View Extract - Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Gendering
Commitment
Gendering
Commitment:
Re-thinking Social and Ethical
Engagement in Modern Italian
Culture
Edited by
Alex Standen
Gendering Commitment:
Re-thinking Social and Ethical Engagement in Modern Italian Culture
Edited by Alex Standen
This book first published 2015
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Copyright © 2015 by Alex Standen and contributors
All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without
the prior permission of the copyright owner.
ISBN (10): 1-4438-7640-2
ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-7640-7
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements ................................................................................... vii
Introduction ................................................................................................. 1
Chapter One ................................................................................................. 9
Discussing Women’s Social Role through Paradoxical Behaviours:
Starvation and Self-empowerment in Neera’s Teresa (1886)
and L’indomani (1889)
Francesca Calamita
Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 27
Gendering the Air: An Alternative Perspective on Futurist Aeropainting
Jennifer Griffiths
Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 45
“Appartenevo ad un uomo, dunque?” Reading Rape and Sexual Violence
in Early 20th-Century Italian Women’s Narrative
Alex Standen
Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 63
Sandro Penna, Queer Intellettuale Impegnato
John Champagne
Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 93
“Senza cacciarsi dentro un destino da etichetta”: The Body Politics
of Dacia Maraini
Maria Morelli
Chapter Six .............................................................................................. 119
Re-Mapping Impegno in Postcolonial Italy: Gender, Race, Class,
and the Question of Commitment
Barbara De Vivo
Contributors ............................................................................................. 139
Index ........................................................................................................ 141
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book began life in 2012 following a conference at the University of
Birmingham, generously supported by the Association for the Study of
Modern Italy. Since then, I have been greatly appreciative of the ongoing
support and interest in this work from previous colleagues at the
Universities of Birmingham and Auckland. I would like to acknowledge
the support of Francesca Calamita, Sarah La Pietra, Maria Morelli, Claire
Peters, Charlotte Ross and Jessica Wood for their patient reading and
thoughtful comments. Finally, particular thanks to Clare Watters, coorganiser of the conference and long-time friend and collaborator, without
whom this book would not have come into being.
INTRODUCTION
Notions of commitment, engagement and impegno continue to provoke
debate in the Italian Studies arena. However, a closer look at such
discussions suggests that gendered perspectives are often conspicuously
absent; be it by accident or by a more conscious selection, critical work
has tended to posit impegno as a predominantly male and, often,
heteronormative domain. This volume aims to challenge this assumption
and to analyse more closely the fluid and fragmented nature of
commitment, and the work of Italian intellectuals and cultural practitioners
associated with it. The texts under analysis have not typically been
associated with terms such as engagement and commitment, and yet, as
the following chapters go on to argue, all insist on the need to question,
interrogate and denounce contemporary social norms and realities.
Impegno is a term that is deeply entrenched in Italian culture and
academia. Defined variously as commitment, engagement, undertaking,
obligation and responsibility, it might appear to correspond to the French
engagement and yet its specific associations make it more difficult to
delineate. In the post-war period, it became associated with a distinctly
communist agenda and, as Jennifer Burns would have it, “a rather
oppressive type of political literature, associated with neorealism and
Soviet ‘social realism’” (2001: 4). Already in 1964, it was being consigned
to a specific historical moment, with Calvino and Pasolini declaring it
unfashionable. Italian artists and writers moved away from realism to
experimentation, and critics professed that since 1975, writers had failed to
offer a sustained engagement with society (Wren-Owens 2007: 2-13). This
shift in Italian thought paralleled wider cultural and theoretical shifts
towards post-structuralism and post-modernism, which, it was assumed,
were at odds with the kind of socio-political engagement previously
vaunted.
However, the concept has once again become the subject of special
academic attention in recent years, with works by Jennifer Burns (2001)
and Pierpaolo Antonello and Florian Mussgnug (2009) provoking
reflection and debate. Seeking to liberate the notion of commitment from
its historically restrictive boundaries, these and other studies have begun to
open up new spaces and possibilities for a broader theorization of
impegno. In Burns’ influential work, for instance, she rejects the typically
2
Introduction
“monolithic notion of commitment to a usually communist agenda in
writing” (2001: 1), instead conceptualizing of contemporary impegno as,
“a break-up of the commitment to a single, overarching social agenda into
a fragmentary attention to specific issues” (ibid: 1). Following Burns,
Antonello and Mussgnug call for the “diversification” of impegno (2009:
2), refuting the persistent academic tendency to associate it with figures
such as Sartre and Pasolini, and favouring its re-description, “simply, as an
ethical or political position channelled through specific cultural and artistic
activities, against any restrictive ideological brace” (2009: 11). For a
number of critics, then, it remains a useful and important term, rather than
one that constrains our thinking or harks back nostalgically to a particular
cultural moment.
Discussions about the role of the intellectual in Italian society have
similarly emerged as areas of critical interest within Italian cultural studies
(Ward 2001; Barwig and Stauder 2007; Bolongaro et al. 2009). The scope
of these works evidently differs: where impegno refers to individuals
whose commitment to society is manifested through their art, the
intellettuale is more typically a public figure offering societal observation
and comment. That said, for the purposes of this study, we are interested in
diverse instances of commitment, be they through literature, art, criticism
or journalism. We interchange impegno freely with terms such as
commitment, engagement and ethics, so as to avoid it conditioning our
thinking in ways that it may previously be seen to have done. As academic
debate has long sought to determine the function of the intellectual in
society, the key characteristics demarcating this – and some of the ways in
which it has been challenged – are useful to our discussion.
