Re-Thinking the Victim: Representations of Gender Violence in the Narratives of Dacia Maraini
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
RE-THINKING THE VICTIM: REPRESENTATIONS OF GENDER VIOLENCE IN THE NARRATIVES OF DACIA MARAINI by ALEX STANDEN A thesis submitted to The University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of Italian Studies School of Languages, Cultures, Art History and Music College of Arts and Law The University of Birmingham June 2011 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. ABSTRACT This thesis explores representations of gender violence in the works of Dacia Maraini, tracing a pathway from early novels in which her protagonists suffer predominantly non- physical oppression, to later works which foreground victims of more extreme bodily violence. Taking a chronological approach, it contextualises her work and situates individual texts in their broader cultural framework, highlighting the changes and continuities that these differing backgrounds have provoked. Maraini’s unique position as both author and social commentator is similarly established, with the interplay of her narrative and feminist commitment emerging as a central concern. Fundamental to the thesis is the figure of the female victim, through whom motifs that are recurrent in Maraini’s oeuvre are identified and analysed. The thesis proposes two main lines of argument. Firstly, that there is a change in the way in which Maraini represents gender violence: from signifying one manifestation of women’s overall oppression under patriarchy, it becomes the dominant theme in a number of texts, presented as a specific phenomenon to be understood and exposed. Secondly, that whilst in many of her early texts her protagonists develop strategies for resisting their abusive situations, Maraini’s later female victims demonstrate little agency and, moreover, appear to submit to the violence they undergo. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis would not have been possible without the generous financial support of the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and the help and encouragement of the following people, to whom I offer my heartfelt thanks: I owe a great deal to my supervisor, Dr. Charlotte Ross, for her invaluable advice, insight and support over the last four years and more. I am indebted to Dacia Maraini for her kindness and disponibilità whenever I have asked her about her work. I am greatly appreciative of the ongoing support and interest in my work from all the members of the Department of Italian Studies. I would also like to acknowledge the support of all my postgraduate colleagues, with particular thanks to Clare Watters, Claire Peters and Susanne Thuermer for their patient reading and thoughtful comments. On a personal note, my thanks are due to all the friends and family who have encouraged and accompanied me throughout this project, especially to Nick – for his tireless support, humour and faith in me. Finally, I would like to thank my parents for inspiring in me a love of literature and languages, without which this thesis would not have been written. CONTENTS Introduction 1 I. Dacia Maraini: Author, Activist and Cultural Figure 10 II. Gender Violence: Some Theoretical Perspectives 19 Chapter One: Adolescent Victims in La vacanza (1962) and L’età del malessere (1963) 36 I. Constructing the Victim 40 II. Instances of Abuse and Mistreatment 45 III. The Trials, and Possibilities, of Female Adolescence 55 Chapter Two: Institutional Victims in Il manifesto (1969), Memorie di una ladra (1972), Donna in guerra (1975) and Il treno per Helsinki (1984) 67 I. Maraini and Second Wave Feminism in Italy 69 II. Discipline and Punish: Il manifesto and Memorie di una ladra 78 III. Institutionalised Motherhood: Il treno per Helsinki 91 IV. Resistance, Communities and Consciousness 99 Chapter Three: Silenced Victims in Isolina (1985), La lunga vita di Marianna Ucrìa (1990), Maria Stuarda (1980) and Charlotte Corday (1989) 105 I. Breaking Women’s Silences: La lunga vita di Marianna Ucrìa and Isolina 108 II. Staging Silences: Maria Stuarda and Charlotte Corday 124 Chapter Four: 140 Perpetrators in Voci (1994) and Buio (1999) I. Constructing the Archetypal Perpetrator in Buio 143 II. The fascino of Masculinity in Voci 153 III. Problematising Perpetrators: Female Complicity 167 Chapter Five: ‘Post-feminist’ Victims in Voci (1994) and Colomba (2004) 175 I. Post-feminism 179 II. Angela and Colomba 185 III. Re-thinking the Victim 192 IV. Generational Legacies 200 Chapter Six: Global Victims in Buio (1999), I giorni di Antigone (2006) and Passi affrettati (2007) 213 I. Looking Inside 217 II. Looking Outside 229 III. Maraini’s Public Role 240 Conclusion 249 Bibliography 259 INTRODUCTION Dacia Maraini is today widely recognised as one of Italy‟s foremost contemporary writers.1 Her career spans nearly five decades, during which time she has