Inside Sicily

Every new country one sees produces unexpected impressions. What struck me most about Sicily—apart from the incredible beauty of the island and the kindness of the people—was the food (about which I wrote last time), the dress of the ladies of the interior mountain towns, and the splendor of the baroque buildings.

From movies I had gathered that the whole female population of Sicily was, so to speak, black widows—women of all ages dressed in black, whether out of custom or perennial mourning. But when I drove through towns like Prizzi and Mussumeli, not only were many of the matrons wearing ordinary (albeit dark) dresses, but the girls were in pants! And what black widows there were did not seem to mind this modernity. All of which is due, I was told, to the influence of television, which in ten years has changed Sicilian habits as fifty or even a hundred years of ordinary development could not have done.

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Nika Hazelton

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Every new country one sees produces unexpected impressions. What struck me most about Sicily—apart from the incredible beauty of the island and the kindness of the people—was the food (about which I wrote last time), the dress of the ladies of the interior mountain towns, and the splendor of the baroque buildings.

From movies I had gathered that the whole female population of Sicily was, so to speak, black widows—women of all ages dressed in black, whether out of custom or perennial mourning. But when I drove through towns like Prizzi and Mussumeli, not only were many of the matrons wearing ordinary (albeit dark) dresses, but the girls were in pants! And what black widows there were did not seem to mind this modernity. All of which is due, I was told, to the influence of television, which in ten years has changed Sicilian habits as fifty or even a hundred years of ordinary development could not have done.