In this edition, a letter dedicated to Luigi Capuana was also published in which the author expressed his concerns that the "humoristic foundation" of the novel might have escaped those who had read the newspaper version.

It is a role that she does not regret losing but whose sudden and violent loss has thrown her into a dramatic situation: she has been kicked out of her home by her husband, who caught her by surprise in the act of reading a letter from someone who has been courting her but whose advances she has always rejected.

The precipitous decision of the husband overwhelmed with rage; the attitude of Marta's father who, even while knowing that his daughter is innocent, totally supports her husband's decision out of a misbegotten sense of masculine spiritual solidarity and ends up dying of shame; the submissive suffering of the mother and sister, constantly ready, in order to conform to traditional convictions, to counsel her surrender and obedience; the choral malevolence of the villagers, taking advantage of a religious procession that is passing by under their windows to publicly jeer and shout names at her, are the elements of a minutely described painting, in the manner of realism, which illustrates the closed mentality of the village.

She reveals a much more complex psychology which begins with a petit bourgeoisie self-satisfaction for the letters of Gregorio Alvignani and gradually develops into an obstinate struggle against all of society for a moral and economic revenge which she will finally end up obtaining, but joylessly.

The singularity of circumstances bursts wide open in the final scene: Marta's husband, after kicking her out of her home, making her suffer, and compromising the birth of his own son, now takes her back when she has actually become guilty of the sin of which she was falsely accused and is carrying her lover's baby in her womb.