The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana

by Jess Nevins

The Adventures of Pinocchio (1881-1883)

copyright © Jess Nevins 2022

The Adventures of Pinocchio (original: Le Aventure di Pinocchio: Storia di un Buranttino) was written by “Carlo Collodi” and first appeared as a serial in Giornale per i bambini (July 7, 1881-Jan. 25, 1883). “Carlo Collodi” was the pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini (1826-1890), an Italian writer, editor, theatrical censor, and freedom fighter. The Adventures of Pinocchio is substantially different from the 1940 Disney film version with which most adults are familiar.

Master Anthony, a carpenter, decides to make a table leg out of a piece of wood which he finds in his workshop. But the wood begins speaking to him and tells him not to chop or plane the wood. This understandably unnerves Anthony, so he gives the piece of wood to his friend Geppetto, who wants to carve himself a puppet and use it to earn some money. Geppetto uses the wood to make the puppet and is surprised to find that the puppet can talk. Geppetto is disconcerted at the puppet’s actions. Before Geppetto can carve its legs the puppet, who Geppetto calls “Pinocchio,” or “Pine Nut,” begins playing pranks on Geppetto, pulling his wig off and kicking him in the nose, and when Geppetto gives Pinocchio legs the puppet runs away. Pinocchio is filled with mischief and lacks any sort of conscience, and when the Talking Cricket who lives in Geppetto’s house warns Pinocchio that “Woe to those boys who rebel against their parents, and run away from home. They will never come to any good in this world, and sooner or later they will repent bitterly,”1 Pinocchio kills the Cricket. Geppetto sells his only coat to buy Pinocchio a spelling book, and Pinocchio vows to be a good boy and go to school, but on the way to school he is distracted by a puppet show and sells his spelling book for a ticket to the show. The puppets interrupt their show to greet Pinocchio as one of their “brothers-in-wood,” but the frightful puppeteer, upset that the puppet show has been spoiled, threatens to throw Pinocchio in the fire so that the puppeteer’s mutton dinner can be properly cooked. Pinocchio’s screams of “I don’t want to die!” touch the puppeteer, who spares Pinocchio and decides to burn one of the other puppets instead. Pinocchio’s pleas for the other puppet’s life and his offer to be burned in the place of the other puppet again sway the puppeteer, who decides not to burn any of the puppets. He gives Pinocchio five gold pieces to take home to Geppetto. But on the way home Pinocchio meets a fox and a cat who tempt Pinocchio’s greed and then succeed in stealing his money from him.

What follows are a series of picaresque adventures. Pinocchio meets several figures, including the ghost of the Talking Cricket, who try to give him good advice, but he continues to ignore them all, even his guardian Fairy. Pinocchio repeatedly tries to return home to Geppetto, but is continually led astray by his bad impulses. Eventually he is told that Geppetto, who has been looking everywhere for him but could not find him, took a boat to the New World to look for Pinocchio there. Pinocchio tries to follow Geppetto but again falls short. He meets the Fairy, who tells him that he can be a real boy if he learns to be obedient and truthful and work hard. Pinocchio swears he will learn to be all of those things, but before he can achieve them and become a real boy he gives in to temptation and goes with his irresponsible friend Lampwick to Funland, where there are no schools, teachers, or books, and children can have all the fun they want for as long as they want. After months of fun Pinocchio and Lampwick are turned into donkeys. Pinocchio is sold to a circus and then to a man who wants to make a drum out of donkey skin. The man tries to drown Pinocchio, but when Pinocchio is submerged he reverts to being a puppet. He resumes the search for his father and is swallowed by a giant Shark, in whose belly Pinocchio finds Geppetto. They escape from the Shark and return home, where Pinocchio takes proper care of his father and is rewarded for his actions by the Fairy, who transforms him into a real boy.

Adult readers of Pinocchio will be struck by how different, and superior, the novel is to the Disney movie. Academics are in agreement about this; there are articles with titles like “From Wariness to Wishfulness: Disney’s Emasculation of Pinocchio’s Conscience,”2 and Emer O’Sullivan dismisses the film as little more than a “saccharine version about a cute puppet.”3 The novel is substantially more imaginative than the bowdlerized movie and has a casual and quite un-Disney-like savagery, starting with the death of the Talking Cricket and including talking puppets nearly being burned alive, a talking birds eaten by a talking cat, the ghost of a little girl, Pinocchio biting the hand off of an attacker, and Pinocchio being hung and choked almost to death. There is much more peril in the novel, much more adventure, and much more material for adult readers. The novel was not originally intended to be a children’s novel. When Collodi wrote Pinocchio poor Italian children were not viewed by their parents as children but rather as small adults, and there was no tradition of novels for children in Italy comparable to the English and American traditions. Collodi wrote Pinocchio for adults and included in the novel a substantial amount of topical satire (which American and English readers will not understand) and puns (which are not comprehensible in English translations); the novel is “full of philosophical reflections¼in the novel, Collodi also skillfully combines many other traditions of storytelling: the old Tuscan tradition of village children tales, popular oral tradition, biblical tales like the story of the prophet Jonah, and elements from Apuleius’ Latin Romance The Golden Ass.4 Pinocchio was adopted by the Italian intelligentsia of during the 1970s and 1980s and is thought of in Italy as a novel for adults.

Pinocchio was not always thought of so highly. It was not an immediate critical success, but it was popular with children from the beginning and became increasingly so in the decades following its publication. Although the novel is didactic and admonitory–the message that Pinocchio’s mischief and disobedience only lead him into trouble, and that good little boys and girls work hard and obey adults, is the dominant theme of the novel–it is sufficiently inventive and entertaining that children do not generally object to the lecturing. And adults will find a surprising amount of material to enjoy, even if the cute factor of the Disney movie is missing.

Recommended Edition 

Print: Carlo Collodi, The Adventures of Pinocchio. Philadelphia, PA: John C. Winston Co., 1925.

Online: http://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00076657/00001

For Further Research 

Richard Wunderlich and Thomas J. Morrissey, Pinocchio Goes Postmodern: Perils of a Puppet in the United States Abingdon: Routledge, 2002.

 

1 Carlo Collodi, The Adventures of Pinocchio (Philadelphia, PA: John C. Winston Co., 1925), 33.

2 Diana Bosworth, Georgia Review 65, no. 3 (Fall 2011): 584-608.

3 Emer O’Sullivan, The Historical Dictionary of Children’s Literature (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2010), 69.

4 Steffano Adami, “Le Avventure di Pinocchio, 1883,” in Gaetana Marrone, ed., Encyclopedia of Literary Studies (Abingdon: Routledge, 2005), 486.

 

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