From the Restoration to the Pisanelli Code (1815-1865): a Cultural and Historical Assessment of the Legal Status of Women in the North of the Italian Peninsula
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From the Restoration to the Pisanelli Code (1815-1865): A Cultural and Historical Assessment of the Legal Status of Women in the North of the Italian Peninsula Sara Delmedico Clare College March 2018 This dissertation is submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy From the Restoration to the Pisanelli Code (1815-1865): A Cultural and Historical Assessment of the Legal Status of Women in the North of the Italian Peninsula Abstract From the Restoration to the Pisanelli Code (1815-1865): A Cultural and Historical Assessment of the Legal Status of Women in the North of the Italian Peninsula Sara Delmedico In the context of a changing political landscape, where shifts in state boundaries and socio- economic structures deeply affected the Italian peninsula and its people, this thesis analyses women and the law in action in the years from the Restoration up to the enactment of the Pisanelli code (1815-1865). It does so with particular reference to the Kingdom of Sardinia and the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia. These years also saw a number of changes in the legal system with various new laws instituted. The quick succession of these legal acts testified to the new ideas, behaviours and perceptions that began to take form in the period in question, but which the patriarchal and hierarchical nineteenth century society – so reliant on strict class stratification to perpetuate its status quo - resisted fully accepting. Within this context, women began to redefine their sense of self and to think of themselves as having an identity which went beyond their traditional domestic roles of mother, wife or daughter. This work aims to describe this process by focusing on women’s attitudes towards the law and their interactions with the legal system. The thesis is structured in the following way: the first part focuses on the Ottocento context, the ideals promulgated about women in public discourse and the legal framework of the Italian peninsula. In the second part attention turns to relevant case studies from the Kingdom of Sardinia and the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia, brought to light by first-hand examination of archival documents and court proceedings preserved in legal journals of the time. Each part is subdivided into three chapters. After an examination of the social, political and economic context of the nineteenth-century Italian peninsula (Chapter one), the discussion presents a picture of contemporary views about women according to scientists, theorists, moralists and jurists (Chapter two). Chapter three is devoted to the law in force in the pre-unification states with regard to women, paying close attention to the institution of dowry. Chapter four deals with a selection of case studies concerning marriage promises, seduction, and extramarital relations. What emerges from the investigation is the intrusiveness of authorities and the reach they extended into people’s private lives in an effort to maintain social order and exercise power within a society founded on hierarchy, immobility, and obedience. Chapter five examines lawsuits questioning dowries and wills. These acts show the families’ choices to preserve their wealth, often inevitably paving the way to future discord, with women initiating lawsuits to obtain more money from their relatives. Finally, Chapter six analyses widowhood and separation, two possible moments in a woman’s existence that had important implications in terms of both their intimate sphere and the devolution of wealth. In particular, the chapter traces widows’ actual access to inheritance, and women’s requests for separation, focusing on the reasons that drove them before a court to relate issues pertaining to their very intimate lives, such as contracting diseases. Through the analysis of the law in action and women’s use of the law itself, this thesis will recover the forgotten voices and lives of those ordinary women, who, in their everyday life, reacted against the limitations and constraints imposed upon them by society and decided not to passively accept their status. From the Restoration to the Pisanelli Code (1815-1865): A Cultural and Historical Assessment of the Legal Status of Women in the North of the Italian Peninsula Index of contents Acknowledgements IV Preface V Introduction 1 1. Recovering women’s voices 2 2. State of the art 5 3. Sources and methodology 13 4. Structure 18 Part 1 The Italian Peninsula in the Pre-Unification Period Chapter 1: Building the nation-state: Italian society between old prerogatives and modernity 22 1. The political and economic context 22 2. Family and society 25 3. Women and the family 29 4. Women and political participation: the Risorgimento 37 Chapter 2: Ideals of women in men’s and women’s writings 44 1. The ideology on women 44 2. ‘L’irrequieto desio di