The Venice Sketchbook

The characters of The Venice Sketchbook, particularly Juliet and Leo, often experience disappointments because of their dedication to familial or national duty. In the era when Juliet is a young woman, specific notions of duty prevailed, and children were often expected to take over family businesses and make decisions that would benefit the entire family. Several characters make decisions to honor their family’s expectations rather than pursuing their own desires and happiness. Henry admits that he wants to be an artist, but that he will return home and take over his father’s business. When war breaks out, Gaston returns to France to protect his country, feeling it is his duty.

Leo’s life is similarly shaped by duty. Leo has been betrothed to a woman named Bianca for most of his life; he does not love or even like her, and he feels a connection with Juliet early on. Despite his feelings, he wants to do right by his family. He tells Juliet that his family might lose some business and their reputation could be harmed if he breaks the engagement, and he admits later that he wants to divorce Bianca, but her father has Mafiosi ties and Leo is frightened of reprisal.

Juliet’s familial duty likewise presses in on her from a young age. At 19, her father’s American investments are lost in the Great Depression and he dies shortly thereafter. Juliet takes on responsibility for her mother and young sister, leaving art school and taking a job as art mistress for a girls’ school. She learns to shut her heart away and to prioritize the needs of others. A consistent theme in Juliet’s life is that of living someone else’s life rather than her own. She admits to herself that she could have stayed in college and worked as a waitress to support her own dreams, but instead “I had been the dutiful daughter, living my mother’s life, not mine” (165).

The pattern of acting out of obligation continues in Juliet’s family, down to Caroline, her grand-niece. When Caroline became pregnant at the end of art school, she and Josh marry out of duty and Caroline gives up her dream of becoming a fashion designer.

Despite this family trait of sacrificing oneself for others, the novel reveals that happiness is possible, if one has support and opportunity. Juliet gets a glimpse of this happiness during her time in Venice. Though she often struggles with loneliness, eventually she builds her own community, first with her fellow foreign art students and later with her neighbors and the contessa. Despite the danger of her position as a British woman in Mussolini’s Italy, she develops relationships with her neighbors, chatting with them regularly and even, on some occasions, being mistaken for a Venetian woman. When she is nearly arrested on the street by non-Venetian carabinieri, the woman she saved from drowning a year prior confronts the men. When she does, the neighborhood rallies behind her. Before Juliet’s final and most heartbreaking losses, she receives a taste of what it might be like to create a life, and a community, of her own.

As an older woman, Juliet takes steps to ensure her grand-niece is able to achieve the happiness she lost. Thanks to her inheritance Caroline achieves financial independence that will enable her to make decisions based on happiness rather than necessity. The money will also help Caroline fight for her son if Josh continues to try to keep them apart. Caroline’s time in Venice also gives her the opportunity to meet Luca; by doing so, she not only discovers Juliet’s past but finds an opportunity for love not driven by duty. Juliet’s chosen family and the gifts they gave her allow her to build a more durable legacy for Caroline, freeing her to live her own life away from the constraints of necessity and duty.