The Leopard

by

Giuseppe Di Lampedusa

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on The Leopard makes teaching easy.

Princess Maria Stella Character Analysis

Princess Maria Stella is the Prince of Salina’s husband and the mother of their seven children. The Princess is a tiny woman inclined to hysterical fits who yearns for her husband despite his frequent infidelity. The Princess affectionately dominates her seven children. She is also a deeply devout Catholic, with a fervor and accompanying prudishness that the Prince finds off-putting.

Princess Maria Stella Quotes in The Leopard

The The Leopard quotes below are all either spoken by Princess Maria Stella or refer to Princess Maria Stella. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Cultural Survival and Decline Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1. Introduction to the Prince Quotes

Suddenly he was swept by a gust of tenderness toward himself. “I’m just a poor, weak creature,” he thought as his heavy steps crunched the dirty gravel. “I’m weak and without support. Stella! Oh well, the Lord knows how much I’ve loved her; but I was married at twenty. And now she’s too bossy, as well as too old […] seven children I’ve had with her, seven; and never once have I seen her navel. Is that right?” Now, whipped by this odd anguish, he was almost shouting, “Is it right? I ask you all […] Why, she’s the real sinner!”

Related Characters: Prince Don Fabrizio Corbèra (speaker), Princess Maria Stella
Page Number: 24
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2. Donnafugata Quotes

At the bottom of the steps the authorities took their leave, and the Princess […] invited the Mayor, the Archpriest, and the notary to dine that same evening. […] And [the Prince] added, turning to the others, “And after dinner, at nine o’clock, we shall be happy to see all our friends.” For a long time Donnafugata commented on these last words. And the Prince, who had found Donnafugata unchanged, was found very much changed himself, for never before would he have issued so cordial an invitation; and from that moment, invisibly, began the decline of his prestige.

Related Characters: Prince Don Fabrizio Corbèra (speaker), Don Calogero Sedàra , Princess Maria Stella, Giuseppe Garibaldi
Page Number: 62
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6. A Ball Quotes

They were the most moving sight there, two young people in love dancing together, blind to each other’s defects, deaf to the warnings of fate, deluding themselves that the whole course of their lives would be as smooth as the ballroom floor, unknowing actors made to play the parts of Juliet and Romeo by a director who had concealed the fact that tomb and poison were already in the script. Neither of them was good, each full of self-interest, swollen with secret aims; yet there was something sweet and touching about them both; those murky but ingenuous ambitions of theirs were obliterated by the words of jesting tenderness he was murmuring in her ear, by the scent of her hair, by the mutual clasp of those bodies of theirs destined to die.

Related Characters: Prince Don Fabrizio Corbèra , Tancredi Falconeri, Angelica Sedàra, Princess Maria Stella
Page Number: 225
Explanation and Analysis:
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Princess Maria Stella Quotes in The Leopard

The The Leopard quotes below are all either spoken by Princess Maria Stella or refer to Princess Maria Stella. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Cultural Survival and Decline Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1. Introduction to the Prince Quotes

Suddenly he was swept by a gust of tenderness toward himself. “I’m just a poor, weak creature,” he thought as his heavy steps crunched the dirty gravel. “I’m weak and without support. Stella! Oh well, the Lord knows how much I’ve loved her; but I was married at twenty. And now she’s too bossy, as well as too old […] seven children I’ve had with her, seven; and never once have I seen her navel. Is that right?” Now, whipped by this odd anguish, he was almost shouting, “Is it right? I ask you all […] Why, she’s the real sinner!”

Related Characters: Prince Don Fabrizio Corbèra (speaker), Princess Maria Stella
Page Number: 24
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2. Donnafugata Quotes

At the bottom of the steps the authorities took their leave, and the Princess […] invited the Mayor, the Archpriest, and the notary to dine that same evening. […] And [the Prince] added, turning to the others, “And after dinner, at nine o’clock, we shall be happy to see all our friends.” For a long time Donnafugata commented on these last words. And the Prince, who had found Donnafugata unchanged, was found very much changed himself, for never before would he have issued so cordial an invitation; and from that moment, invisibly, began the decline of his prestige.

Related Characters: Prince Don Fabrizio Corbèra (speaker), Don Calogero Sedàra , Princess Maria Stella, Giuseppe Garibaldi
Page Number: 62
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6. A Ball Quotes

They were the most moving sight there, two young people in love dancing together, blind to each other’s defects, deaf to the warnings of fate, deluding themselves that the whole course of their lives would be as smooth as the ballroom floor, unknowing actors made to play the parts of Juliet and Romeo by a director who had concealed the fact that tomb and poison were already in the script. Neither of them was good, each full of self-interest, swollen with secret aims; yet there was something sweet and touching about them both; those murky but ingenuous ambitions of theirs were obliterated by the words of jesting tenderness he was murmuring in her ear, by the scent of her hair, by the mutual clasp of those bodies of theirs destined to die.

Related Characters: Prince Don Fabrizio Corbèra , Tancredi Falconeri, Angelica Sedàra, Princess Maria Stella
Page Number: 225
Explanation and Analysis: