Valeria Cossati

Valeria Cossati is the protagonist and first-person narrator of Forbidden Notebook. At the outset of the narrative, she secretly purchases a notebook at the tobacconist and hides it from her family. She fears that they will discover her journal and she will be forced to give it up. While writing and hiding the notebook brings her agita, Valeria relishes in recording the events of her days and the emotions she experiences. In the narrative past, she thought of her life as banal and insignificant but through writing, she “discover[s] that a word or an intonation can be just as important, or even more, than the facts we’re accustomed to consider important” (35). She has dedicated her life to supporting her husband and children, but when she writes about them, Valeria recognizes that her labors are passed over. The things that take great effort are considered ordinary...