The University of Chicago Other Mothers

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO OTHER MOTHERS: REPRESENTATIONS OF NON-BIOLOGICAL MOTHERHOOD IN THE WORKS OF ELSA MORANTE AND DACIA MARAINI A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE DIVISION OF THE HUMANITIES IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF ROMANCE LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES BY ELIZABETH ANNE PORRETTO CHICAGO, ILLINOIS DECEMBER 2015 COPYRIGHT 2015 ELIZABETH ANNE PORRETTO For Emanuele TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ………...………………………………………………………….....v INTRODUCTION: Elsa Morante and Dacia Maraini within the Tradition of Italian Women’s Writing on Motherhood in the Twentieth Century………………..………1 CHAPTER ONE: Elsa Morante: Beyond the Boundaries of Traditional Motherhood………….13 CHAPTER TWO: Canarie d’oro and Cantastorie eccelse: Fairy tales, Storytelling, Narrative and the Maternal in Elsa Morante’s Novels………………………….......57 CHAPTER THREE: Dacia Maraini: Reimagining the Maternal and the Family…………….....92 CHAPTER FOUR: «Racconta ma’»: Maternal Storytelling in Dacia Maraini’s Later Novels..128 CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………………162 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………...167 iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I must first and foremost thank Rebecca West, not only for her dedicated teaching which led me to the inspiration behind this dissertation, but also for her invaluable input and constant guidance as my dissertation director and throughout my academic career. I am also indebted to the support of my other esteemed committee members, Rocco Rubini and Lisa Ruddick, for their insightful readings and observations of my work as well as their thought-provoking questions. I would also like to thank the faculty members at the University of Chicago outside my committee, Elissa Weaver, Armando Maggi and Justin Steinberg for so generously sharing their knowledge and experience over the years. A very special thanks goes to Elana Kranz, the best cohort I could ever imagine. I also greatly appreciate the friendship and advice I’ve received from many of my other wonderful colleagues, particularly James, Beth, Maggie, Cynthia, Elizabeth and Cosette. I am grateful to them as well as to the friends who have become my family in Chicago, in particular our beloved ringleader Barbara and the always joyful Carla. My love and gratitude go my family; to my parents Dee and Michael who have taught me so much about mothering and have encouraged me throughout my life to follow my passion and keep writing. I appreciate the love and support of my brothers Tony and Andrew and their families. I want to thank Luca for being a constant source of inspiration and my amazing husband Emanuele, whose love, patience, understanding and unwavering support made the completion of this project possible. v INTRODUCTION ELSA MORANTE AND DACIA MARAINI WITHIN THE TRADITION OF ITALIAN WOMEN’S WRITING ON MOTHERHOOD IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY Italian women’s writing in the twentieth century reflects through the recurring theme of motherhood the myriad of changes the role underwent beginning with the budding efforts to redefine female identity following the birth of the Italian state. In her thorough study of motherhood in the Italian literature of the last century, Laura Benedetti traces the rise of the figure of the mother in the previous fifty years, as it expanded to encompass roles previously divided amongst various women who saw to the nursing and education of a child after birth.1 Strengthened by the influence of the cult of the Virgin Mary, motherhood became an ideal generations of Italian women were forced to confront, and the contemporaneous entrance of women writers into the nation’s literary scene in unprecedented numbers toward the close of the nineteenth century provided women with a new forum through which to challenge cultural expectations of their roles and identities. From the outset, however, women writing in Italy at this time found themselves in a precarious position, for they risked public criticism of their 1 Benedetti, The Tigress in the Snow: Motherhood and Literature in Twentieth-Century Italy, 12. 