It has been argued, for example, that the ability to offer perspectives on
a broad range of contemporary concerns, coupled with an immediacy of
response, is fundamental to the role of the societal commentator
(Edgeworth 1999). This is a view which clearly conflicts with recent
debate about impegno, as defined above, in which an expanded definition
was sought, including recognition that individual attention to specific
issues must also define the role (Burns 2001: 1). Additionally, it has been
proposed that individuals should be autonomous, acting without political
allegiance and outside of state institutions (Said 2002); as Umberto Eco
would have it, “sarebbe sbagliato per l’intellettuale entrare nella politica
professionale e tentare di occupare in questa un posto di responsabilità; gli
conviene meglio preservare la sua indipendenza” (cited in Barwig and
Stauder 2007: 16). Free from any suspicion of vote chasing or career
building, the intellectual becomes more credible than his or her political
counterparts, and his or her views are more respected and valued (ibid:
Gendering Commitment
3
18). However, such impartiality can also be problematized when, more
typically, impegno has been seen to be implicitly associated with left-wing
concerns. Perhaps more relevant, then, would be to talk about individuals
who question and interrogate social realities, and who use their art (in
whatever form that takes) as a tool for acting in and understanding the
contemporary world. In terming the individual thus, we do not wish to
imply that there is a responsibility to comment, or that the artist’s
supposedly privileged position should require him or her to act as an agent
for change or renewal in society; rather, it becomes clear that individual
responsibility, critical awareness and the instigation of a dialogue with
society are some of the central tenets of the kind of roles we are exploring.
Ethical commitments such as these in turn presuppose a relationship
between the individual and the society to whom he or she wishes to speak.
In her most recent contribution to the impegno debate, Burns unpicks this
connection by scrutinising the relationship between reader and committed
author. She notes that, historically, impegno had always implied an authorcentric perspective, but proposes that contemporary debate should instead
turn from author to reader (2009: 62). Burns argues that literature can still
address our “more troubled social and moral environment”, but can do so
by making the reader confront him or herself:
So an impegno of the twenty-first century might be conceived of as – still –
a close and intense engagement of the reader by the author, aimed at
calling into question the reader’s motivations, assumptions, and at making
him/her engage face-to-face with what brings him/her pleasure. (ibid: 79)
More than passive observation, Burns calls upon readers to confront their
own engagement with a text. The task of the author or artist is not to
provide answers, nor indeed to imply that such answers will ever be
forthcoming, but to interrogate social realities and encourage others to do
the same. Indeed, it might be argued that it is precisely the way in which
an individual responds to a piece of art or literature that determines the
political nature of it; our personal relationship with an artwork, and the
preconceptions, history and motivations that we bring to it surely underpin
its role – and that of its creator – in society.
What then of the perceived masculine bias in this area of academic
study? In Barwig and Stauder’s volume on Italian intellectuals, for
instance, of the almost thirty individuals being considered, just three are
women, whilst Elizabeth Wren-Owens’ Postmodern Ethics focuses
exclusively on Leonardo Sciascia and Antonio Tabucchi. Antonello and
Mussgung’s collection of essays includes one on feminism, with a
particular focus upon Adriana Cavarero, but in the rest of the volume,
4
Introduction
male cultural practitioners remain the dominant presence and the ghosts of
grand intellettuali impegnati loom large. By contrast, whilst the majority
of Burns’ study may focus on male writers, she devotes a chapter to two
female authors, in which she specifically refutes any accusation of “gender
blindness”. She states that her analyses of Fabrizia Ramondino and Silvia
Ballestra are not taken from a comparative position of them as “women
writers”, but rather as autonomous case studies representing further
examples of “fragments of impegno”. In so doing, she avoids
“demarcat[ing] the writing of women writers from that of men in a way in
which the writers themselves do not suggest and would not, I think,
accept” (2001: 81). Discussing Ramondino, Burns argues that “her work
demonstrates an acute political consciousness and a powerful ethical
commitment which will go well beyond, but still include, her ‘feminist’
and regional concerns” (ibid: 82). Matters of gender may thus be
supposedly eliminated from Burns’ hypothesis, but, when her work is read
alongside other volumes, it is not too problematic to conclude that critical
work in the Italian Studies arena has tended towards a male,
heteronormative bias.
A number of studies have questioned specifically the role of female
committed individuals, and, indeed, their absence both in public spaces
and academic study. Kathryn Edgeworth considers the dearth of female
public intellectuals in Australia, and argues that it is not – of course – that
they do not exist, but that they are often simply denied such a designation.
Edgeworth posits that this is due to the fact that much of their discourse
privileges the private over the public sphere: “where participants in public
debate focus on the ‘private’, they are necessarily marginalised as speakers
by the gatekeepers of public thought” (1999: 2). She indeed claims that,
“common to descriptions of public intellectual discourse is the need for
[the] issues that intellectuals speak and write about to not only be
concerned with public life, but indeed limited to the public realm” (ibid: 2.
Emphasis added). Such a classification does not sit comfortably alongside
the feminist maxim that “the personal is political” and Edgeworth
accordingly confirms that, “just as political theory has historically denied
the relevance of domestic concerns in public life, so public intellectual life
affords status to civic and state matters while ignoring their reliance on
activities carried out in the private domain” (ibid: 3). Edgeworth’s
comments are vital to an understanding of some of the individuals under
analysis in our collection, whose written work and/or public discourse,
with its emphasis on women’s rights, role and subjectivity, would no
doubt be deemed “private concerns”.
Gendering Commitment
5
Making direct reference to the Italian case, Susanna Scarparo has
argued for Italian feminists to be recognised as public intellectuals:
They are public not only because they interact with and operate in public
institutions such as the school or university, the literary or academic
journals, publishers and so on, but that they are public in so far as they
operate within an agora (or public space) of their making. (2004: 209)
In this definition, Scarparo’s use of the term “agora” is key; she identifies
it as, “a place emblematic to public life which is given a political validity
without it being political in institutional terms. For Italian feminist
intellectuals there is another agora; that which women have put into
existence through their network of relationships” (ibid: 208). The
legitimizing of their authority comes not through the kind of spaces in
which (male) intellectuals have traditionally operated (institutions, the
media), but through their practica delle relazioni: the relational politics
that they practise (ibid: 209). Scarparo’s argument calls into question
exactly who it is that is validating an intellectual’s voice and investing
them with such a function. As remarked upon above, the relationship that
is forged between artwork and audience could be considered as
fundamental to its ethical positioning as the politics of its creator; to this,
Scarparo adds the ways in which intellectuals relate to one another.
To speak, then, of gendering commitment means to seek to separate
further the term from its historicity; to continue where previous academic
work has begun in trying to liberate notions of engagement and impegno
from previous constricting delimitations. Evidently, one principal aim is to
reinstate female (public) intellectuals into the canon in much the same way
women writers were (re)-discovered by feminists, but, more broadly than
that, this “gendering” implies opening up to new theoretical standpoints
and perspectives and bringing these into dialogue with pre-existing
concepts. The volume opens up a space not only for an impegno al
femminile, but also a “queer impegno”, a “globalized impegno”, a
“postcolonial impegno”. Indeed, as forms of cultural output and expression
continue to diverge and interchange more freely between diverse media, so
academic debate must continue to diversify in parallel with these changes.
Our “diversification”, to borrow from Antonello and Mussgnug,
encompasses various forms of commitment that both challenge and
destabilize, and that ultimately reflect the changing Italian cultural
panorama.
The volume opens with an essay by Francesca Calamita, which
examines Neera’s narrative production. Where Neera’s theoretical writings
have often subscribed to traditional views of womanhood, Calamita argues
6
Introduction
that many of her novels and short stories instead depict female
protagonists who do not follow the social and cultural conventions on
womanhood of their time. Calamita illustrates her hypothesis through a
focus on the protagonists’ bodies and their troubled eating habits: by
eating or starving, Neera’s characters display their deepest emotions and
reject the repressive social role they inhabit. In this light, Calamita
suggests that Neera is communicating her unease with the socially
sanctioned feminine roles of the time; the fictional hunger of her
characters can be read as a powerful metaphor for the desire for social and
cultural emancipation that, although undeclared, Neera shared with many
other women at the turn of the century.
Jennifer Griffiths’ contribution likewise focuses on a group of artists
not typically associated with gendered concerns. In Griffiths’ reading of
female Futurists, she makes a persuasive argument for a re-thinking of the
frequent derision, particularly within English-language scholarship, of
Futurism as devoid of originality and avant-garde critique. The Futurist
activity of Griffiths’ group of female aeropainters contradicts the general
belief in Futurist misogyny, and, in some cases, their work indeed critiques
male-centered Futurist and Fascist expressions. Whilst the burgeoning
technology of aviation was seen as a symbol of superlative masculinity in
early Futurist declarations, it became a liberating platform for Futurist
women to imagine an escape from material embodiment and social
expectations in later years.
The volume then moves towards the early and mid-twentieth century,
and an analysis of women writers whose narrative works are posited as
explicit acts of impegno. Alex Standen’s focus is on instances of rape and
sexual violence in works by Sibilla Aleramo, Elsa Morante, Maria
Messina and Paola Drigo, analysing both the depiction of these traumatic
acts and the ways in which the protagonists respond. For Standen, the
authors’ social commitment lies in their impulse to make public an
implicitly private matter, and one which has typically been framed by a
masculine perspective: premised on men’s fantasies about female
sexuality, their fears of false accusation, and their codified expectations of
their access to and possession of women’s bodies.
John Champagne begins his essay by describing how, according to
Cesare Garboli, and many other critics, Sandro Penna is the last place one
might look for signs of impegno. What Champagne goes on to argue, by
contrast, is that in Penna, we can identify a persuasive example of a queer
intellettuale impegnato: just to write of homosexual desire in the fascist
years was in itself a political act, but Champagne’s analysis goes beyond
this to draw attention to the way that the poet’s works give voice to
Gendering Commitment
7
affective needs and to the politics of Penna’s aesthetic. With their refusal
of appropriate sexual objects and their aesthetic challenges, Penna’s works
are, in Champagne’s words, “politically queer”; when – in line with the
volume’s aims – we are prepared to re-think what we mean by politics,
commitment and intellectuals.
The final two essays of the volume bring us forward to the latetwentieth and early-twenty-first century. Maria Morelli takes as a starting
point for her essay on Dacia Maraini’s politics, Burns’ conception of
narratives of impegno being those which “demand something of their
reader, and of a reader who is envisaged to be Italian” (2009: 72). Reading
two of Maraini’s narratives in the light of post-structuralist theories on
gender and sexuality, Morelli explores how they deconstruct pervading
notions of femininity and call for new forms of female subjectivity and
relationality. Whilst they are indivisibly linked to the politics of their time,
they simultaneously reveal a postmodern consciousness as far as the
treatment of the body and sexuality is concerned.
Barbara De Vivo’s focus on the recent outcomes of the Italian debate
over the crisis of impegno draws the volume to a close. In light of
contemporary Italian postcolonial literature, De Vivo argues for the
reconsideration of the notion of impegno and of its crisis, suggesting that
the presence of African-Italian postcolonial women writers in the Italian
public literary and cultural domain challenges the gender and ethnicity
embodied by the classic figure of Italian intellettuale impegnato. De
Vivo’s essay considers the narratives of three African-Italian
contemporary women writers – Igiaba Scego, Gabriella Ghermandi and
Ubax Cristina Ali Farah – investigating the epistemological basis that
shapes the notion of impegno, and analysing how axes of gender, ethnicity,
class and sexuality intersect in the contemporary Italian literary sphere.
As Burns (2001) and Wren-Owens (2007), amongst others, have
shown us, there had existed a long-standing belief that intellectual debate
addressing contemporary concerns had been absent in Italy since the mid1970s and that a new breed of intellectual was required to confront the
contemporary socio-political climate. Whilst scholarly debate in Italian
studies has roundly overthrown that argument, and demonstrated that the
spirit of impegno remains strong in Italian culture, we felt that an absence
still remained: not an absence of politically and ethically-committed
cultural practitioners, but an absence in acknowledging their plurality.
Taken together, the essays in this volume contest the traditional invisibility
not only of socially engaged Italian women writers, artists and
intellectuals, but also of those male cultural operators whose gendered and
8
Introduction
sexed forms of commitment may likewise have prompted their exclusion
from debate.
Works Cited
Antonello, Pierpaolo and Mussgnug, Florian (eds.), Postmodern impegno:
Ethics and Commitment in Contemporary Italian Culture (Oxford and
New York: Peter Lang, 2009).
Barwig, Angela and Stauder, Thomas (eds.), Intellettuali italiani del
secondo Novecento (Frankfurt: Oldenbourg, 2007).
Bolongaro, Eugenio, Gagliano, Rita and Epstein, Mark (eds.), Creative
Interventions: The Role of Intellectuals in Contemporary Italy
(Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2009).
Burns, Jennifer, Fragments of Impegno: Interpretations of Commitment in
Contemporary Italian Narrative 1980-2000 (Leeds: Northern
Universities Press, 2001).
—. “Re-thinking Impegno (again): Reading Ethics and Pleasure”, in
Antonello and Mussgnug (eds.), pp. 61-80.
Edgeworth, Kathryn, “Women as Public Intellectuals: The Exclusion of
the Private in Public Intellectual Life”, Women’s Worlds 99: The 7th
Interdisciplinary Congress on Women, Tromso, Norway, 20-26 June
1999.
Said, Edward W., “The Public Role of Writers and Intellectuals”, in Small,
Helen (ed.), The Public Intellectual (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), pp. 1939.
Scarparo, Susanna, “Feminist Intellectuals as Public Figures in
Contemporary Italy”, Australian Feminist Studies, Vol. 19, No. 44,
July 2004, pp. 201-12.
Ward, David, “Intellectuals, Culture and Power in Modern Italy”, The
Italianist, 21 and 22, 2001/2002, pp. 291-318.
Wren-Owens, Elizabeth, Postmodern Ethics: The Re-appropriation of
Committed Writing in the Works of Antonio Tabucchi and Leonardo
Sciascia 1975-2005 (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2007).
CHAPTER ONE
DISCUSSING WOMEN’S SOCIAL ROLE
THROUGH PARADOXICAL BEHAVIOURS:
STARVATION AND SELF-EMPOWERMENT
IN NEERA’S TERESA (1886)
AND L’INDOMANI (1889)
FRANCESCA CALAMITA
“Ridotta al silenzio, chiusa nel recinto della casa, la donna ha
sviluppato una storia alternativa [...] e ha usato lo strumento proibito, il
linguaggio, la scrittura […] consapevole che l’atto dello scrivere è un
gesto di diffidenza verso tutto ciò che è dato, anche e soprattutto verso la
sua immagine o meglio l’immagine che di lei si specchia negli occhi degli
uomini” (Azzolini 2001: 38-39). Paola Azzolini’s comment on late
nineteenth-century Italian women writers cannot help but remind us of
Anna Radius Zuccari (1846-1918) whose narrative production, under the
pen name Neera, has often described an alternative model of womanhood
to the one imposed by patriarchal ideology and the socio-cultural norms on
fin-de-siècle femininity. Over her long and very successful career,
spanning about fifty years, Neera wrote twenty-two novels, numerous
short stories, a number of poetry collections and ten volumes of essays;
her autobiography, Una giovinezza del XIX secolo, was published
posthumously in 1919.1 Her work was praised by Luigi Capuana (18391915), one of the fathers of Verismo,2 and by the philosopher and critic
Benedetto Croce (1866-1955), 3 and yet she has nevertheless been
neglected both by literary critics and the public, particularly in the first
half of the twentieth century.4
However, a number of recent studies have shed new light on her
narrative and theoretical work, encouraging scholars to reconsider Neera.
In particular, Rethinking Neera (Mitchell and Ramsey-Portolano 2010),
one of the latest publications on the Lombard author, includes a number of
10
Chapter One
essays that make reference to the contradictions between Neera’s
theoretical and narrative texts. As several critics have pointed out,5 in her
books of essays, particularly in the well-known Le idee di una donna
(1904), Neera states her rejection of the feminist movement that was
developing at the turn of the twentieth century; by contrast, in her
narrative production she often portrays female protagonists who do not
follow the social and cultural conventions on womanhood of their time. In
my reading of Neera, I wish to engage with previous literary criticism
about her contradictory perspectives on the social role of women; I shall
introduce a new interpretation of Teresa (first published in 1886) 6 and
L’indomani (first published in 1889),7 in which the author portrays both
the late nineteenth-century Italian middle class and women’s roles and
duties. As I shall explain shortly, I will focus on the protagonists’ troubled
relationship with food and their sick bodies, which I read as nonverbal
instruments employed to voice their protest against an unjust predestined
female fate. Furthermore, the contrast between Neera’s conventional ideas
on womanhood put forward in Le idee di una donna and the less
conformist attitudes towards ideal femininity described through her
protagonists in Teresa and L’indomani is what I will call the author’s
undeclared gendered impegno.
