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, co- organiser 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 author- centric 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 late- twentieth 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 mid- 1970s 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. 19- 39. 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 (1839- 1915), 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 so- called “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 fin- de-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 1940s- 1960s, 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: 1- 9). 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 middle- class 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 so- called 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 socio- cultural 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.

Works cited

Antonello Pier Paolo and Mussgnug Florian (eds.), Postmodern Impegno: Ethics and Commitments in Contemporary Italian Culture (Bern: Peter Lang, 2009). Arslan Antonia, Dame, galline e regine: la scrittura femminile italiana fra ̕ 800 e ̕ 900 (Milan: Guerini Studio, 1998). —. “Ideologia e autorappresentazione. Donne intellettuali fra Ottocento e Novecento”, in Annarita Buttafuoco and Marina Zancan (eds.), Svelamento. Sibilla Aleramo: una biografia intellettuale (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1998), 164-77. 20 Chapter One

Artusi Pellegrino (ed. Alberto Capatti), “Appendice”, in La scienza in cucina e l’arte di mangiar bene (Milan: BurRizzoli, 2010). Azzolini Paola, Il cielo vuoto dell’eroina (Bulzoni Editore: Roma, 2001). Bordo Susan, Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003). Brumberg Joan Jacobs, Fasting Girls: The History of Anorexia Nervosa (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988). Brugnoli Giovanni,’sull’anoressia. Storie e considerazioni”, Memoria dell’Accademia delle Scienze dell’ Istituto di Bologna, serie III, tomo 6, 1875, 351-61. Burns Jennifer, Fragments of Impegno: Interpretation of commitment in Contemporary Italian Narrative 1980-2000 (Leeds: Northern University Press, 2001). Calamita Francesca, Linguaggi dell’esperienza femminile: disturbi alimentari, donne e scrittura dall’Unità al Miracolo Economico (Padua: Il Poligrafo, forthcoming 2015). —. “Neera”, Enciclopedia delle donne. http://www.enciclopediadelledonne.it —. “Unspoken Feelings: Comparing the Feminism of Sibilla Aleramo’s Una Donna and the Social Battle of the Present-day Anorexic”, Skepsi, vol. 4, n. 1, 2011, pp. 1-11. —. “Storytelling and Female Eating Habits at the turn of the Twentieth Century: Italo Calvino’s ‘Zio Lupo’ and Neera’s ‘Uno Scandalo’” AUMLA, Special Issue, Refereed Proceedings of the 2011 AULLA Conference: Storytelling in Literature, Language and Culture, April 2012, pp. 67-75. —. “Tastefulness: Fashion, Food, Lust and Domesticity in Matilde Serao’s ‘La virtù di Checchina’ (1884),” altrelettere, February 2015, 1-22. —. “Voracious Dolls and Competent Chefs: Negotiating Femininity and Masculinity in Italian Food Advertisements of the 1990s-2010s,” Gender/Sexuality/Italy, 1, May 2014, 1-13. Chernin, The Hungry Self: Women, Eating and Identity (London: Virago, 1986). Colella Anna, Figura di vespa e leggerezza di farfalla. Le donne e il cibo nell’Italia borghese di fine Ottocento (Florence: Giunti, 2003). De Giorgio, Michela, Le italiane dall’unità ad oggi. Modelli culturali e comportamenti sociali (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1992). Furst, Lilian R. and Graham, Peter W. (eds.), Disorderly Eaters: Texts in Self-Empowerment (The Pennsylvania State University Press: University Park, 1992). Discussing Women’s Social Role through Paradoxical Behaviours 21

Gilbert, M. Sandra and Gubar, Susan, The Madwoman in the Attic: the Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-century Literary Imagination (New Heaven: Yale University Press, 1979). Gull, William Withey and Lasègue, Ernst Charles (introduction by Piero Feliciotti. Translated and edited by Giuliana Grando), La scoperta dell’anoressia (Milan: Edizioni Bruno Mondadori, 1998). Gundle, Stephen, Bellissima. Feminine Beauty and the Idea of Italy (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007). Heller, Tamar and Moran, Patricia (eds.), Food and the Female Body in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Women’s Writing (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003). Krugovoy Silver Anna, Victorian Literature and the Anorexic Body (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Lawrence Marilyn, The Anorexic Experience (London: Women’s Press, 1984). MacSween Morag, Anorexic Bodies: A Feminist and Sociological Perspective on Anorexia Nervosa (London: Routledge, 1993). McEacherrn Patricia, Deprivation and Power: The Emergence of Anorexia Nervosa in Nineteenth Century French Literature (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1998). Michie Helena, The Flesh Made Word (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987). Mitchell, Katharine, “Neera’s Refiguring of Hysteria as nervosismo in Teresa (1886) and L’Indomani (1890)”, in Katharine Mitchell and Catherine Ramsey-Portolano (eds.), “Rethinking Neera”, supplement to The Italianist, vol. 30, n. 3, 2010, 101-122. Morandini, Giuliana, La voce che è in lei. Antologia della narrative femminile tra “800 e “900 (Milan: Bompiani, 1980). Muzzarelli Maria Giuseppina, and Re Lucia (eds.), Il cibo e le donne nella cultura e nella storia. Prospettive interdisciplinari (Bologna: Clueb, 2005). Muzzarelli Maria Giuseppina and Tarozzi Fiorenza, Donne e cibo: una relazione nella storia (Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 2003). Neera, Teresa (Lecco Periplo Edizioni, 1995). (First published 1896) —. Lydia (Lecco: Periplo Edizioni, 1997). (First published 1887) —. L’indomani (Palermo: Sellerio Editore, 1981). (First published 1890) —. Le idee di una donna e Confessioni letterarie (“Invito alla lettura” di Francesca Sanvitale) (Florence: Vallecchi, 1977). Nozzoli Anna, “La letteratura femminile in Italia tra Ottocento e Novecento”, in Tabù e coscienza. La condizione femminile nella 22 Chapter One

letteratura italiana del Novecento (Florence: La nuova Italia, 1978), 1- 40. Orbach Susie, Fat is a Feminist Issue: The Anti-Diet Guide to Permanent Weight Loss (New York: Paddington Press: 1978) —. Hunger Strike: The Anorectic’s Struggle as a Metaphor for Our Age (London: Penguin, 1993). Ramsey-Portolano Catherine, “Neera the Verist Italian Women Writer”, Italica, vol. 81, n. 3, 2004, 351-366. Wood Sharon, Italian’s Women Writing 1860-1994 (London: The Athlone Press, 1995). Vandereycken Walter and van Deth Ron, Dalle sante ascetiche alle ragazze anoressiche. Il rifiuto del cibo nella storia (Milan: Raffaello Cortina Editore, 1995).

Web sources http://www.braidense.it/ http://www.enciclopediadelledonne.it/ http://www.iperteca.it/ http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/efts/IWW/

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).