1 literary vocation as transgressive in a time in which biological distinctions between the sexes were employed to further root women within the institution of the family.2 Motherhood was a central theme in the work of the group of women writers that Marina Zancan locates within the first generation of the twentieth century, and although several of them challenged the conditions of women in the period and in relationships within the family, they all tended to perpetuate the maternal ideal.3 Neera, one of the most prolific and well-known women writers in Italy at this time, advocated through her theoretical writing the perpetuation of a mother’s necessary self-sacrifice, and famously concluded the last of the three novels of her ‘ciclo della fanciulla’ with a tale of a woman who finds a sense of fulfillment and purpose in impending motherhood, shifting her focus from romantic to maternal love.4 Though some of her most prominent contemporaries, including Marchesa Colombi, Bruno Sperani, Contessa Lara and Matilde Serao, addressed the realities and perspectives of contemporary women both in the private domain of marriage and family as well as in the public sphere, it wasn’t until the subsequent generation, with the arrival of Sibilla Aleramo, that women writers truly began problematizing in their fiction the role of the mother as dictated by society.5 In her 1906 novel Una donna, Aleramo critiques the patriarchal tradition of maternal abnegation in fictionalizing her autobiographical experience of leaving her son in order to escape an abusive marriage. Though the self-sacrificing mother appears in several of the works of Aleramo’s contemporary, Grazie Deledda, both she and Maria Messina also undermine this figure and complicate the 2 See Kroha, Lucienne, “The novel, 1870-1920,” A History of Women's Writing in Italy, 164-1975. Many women writers at this time, perhaps most noticeably Neera, tended to avoid drawing attention to their own transgressive status as women writers while reinforcing traditional female roles. 3 Zancan, Marina. “Le autrici. Questioni di scrittura, questioni di lettura.” All references to ‘generations’ of Italian women writers in my introduction are based on Zancan’s classification in this work. 4 See, respectively, Neera’s Le idée di una donna (1904), and the novel L’indomani (1889). 5 See Kroha, “The novel, 1870-1920,” 168-172 for an overview of the works of these writers. 2 notion of gender roles as fixed and rooted in biology.6 Thus, in the years preceding the arrival of Fascism, women in the Italian literary scene were actively questioning motherhood as an inevitable outome of their biological and social identities as women. Benedetti observes that despite the Fascist regime’s advocacy of the ‘total, self- annihilating’ maternal ideal women writers had begun to challenge in the years leading up to 1922, Italian literature did not follow the regime in its glorification of this ideal.7 The prolific mother, promoted though policy and propaganda as a political construction for women to emulate, failed to gain prominence in literature of the period. Women writers found themselves once again in a subversive role in transgressing the regime’s expectations for women, and portraying mothers in their works exposed the contradictions between their intellectual activity and the social expectations encouraging their maternity. Nevertheless, established writers such as Ada Negri and Annie Vivanti continued to feature mother protagonists centrally in their works, emphasizing the power of motherhood as a regenerative force imbued with the potential to renew the past.8 The years following World War II and leading up to the social and political turmoil of the 1970s represent a static period in which traditional ideas regarding women and motherhood continue to dominate in literature.9 An increasing range of literary mothers’ attitudes toward motherhood, however, can be found in the work of Natalia Ginzburg, including her protagonist’s struggle with an unwanted pregnancy in the novel La strada che va in città and the maternal indifference that characterizes the short story ‘La madre’. Benedetti credits Fausta Cialente, a 6 Ibid., 173-174. Kroha cites the transgressivenes of both male and female gender roles Deledda’s novels Marianna Sirca (1915) and La madre (1920) as well as Messina’s depiction of unconvential gender arrangements in La casa nel vicolo (1921) and the rejection of traditional roles in Alla deriva (1920). 7 Benedetti, The Tigress in the Snow, 42-45. 8 See Benedetti, The Tigress in the Snow, 60-64 for in-depth analysis of these authors’ depictions of motherhood. 9 Ibid., 76-78. 3 member of the new generation of women writers debuting in this period, with one of the most powerful female characters in the nation’s literary history, in her portrayal of her protagonist, Camilla’s, struggle between the identities of woman and mother in Un inverno freddissimo.10 As will later be discussed in depth, Elsa Morante defies adherence to literary and cultural trends throughout her career, and the contradictory criticism of mothers in her novels from Anna of Menzogna e sortilegio to Aracoeli of the eponymous novel reveals the difficulty inherent in classifying her treatment of motherhood.11 Morante certainly distinguishes herself from the subsequent generation of women writers in which a feminist questioning of motherhood comes to the fore. As Adalgisa Giorgio has noted, the literature of the 1970s reflects the devaluation

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