As Katharine Mitchell and Catherine Ramsey-Portolano note (2010:
8), since Luigi Baldacci’s introduction to the 1976 reprint of Teresa,
where he suggested that the novel is a “document[o] essenzial[e] dello
spirito femminista”,8 and Francesca Sanvitale’s “Invito alla lettura” to the
1977 edition of Le idee di una donna e Confessioni letterarie,9 the paradox
of the contrast between Neera’s theoretical and fictional writings has been
a widely debated topic among scholars. Discussing late nineteenth century
Italian women writers, Antonia Arslan (1998: 168), director of the archive
dedicated to the Lombard author, states that they are: “esitanti ed incerte
nel trarre in sede teorica le conseguenze di un ordine emancipazionista e
sociale che sembrerebbe logica conseguenza dei casi descritti nella loro
narrativa”; comments that particularly resonate with Neera’s paradoxical
approach.10 Similarly, Sharon Wood notes the contradictions between the
conventional ideas on womanhood put forward in Neera’s theoretical
production and the more progressive concepts articulated in her narrative
works, thus suggesting that while “in her theoretical polemical work Neera
writes from an inflexibly traditionalist and anti-feminist philosophical
position […] her fictions offer an oblique critique of personal relations and
family life which would not have been out of place on any feminist
platform” (1994: 27). For example, discussing marriage, motherhood and
work in Le idee di una donna, Neera states: “Ma bisogna pur far qualcosa
Discussing Women’s Social Role through Paradoxical Behaviours
11
per le donne che non trovano marito! Ora in tale circostanza una sola cosa
potrebbe veramente riuscire efficace: trovare il marito! Se questo non si
può, tutto il resto è fumo e rumore vano; perché mi vorrete concedere che
isterilire sopra un calamaio piuttosto che sopra una calza […] non muta
affatto la questione” (1977: 56). In this passage, Neera suggests that
finding a suitable husband is the most significant step in a woman’s life,
and that working is not essential to shape her identity. By contrast the
young and wealthy Lydia, 11 protagonist of the 1887 novel of the same
name, has a scandalous motto about her attitude towards womanhood and
the relationship with her suitors: “divertirsi” (1997: 27), which does not
echo Neera’s opinion on female identity as described in her essay.
In Teresa and L’indomani, which along with Lydia made up the socalled “ciclo della fanciulla”, 12 Neera describes the protagonists’
emotional struggle to accept their designated social role, in turn
questioning the prescribed destiny of middle-class women, both married
and unmarried. Both novels present scenes in which the protagonists’
bodies and their troubled eating habits take centre stage. I argue that, be it
by eating or starving, both Teresa, the eponymous protagonist of the 1886
novel, and Marta, the main character of the 1889 novel, display their
deepest emotions and reject the repressive social role they inhabit. Similar
to present-day anorexics, bulimics and compulsive eaters, they question
their social position by employing the language of the body and food,
which becomes an expression of what words cannot say openly. Teresa’s
and Marta’s atypical relationship with food and their bodies becomes their
second language, their unidiomatic source of communication, which
allows them to say what they were forbidden to express in words by the
cultural and social conventions of the time. Indeed, according to the
feminist discourse around women’s relationships with food and the body
that developed in the 1970s and 1980s,13 eating disorders are a complex
reaction to traditional models of female identity. Anorexia, bulimia, binge
eating and other problematic attitudes towards food and the body become,
therefore, powerful tools adopted by women to communicate what words
cannot yet express. Paradoxically, eating disorders also act as instruments
of self-empowerment: on the one hand, unconventional eaters develop
abnormal attitudes towards their bodies, but on the other hand, by
employing such a metaphorical language, they find a way to question the
social constrictions and cultural contradictions of women’s position in
patriarchal culture. Through her fictional characters, Neera can be seen as
having employed a complex approach to the discussion of women’s roles
in patriarchal culture and her political commitment towards the so-called
questione femminile.14 As I have already stated, in her theoretical writings,
12
Chapter One
Neera embraces a traditional view on womanhood, but in her fictional
writings, through the unidiomatic language employed by her rebellious
protagonists, she articulates her unease with the accepted feminine roles of
her time. Analysing the depiction of her female characters is, therefore,
crucial in order to understand Neera’s contradictory attitudes towards finde-siècle womanhood. The quest for greater social independence,
conveyed by the writer and her protagonists through “hidden” messages, is
what I have called Neera’s undeclared impegno; an impegno strongly
marked by gendered concerns. It is not my intention here to label Neera as
a feminist writer or her protagonists as anorexic women, but rather to
provide a reading of two of her fictional works in which women’s position
in patriarchal culture is questioned through her protagonists’ bodies and
their food habits.
Discussing the notion of impegno and challenging its traditional
association with the historical and political framework of the late 1940s1960s, Pierpaolo Antonello and Florian Mussgnug suggest that it can be
understood as “an ethical or political position channeled through specific
cultural and artistic activities against any ideological braces” (2009: 11).
From this perspective, and specifically in the Italian context, impegno can
also be civile or laico; moreover, it can be part of “existential, intellectual
and ethical experiences that are not the outcome of deliberate projects or
experiences but the results of contingent factors and external constraints”
(2009: 9-11).15 In accordance with this notion, I read Neera’s undeclared,
gendered impegno as a result of her late nineteenth-century female
experience and her awareness of the socio-cultural constrictions imposed
on women in post-unified Italy. In order to consider this point, it is
essential to have an overview of the ideals of late nineteenth-century
bourgeois womanhood, particularly female habits regarding food
consumption which, as I have stated, is the instrument employed by
Neera’s protagonists to voice their protest.
In Figura di vespa e leggerezza di farfalla: le donne e il cibo
nell’Italia borghese di fine Ottocento (2003), Anna Colella notes that the
ideal bourgeois lady is unsuited to work outside the household, should
wear a tight corset, have a pale skin-tone and above all be lacking in
appetite, especially during public occasions (2003: 9-37). 16 As several
scholars have pointed out from feminist sociological, literary and historical
perspectives, 17 physicians claimed that European middle-class women’s
daily diet was meant to provide support for their unbalanced feminine
nature, believed to be shaped by biological age (Colella 2003: 23). Colella
describes the eating regimen of Italian bourgeois women, which was often
made up of delicate meals, such as soups, milk and tea; red meat, reserved
Discussing Women’s Social Role through Paradoxical Behaviours
13
for men who were allowed to show their appetite in public, was often
excluded from the foods women could eat. 18 A variety of etiquette
magazines and manuals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century
often encouraged women to limit their food intake from adolescence
onwards; at the same time, they also urged them to become perfect
housekeepers and to learn how to nourish the whole family well.19 On the
one hand, women were supposed to lack appetite in order to embody the
ideal femininity of the time; on the other, they were required to plan and
cook – along with their servants – the daily meals for the other members of
their family.20 Interestingly, in the well-known cooking manual La scienza
in cucina e l’arte di mangiar bene (first published in 1891) by Pellegrino
Artusi (1820-1911), there is an appendix of recipes21 for those who have a
delicate stomach which includes those “debol[i] per natura”, 22 thus
suggesting a number of special meals for women, who are traditionally
considered of a weaker nature.
