An analysis of Gene Brucker’s non-fiction book Giovanni and Lusanna: Love and Marriage in Renaissance Florence.
The paper examines the book Giovanni and Lusanna: Love and Marriage in Renaissance Florence by Gene Brucker which discusses the contractual aspects of marriage that arise from the financial elements of the union of two families. In the book, Lusanna, who had been widowed, sued Giovanni – an aristocrat and her social better by at least one class – by seeking formal recognition of their union, of the secret marriage that the two of them had enjoyed. The paper shows that in challenging Giovanni’s right to set the conditions of their relationship, Lusanna was challenging the rights socially acknowledged to him by virtue of his wealth, his gender and his class.
“For Lusanna loved Giovanni, and he loved her as well their affair is tempestuous and passionate, if also touched by tragedy at times. It is the story of two classes, two genders, two ways of seeing the world coming into conflict with each other ” with the easily predictable result that the far more powerful side would win. But it is also a story of two people who love each other but who find themselves pulled apart ” both because of the nature of the structure of the society in which they live and because of their own natures.”