Dorina was not born in the city. Her childhood was spent in the countryside suspended between sky and sea in the Lattari mountains, looking after goats and chickens. The first time she saw Naples and the charm of the ladies who walked slowly along elegant streets, she suddenly understood why her mother's face would turn sad and green with envy whenever Aniello's wife came to visit them with the excuse of fresh eggs for her daughters, flaunting large hats wrapped in veils as she spoke with a feignedly distracted air about mysterious places such as the theater, the milliner's atelier...
The Neapolitan lady who employed Dorina turned out to be pretentious and bad, she considered the girl to be only an incapable peasant. Dorina ran away in a flash! Suddenly she found herself in a beautiful house full of luxuries she had never seen. The mystery of sex was already known to her, she had learnt to regard it not as a gross and reprehensible thing but a source of life, as a miracle from which lambs and babies were born.
Dorina returned to her home on the Lattari mountains in old age, and eventually she died there serenely.
Only the name "Dorina" is engraved on her grave... her working name, which was the name of her first goat whom she had never forgotten.