Neera’s fictional characters experience these contradictions towards
food. For example, Lydia who spends her adolescence at dinner parties
and social events, in which food is abundant, is rarely seen eating; readers,
indeed, do not have any details about her daily eating habits and imagine
her as a glamorous lady whose life is filled by holidays, expensive clothes
and nights at the theatre. By contrast, as soon as Marta marries Alberto in
L’indomani, she would like to become a regina della casa and feels in
competition with the old servant Apollonia who manages the household.
Marta would like to fulfill her task as a perfect wife, thus preparing
delicious meals for her husband and showing her expertise in the kitchen
to their friends and acquaintances, as late nineteenth century middle-class
women were required to do with the help of their servants.
The biblical episode of Eve and the apple marks the first controversial
meeting between women and food.23 As Giuseppina Muzzarelli points out,
ever since Eve’s gesture, gluttony has been regarded as one of the worst
sins, and as a symbol of an excessive desire for something else (2003: 19). As a result, women have been labelled as peccatrici di gola by the
Catholic Church, whose ideology has deeply influenced female eating
habits by suggesting what women should and should not eat in order to
conform to the ideal femininity of a specific time. 24 As I shall analyse
shortly, Teresa worries constantly about her family discovering her secret
love story with Egidio Orlandi; in particular, after having listened to a
sermon by the priest at the local church she believes herself to be a great
sinner. There may not be any images of food refusal directly related to the
Catholic ideology of the time, yet Teresa is deeply concerned about her
priest’s words towards sin and love, which influence her experience as a
14
Chapter One
woman and in turn her eating habits. Unsurprisingly, the relationship
between women and food has been characterized by this paradox for
centuries: in present-day culture, women are still seen as food givers who
are not allowed to eat qualitatively and quantitatively like men. Indeed, as
Susie Orbach puts it: “Throughout history women have occupied this dual
role of feeding others while needing to deny themselves. […] Women
must hold back their desires for the cake they bake for others […]. Diet,
deprive, deny is the message women receive” (1993: 41). The relationship
between women and food gains such importance that as a result numerous
scholars, amongst whom Muzzarelli and Lucia Re (2005: 13), have stated
that “la donna è cibo”.
Teresa and L’indomani portray the complex relationship between
Italian middle-class women and food in the significant period between the
nineteenth and twentieth century, where female identity was being defined
in national culture as a consequence of the recent unification of the
country in 1861. My analysis centres specifically on the metaphorical
meaning of food depicted by Neera and her awareness of the symbolic
value of food as an unidiomatic instrument for voicing impegno. For
Neera’s young protagonists, food is synonymous with something else: by
eating or starving they discharge their deepest emotions, reject the
repressive social role they inhabit and purify their sins against a complex
social background that, as I have described, promoted a fragile ideal of
femininity.
At the end of the nineteenth century, the cultural conventions of
womanhood required middle-class Italian girls to become wives and
mothers in order to fulfill their female destiny. Considered naturally
predestined to work in the household and raise children, they had a very
close relationship with food from an early age. These social and cultural
circumstances occur in Teresa, where the protagonist is not allowed to
work outside the household and questions her social role with one of the
only instruments she is allowed to employ everyday: food. Teresa’s plot is
centered on the impossible marriage between the eponymous middle-class
protagonist and her lover, Egidio Orlandi. Teresa grows up in a
subservient environment: she considers her mother, la signora Soave, the
typical angelo del focolare, an exemplary model of femininity;
furthermore, she is aware that her father is investing all his money in her
brother, the young Carlino’s, studies and does not have any plans for her
future, except that she make a respectable marriage. Indeed, Carlino is
“[l]’unico maschio […] [è] pur necessario dargli una buona educazione, e
colla educazione [viene] tutto il resto (53) [The only male needed a good
education, and with an education came all the rest (83)]”,25 while Teresa is
Discussing Women’s Social Role through Paradoxical Behaviours
15
expected to take care of her family and to find a suitable husband who can
support her economically. Orlandi cannot afford to support Teresa, and his
ambitious project to set up a journalistic career after his marriage with her
vanishes with his matrimonial proposal as soon as Signor Caccia refuses to
lend him some money. Arslan interprets the novel’s plot as:
Una storia coraggiosa, audace persino, tramata intorno a una protagonista
innocente ma non ignara, che appare subito come la vittima designata di
una concorde volontà e crudeltà familiare: la madre debole, il padre
ottusamente autoritario, le sorelle capricciose ed egoiste, il fratello
maschilmente sornione. Un ritratto – e un ambiente – tipici
dell’oppressione femminile ottocentesca [...].26
Teresa spends her days assisting her sisters and managing the household
with her mother, and worries constantly about her father discovering her
secret love tryst. In this context, Teresa starts to develop an abnormal
relationship with food. For example, one day, before meeting her lover,
“per lo sforzo di contenersi, era diventata pallida. Aveva dimenticato di far
colazione; si sentiva appetito ma non la voglia di mangiare (121) [From
the effort to contain herself, she had grown pale. She had an appetite but
no desire to eat (97)]”. This inability to eat could be read as a juvenile
reaction to love, yet when considered in the context of other details about
Teresa’s eating habits and her illness, it reveals that the young protagonist
communicates her emotions through her relationship with food, a strategy
which began during her teenage years. Indeed, it is noteworthy that on one
occasion, she states she is hungry yet unable to eat. These symptoms
increase over time and along with them her troubled relationship with
food; significantly, when Teresa becomes very ill and suffers from
convulsions later in the novel, she is also unable to eat together with other
people, exactly as a contemporary disorderly eater would do: “Il cibo
preso in compagnia le faceva male; divorava, sola in cucina, gli avanzi dei
pasti (212-13) [Food eaten in company made her ill, therefore she ate
leftovers alone in the kitchen (184)]”. Moreover Teresa, who excels at
domestic work, suddenly starts to perform her tasks badly:
- Il brodo non ha nessun sapore - disse il signor Caccia.