authored countless works of prose, poetry, theatre and journalism.2 Throughout this period, there has existed an almost constant interplay between her narrative work and her feminist engagement. Alongside her prolific career as an author, Maraini has simultaneously remained a dedicated activist for social justice. She has long been publicly active in feminist causes, and as a commentator on politics and society. Her narrative output in turn reflects this commitment, through texts which focus persistently upon the female subject, but which also highlight discrimination and inequality in both the public and private spheres. Moreover, a number of her texts deal with what Maraini sees as the incessant mistreatment of women, and, specifically, the issue of gender violence. In this thesis I demonstrate how gender violence is a theme which indeed permeates Maraini‟s entire body of work. The term „gender violence‟ refers to a specific cultural situation concerning the sustained domination of women in a patriarchal society, and is commonly defined as „violent acts (real or threatened) perpetrated on females because they are female. [...] [Its] intent is to perpetuate and promote hierarchical gender relations‟ (Green 1999: 2).3 Numerous examples of Maraini‟s commitment to an anti- violence agenda are readily available in her texts. Attention is drawn, for example, to 1 Her contribution to contemporary Italian literature is documented in numerous critical responses to her work, much of which I outline below. She is the recipient of a number of awards and her work has been widely translated. However, probably the greatest testament to Maraini‟s achievements was her recent nomination for the Man Booker International Prize, in March 2011. 2 See Maraini‟s website for a comprehensive and up-to-date bibliography of her works: www.daciamaraini.it. 3 I explore the meaning and implication of the term in more depth below. 1 sexual violence in La lunga vita di Marianna Ucrìa (1990), a work that remains one of Maraini‟s most successful to date. In it, Maraini‟s protagonist is struck deaf and dumb through the shock of being raped by her uncle as a small child. Meanwhile, the 1985 novel, Isolina, foregrounds bodily violence suffered by women, charting Maraini‟s own investigations into the brutal death of a young woman in the early twentieth century. More recent works attempt to highlight the contemporary realities of gender violence: the 1994 thriller, Voci, narrates a journalist‟s investigation into the violent death of her neighbour and her parallel enquiry into why the deaths of so many women remain unsolved, whilst the eponymous victim of Colomba (2004) is prey to a boyfriend who drugs and uses her as a sexual plaything for him and his friends. In addition, Buio (1999) is a collection of short stories which focus on crimes against women and children in a newly multicultural Italian society. The stories in Buio take actual events as their starting point, in the same way as does one of Maraini‟s most recent successes, the play, Passi affrettati (2007). Based on real testimonies, this latter work recounts the stories of women from around the world who are, still today, victims of the physical manifestation of their historical and familial oppression. Whilst examples of acute, physical violence evidently abound in Maraini‟s oeuvre, I demonstrate that violence against women can equally be defined as something fluid and wide-ranging. Alongside the works already mentioned, I consider Maraini‟s first literary offerings, in which her adolescent female protagonists are reduced to physical and sexual beings by their male counterparts. The characters in La vacanza (1962) and L’età del malessere (1963) are consistently objectified and subjugated by a dangerous, and ubiquitous, patriarchy. Such „non-physical‟ forms of domestic violence are also foregrounded in Donna in guerra (1975), in which the protagonist‟s husband coerces her 2 into sexual intercourse; she also bears witness to a neighbour who is verbally and psychologically abused by her husband and sons. Evidently there is, however, a noticeable shift in Maraini‟s treatment of gender violence in her narratives, from the predominantly non-physical in her early works to ever more overtly physical manifestations in texts of more recent times. When questioned about this element of her oeuvre, Maraini suggested that it reflected her belief that, in a supposedly modern society, the continued mistreatment of women constitutes an ever more pressing concern: La violenza è sempre stata presente nel mondo, ma ora siamo diventati più sensibili a ciò che una volta veniva considerato normale: la proprietà di un essere umano (la schiavitù), la punizione fisica di chi viene giudicato colpevole (frustate ai prigionieri, agli adulteri, bacchettate sulle mani ai bambini a scuola, ecc.), l‟eliminazione fisica del nemico, l‟uso continuo e dichiarato della tortura.