may look relaxed and carefree, but is actually quite anxious as it offers almost no place to hide. On the beach, people are always visible, their body, who they are with, where they stand next to others. That constant exposure, being surrounded by other people’s eyes, runs quietly through the entire novel.
In this environment, the mother is never a neutral presence. From the very beginning, she is someone who is looked at, not only by Agostino. The novel repeatedly emphasizes her beauty, her body, and her ability to attract attention. She appears more often as “a beautiful woman” than simply as a mother. Strangers look at her, the young man looks at her, and these gazes are not suddenly appeared but something that has always existed. What made me uncomfortable is realizing that Agostino himself has already internalized this way of looking. He knows that others would envy him for walking beside such a beautiful woman, and he even seems to take a quiet pride in that envy. This suggests that his gaze toward his mother is never completely innocent.
The mother is therefore always surrounded by multiple gazes. She exists within the mother son relationship, but she is also constantly shaped by the looks of strangers, men, and the public space around her. The beach makes all of this impossible to ignore, as if every gaze is laid bare under the sunlight. When her body and attention begin to be truly taken over by others’ eyes, Agostino starts to feel unsettled. It is not that he suddenly realizes his mother is a woman, but that he realizes she no longer belongs only to his gaze.
In the first half of the novel, the intimacy between Agostino and his mother is sustained through looking. He stays close to her, watches her, follows her, as if as long as his gaze remains, she still belongs to him. This way of looking gives him a strange but stable sense of security, allowing him to pretend that even in such a public space, they still share a small, enclosed world of their own. But the moment his mother begins to respond to someone else’s gaze, that world collapses.
It is only then that I began to understand that what Agostino truly loses is not his mother herself, but a way of confirming himself through looking at her. For him, gaze is a way of defining intimacy, position, and reassurance of knowing whether he still matters.
5 replies on “Evil under the sun”
I like your focus on Gazes. I would argue the “male gaze” strongly influences this novel, much like how you said Agostino’s mother is warped by multiple gazes. Agostino’s behaviour also changes under each gaze, specifically how the boys he meets changes his words and attitudes. The boyhood he’s experiencing seems to be shaped by the male gaze and how a man should be like in this society.
Sarah
This is a great post. And as Sarah’s comment suggests, the gaze here is very definitely gendered: it’s a male gaze, though men as well as women are shaped by (or perform for) it.
And I really like this point:
“what Agostino truly loses is not his mother herself, but a way of confirming himself through looking at her.”
I’d add that he “confirm[s] himself” also, at the outset, though being seen next to her; through being seen in relation to her.
I really like this view and take on the novel that I didn’t fully think about when reading the novel. it definitely shows how Agostino’s gaze shifts from when innocent to when innocence is lost.
what a great point, that he loses his mother’s confirmation of himself when he interprets her gazes differently, I can totally see that. I also agree with your point of people always being subject to others’ gazes, although I don’t think many people care and just accept it as unavoidable.
Hi!
I absolutely love the perspective of gazes that you bring up. This is such a great point that I did not think of before. Yet, the idea of “looking” or “being seen,” is clearly brought up in the text! One example I recall is when Agostino’s mother is sunbathing bare in the boat.