piacere agli uomini’: women, their world and their education 51 3. Women and motherhood 55 4. Jurists on women’s status 65 5. Acknowledging women’s participation 69 i Chapter 3: Women and the law in the nineteenth century Italian peninsula 73 1. The dowry from ancient times to the nineteenth century 74 2. The French Revolution: the Jacobin Constitutions and the Napoleonic Code 85 3. Women and the law during the Restoration 88 4. Women and civil rights before Unification 101 5. The Unification of Italy 104 Part 2 Women and Marriage between Civil, Criminal and Canon Law: The Cases of the Kingdom of Sardinia and Lombardy-Venetia Chapter 4: Women and men beyond marriage 109 1. The promise to marry 109 2. Seduction of a ‘zitella onesta’ 115 3. Extramarital relations 127 Chapter 5: Women, marriage and the transmission of property 134 1. ‘Recapitata onestamente’: women’s exclusion from inheritance in the Kingdom of Sardinia 134 2. The Roncallis: a wealthy family in Piedmont 138 3. Negotiating their exclusion: the Marchisone sisters 150 4. Women and wills in Lombardy-Venetia: overriding the law 155 Chapter 6: Ending wedlock 161 1. Wealth, poverty and widowhood 161 2. Annulment and consensual separation 168 3. Non-consensual separation: adultery and saevitiae 172 3.1 Adultery 172 3.2 Saevitiae 177 Conclusion 186 ii Table 1. Nineteenth-century coinage 190 Glossary 191 Bibliography 193 Primary sources 193 Secondary sources 209 iii Acknowledgements I wish to express my sincere gratitude to the Arts and Humanities Research Council and Cambridge Commonwealth, European and International Trust for generously supporting my PhD studies. I would like to thank the Italian Department at the University of Cambridge for creating such a supportive and enriching environment in which to work. For her illuminating, meticulous, enthusiastic and invaluable guidance and feedbacks, I am deeply indebted to my doctoral supervisor Helena Sanson. I am also grateful to Victor Crescenzi, Federica Boldrini and Giovanni Minnucci for sharing their expertise and providing me with helpful comments. My warmest thanks go to my family and friends for their love and support. iv Preface This dissertation is the result of my own work and includes nothing which is the outcome of work done in collaboration except as declared in the Preface and specified in the text. This dissertation is not substantially the same as any that I have submitted, or, is being concurrently submitted for a degree or diploma or other qualification at the University of Cambridge or any other University or similar institution except as declared in the Preface and specified in the text. I further state that no substantial part of my dissertation has already been submitted, or, is being concurrently submitted for any such degree, diploma or other qualification at the University of Cambridge or any other University or similar institution except as declared in the Preface and specified in the text. This dissertation does not exceed 80,000 words. v Introduction Padre. Io ho fatto, come forse avrete inteso, una donazione generale ai miei figli e vostri fratelli all’oggetto di conservare in famiglia l’integrità del mio patrimonio; ma nel far questo ho pensato anche a voi, avendo fissato, oltre la dote già stabilita e pagatavi da alcuni anni, di assegnarvi altri mille scudi di Milano. Vorrei però che ne parlaste anche a vostro marito, e che vi disponeste a farmi un’ampia e generale liberazione. Figlia. Sarà assai difficile, che mio marito si determini a questo; e se ho da dirvi il vero, non ne sono nemmen io persuasa, perché il Codice presente mi ritiene eguale ai fratelli, e tutto al più vi è permesso esser liberale con essi di una quarta parte del vostro patrimonio. (La donna legale ossia i diritti di natura richiamati dal Codice napoleone. Dialogo (Brescia: Bettoni, 1806), pp. 3-4) The protagonists of this short passage from La donna legale ossia i diritti di natura richiamati dal Codice napoleone. Dialogo, published anonymously in 1806, are a father and his daughter. The latter conveys an image of women that contradicts most eighteenth- and nineteenth-century commonplaces: she knows the law, does not consider men superior to women, and does not accept different treatment from her brothers. She responds to her father with a certain degree of deference, but she does not stand in the awe of him, and asks for her rights to be recognised. The father, by contrast, perfectly matches the patriarchal stereotype: he is the head of the family, and wants to preserve his patrimony ‘in famiglia’ by excluding his daughter from his inheritance. He informs her of his decision, considers himself to be magnanimous with the dowry he assigned her, and urges her to talk to her husband, the head of her new household. There is something even more striking in the father’s words: he does not consider his daughter as part of the famiglia. Through marriage, she would give birth to children bearing the name of another famiglia, and should not be entitled to share the wealth of her family of origin.