La signora Soave sospirò, costernata.
- Vi ho detto tante volte di metterci un sedano a bollire. L’avete messo?
- Bisogna domandarlo a Teresina - rispose prontamente una delle gemelle.
- Hai messo il sedano nel brodo, Teresina? L’hai messo? (123-24)
[- This broth is tasteless, Signor Caccia said.
Signora Soave sighed in consternation.
16
Chapter One
- I told you a hundred times to put in some celery. Did you?
- You will have to ask Teresina, one the twins reply promptly.
- Did you put the celery in the broth, Teresina? Did you? (99-100)]
While her domestic omissions can be seen as a distraction caused by
thinking constantly about her lover, we can also read them as a rejection of
the canonical domestic duties she is expected to perform by her family.
Her eschewing of traditional domesticity becomes a sign of rebellion
against her father’s tyranny, which, in the novel, symbolizes the influence
of patriarchal society in women’s lives. Teresa gradually becomes ill and
her sickness is seen by her family as a typical nineteenth-century middleclass feminine disease: she suffers from anemia and neurosis.27 While her
twin sisters are married and her other sister, Ida, has a job as a teacher,
Teresa suffers for her neglected love and the submissive role assigned to
her in the family by her father; food, therefore, becomes a metaphorical
tool to express her feelings. Eating or not eating, for Teresa, is not only a
need but also an attempt to communicate to others her deepest feelings. It
is worth noting that Mitchell draws attention to Teresa’s inability to eat
and she reads it as one of the symptoms of her nervosismo (Mitchell 2010:
111).
Anorexia nervosa was first referred to as such in 1873, and in the
medical discourse of the time, the boundaries which differentiate the socalled typical feminine neuroses were very blurred. Anemia, chlorosis,
hysteria, nervosismo and eating disorders were often diagnosed within the
range of the same illness as they shared very similar symptoms. The
Italian physician Giovanni Brugnoli, who is considered one of the
“fathers” of late nineteenth-century scholarship on anorexia suggests:
[…] se ne discorre quale sintomo costante od accidentale di altra malattia.
Difatti l’anoressia è assai frequente nel campo clinico e la si incontra quale
sintomo costante in tutte quante le malattie acute febbrili, in moltissime di
quelle che hanno sede nello stomaco; […] talvolta campeggia così, in
specie nelle nevrosi complesse […] (1875: 351-61).
Teresa’s body becomes a powerful weapon to address emotions and
frustration; as Arslan points out, the protagonist gradually becomes aware
of her illness and she understands the inner rebellion that her body is
experiencing (1998: 96). 28 Indeed, the doctor who regularly visits her
suggests that the family environment plays a key-role in the development
of her disease. His diagnosis highlights the strict relationship between
psychopathologies and the family environment:
Discussing Women’s Social Role through Paradoxical Behaviours
17
[U]na tendenza all’anemia, forse, ma anche questa temporanea, dipende
dalle cause che sfuggono al nostro esame. [...] Quando si manifesta un
perturbamento dei nervi così vivo, con caratteri francamente isterici, la
miglior cura è quella di non abbandonare l’ammalata a se stessa. Io posso
ordinare delle medicine, ma se non sono aiutato dal sistema... (216-17)
[A tendency towards anemia, perhaps, but this is temporary, dependent on
causes that this examination does not show. […] With such a strong
nervous disturbance, of a definite hysterical nature, the best cure is not to
leave the patient alone. I can prescribe some medicines but if it isn’t helped
by the routine… (187)]”.
Ida refuses to treat her sister Teresa as a sick woman: “la tua non è una
malattia (214) [You don’t have a disease (186)]”, she says, thus
highlighting that typical female diseases, such as hysteria and anorexia, are
not perceived as pathologies but rather as part of late nineteenth-century
women’s experience. This is exactly what Alberto thinks about Marta’s
neurosis in L’indomani, as we shall see shortly. Indeed, in Teresa, Ida is
the only female character who has a job: she is a teacher, and therefore
more socially and economically independent. Commenting on her sister’s
neurosis, she embraces a traditionally male standpoint which aims to
differentiate Ida’s unconventional womanhood from Teresa’s conformist
female experience. Like a present-day anorexic’s struggle, Teresa’s pain is
hardly decoded within the family environment and it is often read as
something else. As we have seen, for Ida, her sister’s neurosis is not an
illness and therefore the doctor asks Teresa’s family to consider her
conditions more carefully as well as to give to her the attention she
deserves. In this light, starving becomes a way to discuss her feelings and
to communicate her unease with her stereotypical role in the family. Her
illness becomes a paradoxical means of self-empowerment, a controversial
reaction that allows her to speak out about social injustices towards
women’s roles at the end of the nineteenth century.
The relationship between food and emotions is also central to another
novel by Neera, L’indomani, written in 1889, three years after Teresa.
Having married Alberto, Marta, the young bride, shows her love for her
husband by preparing him delicious meals: “Marta si spogliò in fretta;
doveva preparare una salsa di cui ella sola conosceva la ricetta e che, nel
suo ardore di neofita, giudicava più accetta ad Alberto, se fatta da lei”
(38). The narrator makes a very important point in this episode: after
receiving Alberto’s approval of the delicious sauce, the protagonist
“mangiò e bevve di buonissimo umore” (38). In the context of what
readers will discover soon about Marta’s neurosis, this detail reveals the
18
Chapter One
bride’s inclination to link positive and negative emotions to food, just as
Teresa does.
