Literary Criticism: Monte Verità By: Daphne Du Maurier

 

This story is set in Switzerland around Ascona, where Monte Verità is located. It is described as a mountain with two peaks; in the center, on a plateau, sits an abbey inhabited by priestesses. Legend says that these priestesses are immortal and that women do not lose their beauty with the flow of time. Most women from the local village who climb this mountain never return. This creates a huge conflict that ultimately ends in punitive action by the local inhabitants.

The main characters include an unnamed, seventy-year-old narrator living in New York City. He wants to write his story about Monte Verità before losing his mental clarity. He is a man who suffers from the regret of not having climbed the mountain with his close friend, Victor. Later in the story, he is tasked by Victor to deliver a letter to his wife, warning her that the local population wants to kill her and the other priestesses. Upon reaching the crest of the mountain, he encounters the sect but ultimately decides to leave to assist Victor, who is near death.

Victor is a middle-aged, bourgeois man who takes care of his wife, Anna. However, he is unable to understand her deeply, viewing her merely as someone to be lovingly protected. When Anna leaves him to join the sect on Monte Verità, it causes him terrible suffering. Obsessed with his dream of freeing her, he spends his remaining days at the mountain's base and is eventually buried at the foot of Monte Verità.