Katharine Mitchell and Helena Sanson (eds) Women and Gender in Post-Unification Italy: Between Private and Public Spheres

Reviewed by: Laura A Salsini, University of Delaware, USA

In recent years, scholars have explored the roles Italian women played in both private life and public arenas in post-Unification Italy. This volume further investigates this subject, compiling a richly researched and engaging collection of essays. The text arose from a 2009 symposium organized by the editors at Cambridge University entitled ‘Women in Ottocento Italy: New Perspectives.’ The volume indeed offers fascinating and original studies of both widely recognized female authors as well as other, less well-known women from the edges of society.

The first section addresses the complex ideal of motherhood in the newly united Italy. Ursula Fanning's article, ‘Maternal Prescriptions and Descriptions in Post-Unification Italy,’ reveals how authors often anticipated the kinds of issues that would be addressed by feminists in the 1970s and 1980s. In the works of Matilde Serao, Carolina Invernizio, and Neera, for example, Fanning finds ample depictions of the modern notion of ‘affidamento’ in their portrayals of the mother–daughter relationship and of non-biological bonds between women and others. Sibilla Aleramo offers a different but equally compelling perspective on motherhood, one that looks at the dichotomy of ‘the pull of motherhood … against the pull of self’ (p. 36). Helena Sanson, in her essay “‘La madre educatrice” in the Family and in Society in Post-Unification Italy: The Question of Language,’ points out a troubling paradox: although the new nation of Italy demanded a national language, women—who were expected to be the primary moral educators of their children—had an astonishingly high rate of illiteracy. However, in shifting the model of the ‘madre educatrice’ from the domestic arena to the ‘more public context, that of society and the new State’ (p. 50), women became entrusted with the promulgation of standard Italian, a true ‘mother tongue.’

Women living at the margins of society are the focus of Part 2 of the volume. In ‘The Spinster in the Works of Neera and Matilde Serao: Other or Mother?’, Lucy Hosker traces how these authors rescue the ‘zitella’ (spinster) from both social and literary isolation. Serao and Neera drew attention to the figure of the spinster, a figure who defies social prescriptions insisting on motherhood, as a means of questioning conventional female roles. Anna Laura Lepschy, in ‘Carolina Invernizio and Maria Messina: The Drama of Italian Emigration to America,’ examines the personal and social disruptions caused by emigration, especially on women. The unconventional, decidedly non-feminine lives of female bandits, in Marjan Schwegman's ‘Horrific Heroines: Female Brigandage, Honour and Violence in Post-Unification Italy, 1860–1870,’ serve as a counternarrative to that of the heroic women who participated in the struggle for a united nation.

Women who succeeded in traditionally male spheres, such as politics, theater management, and film, are highlighted in the third section. Sharon Wood, in ‘Murder in the Harem: Cristina di Belgiojoso,’ looks at the Turkish sojourn of this unconventional political and literary figure, tracing how her fictional depiction of a harem presages her later writings on women. Julie Dashwood examines the early career of a woman who was able to challenge the restrictive customs of the theater world to found a successful drama company in ‘The Actress–Manager in Nineteenth-Century Italy: Adelaide Ristori.’ Monica Dall’Asta, in ‘Women Film Pioneers in Early Twentieth-Century Italy,’ brings to light the forgotten women toiling in the silent film industry. She focuses on those working behind the camera, such as Frieda Klug, a film distributor in Turin, Neapolitan film director Elvira Notari, the film-maker Elvira Giallanella, and the author Matilde Serao—here viewed through her work as screenwriter. These essays reveal how the insights of literary scholars and historians provide alternative perspectives on female contributions to the cultural landscape of this era.

The final section offers a wider approach to the inquiry into the role of gender in the post-Unification era. Katharine Mitchell, in “‘Sorelle in arte (e politica)”: The ‘Woman Question’ and Female Solidarity at the Fin de Siècle,’ surveys the works of prominent women from all walks of life, including writers, political figures, and theater stars. She sees in their work, such as conduct books, political tracts, and even dramatic performances, a desire to connect with women of lower economic classes to better their situation. Mitchell suggests this sense of ‘sorellanza’ (sisterhood or female solidarity), was a significant contributor to the changing political, legal, and sociocultural status of women during this period. Ann Hallamore Caesar's essay, ‘Writing by Women in Post-Unification Literary Culture: The Case for De-segregation,’ is an apt one with which to end this noteworthy volume. In it, she argues that the decades-long project of resuscitating female artists from cultural neglect by contemporary scholars has resulted in literary ghettoization. Although the increased attention toward these women writers has led to renewed awareness of their contribution to 19th century Italian literature, Hallamore Caesar believes ‘the time has come to integrate their writings into the literary landscape’ (p. 8). By doing so, their work can be meaningfully included with that of their male cohorts to create a broader (re)assessment of the literary canon.

All of these essays are well written, cogent, and compelling. They successfully argue for the importance, especially in the still emerging field of post-Unification studies, of understanding and contextualizing the many roles of women, in both the private and public spheres. Hallamore Caesar's essay points to an approach for future studies: that of integrating an investigation of female literary production with that of male writers, to ‘put to rest the persistent assumption that the history of fictional narrative in Italy is largely a male preserve’ (p. 245).