Marta soon becomes disappointed by her marriage and a conversation
with his husband’s friend, “il dottorone”, confirms the miserable meaning
of the typical bourgeois partnership. According to their family friend,
mental illness can become a powerful means of revenge in order to rebel
against an unjust, predestined fate:
Le ho già detto, mi pare, che per le donne oneste l’amore non può essere
che un dovere o una colpa. Allevate nell’idea fissa del matrimonio il quale,
con la morale odierna è la sola porta d’uscita che esse hanno, non
conoscendo l’amore né l’uomo, ognuna accetta quel marito che il caso,
gl’interessi, la mamma o gli amici le pongono davanti; è un lotto, una
roulette, bazza a chi tocca, e chi le piglia se le tiene. [...] La donna non è
sempre vittima, [...] ella si vendica, come può, quando può. Ella risponde
alla mostruosa ingiustizia dell’amore civile coi suoi milioni di isteriche, coi
suoi miliardi di adultere. (60)
Marta’s illness is also a way of communicating to Alberto her enormous
disappointment, an answer “alla mostruosa ingiustizia dell’amore”. The
early enthusiasm for being married ends as soon as Marta discovers
Alberto’s shady past and she gradually becomes ill: “Tutto il fisico di
Marta si risentiva di questo stato patologico. Era magra, coll’occhio
spento; soffriva lunghe malinconie; già più volte, senza una ragione
apparente, era corsa a nascondersi nella sua camera per piangere”(65).29
Marta discovers her husband’s youthful love for Elvira and suggests to
Alberto that they give the same name to their future daughter, in order to
provoke him, but he pretends not to understand. In this episode, Marta
shows her inner emotions by refusing to eat; by doing so she gains
Alberto’s attention as he encourages her to fill her plate and eat. If we
compare this scene to the one at the start of the novel, when the
protagonist sees Alberto eating with satisfaction, it becomes clear how
Marta relates her emotions to food. Marta eats happily when Alberto
shows her his love, but she refuses to eat when there is a problem between
them. In this sense, food is used to express a protest, to articulate what
words cannot describe openly, to gain attention and to express her intimate
feelings, exactly as I have noted in the context of Teresa’s narrative.
According to Orbach, the anorexic “is in protest at her conditions”
(1993: 82-83) and she embraces a self-destructive, yet self-empowering
means to speak about her identity with her body and food. This is precisely
the anorexic logic employed by Marta. In Le idee di una donna Neera
states: “Rimanga la donna al suo posto da cui ha fatto tanto bene
Discussing Women’s Social Role through Paradoxical Behaviours
19
all’umanità […] L’intelligenza della donna non deve disperdersi altrove,
perché altrove non c’è bisogno di lei e qui, nel focolare, nel tempio,
quando ella sarà lungi, entrerà la morte” (1977: 48) This passage deeply
contrasts with Marta’s attitude towards her position in the family; indeed,
as we have seen, she does not accept her role as a silent bride and
constantly investigates her husband’s past life, thus refusing to embrace a
traditional role in the family as described by Neera. Even if Marta’s sociocultural role does not allow her to escape her marital frustrations, her sick
body and troubled eating habits paradoxically voice her protest in the
family environment.
Teresa and Marta’s relationships with food show the close link
between eating and emotions. For these young protagonists, food is not
only a necessity, but also a source of emotional nourishment as well as a
form of rebellion against the rules imposed by patriarchal society. It
identifies women as the caregivers for their families, but also becomes an
instrument of protest against their repressive social role: one of the few
tools available to women in late nineteenth-century society which defined
them as fragile individuals naturally designed for household work. At the
same time, through their bodies, these characters express their innermost
feelings, shaping them into further visible outcomes of their neuroses. By
describing a variety of alternative female identities, Neera reveals her
paradoxical attitude towards women’s social positions. In Teresa and
L’indomani, through the actions of her rebellious protagonists, the writer
questions Italian female identity in post-unified Italy, employing
instruments traditionally associated with womanhood. From this
perspective, the fictional hunger of her characters can be read as a
powerful metaphor for the desire for social and cultural emancipation that,
although undeclared and often rejected in her theoretical writings, Neera
shared with many other women at the turn of the twentieth century.
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Chapter One
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Chapter One
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Notes
1
Several websites give the opportunity to read Neera’s prolific production. Some
of her novels are on the website of the Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense (project
Di.Re): Lydia (1887), L’indomani (1889), Nel sogno (1893), L’amuleto (1897),
Crevalcore (1907), Una passione (1910), Duello d’anime (1911) and the collection
of short stories La sottana del diavolo (1912).
http://www.braidense.it/risorse/dire.php (last accessed 30/04/2013). Her autobiography
Una giovinezza del XIX secolo can be found on the website of the Biblioteca
Digitale Iperteca: http://www.iperteca.it/index.php (last accessed 30/04/2013). The
database on women’s writings by the University of Chicago offers access to
various collections of short stories: La freccia del parto e altre novelle (1894),
Anima sola (1895), Conchiglie (1905), Iride (1905); to the novels: Nel sogno
(1893), L’amuleto (1897) and La vecchia casa (1900); to the play: Fotografie
matrimoniali (1900), first published in “Il pungolo della domenica”; to the essay
Battaglie per un’idea (1898), and to the 1903 article “Uomini, uomini, donne,
donne”, firstly published on “Il Marzocco”:
http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/efts/IWW/ (last accessed 30/04/2013).
2
For a short biography of Neera, see my encyclopedia entry “Anna Radius Zuccari
(Neera)” by Francesca Calamita on the website Enciclopedia delle donne.
http://www.enciclopediadelledonne.it (last accessed 26/05/2013).