Paola Blelloch Quel Mondo Dei Guanti E Delle Stoffe

PAOLA BLELLOCH QUEL MONDO DEI GUANTI E DELLE STOFFE... PROFILI DI SCRITTRICI ITALIANE DEL '900 Verona: Essedue Edizioni, 1987. 168 pp. The title, a quotation from A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf, understood of course in an ironic sense, sets from the beginning the boundaries within which tradition has confined the role of women in society and consequently the thematic content of women's literature. The period investigated is the twentieth century and the writers are Italian, but, from resigned acceptance to overt rebellion, the thoughts and action described surpass the limits of time and space set by the author and reflect a condition similar to that of women in antiquity, the specific interest of this reviewer. Hence the particular validity of this book, which does not address only a specific public knowledgeable in Italian literature and society, but anyone interested in the subject of women. At the same time it fills a serious gap in the history of contemporary Italian literature, since women writers, with only a few exceptions to the contrary, have not received sufficient critical attention in their own country, in spite of their considerable number and output; nor did there exist, needless to say, a comprehensive work on the subject, comparable to Ellen Moers' Literary Women or A Literary and Psychological Investigation of Women's Writing by Patricia Spacks. In the Introduction the author begins by establishing her method in selecting and assembling such vast and diversified material: not a traditional critical approach based on qualitative and discriminatory judgement, but a frankly feminist one resting on the assumption of the persistence of "concrete features of thematic and linguistic nature" in the writings by women. Then she proceeds to analyze the peculiar relation of women to writing within the context itself of women's writing. Reactions such as fear, lack of confidence, a drive to overcome, or more simply a need for coherence in the midst of a fragmentary existence, characterize this relation. In the first chapter, entitled "Dalla condanna alla protesta," the two successive moments of refusal of women's condition and rebellion against 104 society are investigated in the different behaviors of two groups of writers: the generation from the beginning of the century (Matilde Serao, Grazia Deledda, Ada Negri, Sibilla Aleramo) and the generation of the seventies, deeply committed to the cause of feminism (Dacia Marami, Armanda Guiducci and many others). In the second chapter, entitled "I rapporti umani," the various types of human relations, particularly between mother and son or mother and daughter, are considered in the light of a feminine perspective. Entire novels of writers such as Elsa Morante, Francesca Sanvitale, Natalia Ginzburg, Lalla Romano, Gina Lagorio and others are explained in the framework of a typical feminine experience, which often turns upside down the opposite masculine interpretation. The third chapter, "L'ambiente," clearly the most original and personal, is pervaded with that sensitive mood suggested in the title of the entire work. It is indeed in the treatment of the environment, according to the author, that the most striking dichotomy between men and women writers is revealed, and the most original contribution of women to literature becomes evident. In her words "nel rapporto con diversi ambienti esterni, le scrittrici riescono a introdurre elementi nuovi, quali la vita casalinga e l'oggetto domestico, che diventano metafore della chiusura della vita femminile." An "essential," in fact quite exhaustive bibliography, and precise references to the works discussed, in the notes, make this book a required and easily manageable tool in the hands of scholars of Women Studies. A more general public will find the vivid style of writing and the many references to the texts discussed an interesting and enlightening reading. MARIA TERESA MARABINI MOEVS Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey 105 .

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