UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Women Writers and Italian Fascism: Figures of Female Resistance in Paola Masino, Paola Drigo, and Milena Milani A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Italian by Carmen Marie Gomez 2013 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Women Writers and Italian Fascism: Figures of Female Resistance in Paola Masino, Paola Drigo, and Milena Milani by Carmen Marie Gomez Doctor of Philosophy in Italian University of California, Los Angeles, 2013 Professor Lucia Re, Chair This dissertation brings into focus a vital body of women’s writing about fascism in order to highlight the articulation of a literary discourse that undermines fascist depictions of femininity. I provide evidence of the emergence of a distinctly Italian approach to feminist creative and theoretical practices, founded in critical interpretations of sexual difference. I consider the work of three authors who have yet to be fully acknowledged in the Italian literary panorama: Paola Masino (1908-1989), Paola Drigo (1876-1938), and Milena Milani (1917- present). My analysis focuses on the stylistic, thematic, and structural elements that Masino, Drigo, and Milani employ to engage with and re-imagine normative fascist narratives of femininity and womanhood. The scope of the project is multi-faceted: I attempt to 1) recuperate ii these particular authors who have not yet been fully recognized by Italian literary scholarship; 2) highlight their critical engagement with and resistance to fascist constructions of woman; 3) recapitulate and illustrate through my analyses fascism’s use of rhetorical strategies intended to streamline and contain femininity by way of patriarchal conceptualizations of gender and the ‘naturalization’ of concepts meant to relegate women to a subservient role; 4) and finally, to suggest that feminist literary critics learn from the ‘Italian approach’ found in the works of innovative theorists such as Adriana Cavarero and Teresa de Lauretis. These Italian scholars anticipated the ‘new’ direction of the kind of feminist literary scholarship practiced by Rita Felski and others as a dialogical practice that creates positive aesthetic value through the highlighting of textual tensions, polyvalent forms, and constructive figures of resistance. The authors studied in this dissertation re-imagine traditionally female realms and identities with new and empowering energies. Masino, Drigo, and Milani not only utilize narrative strategies to disrupt patriarchal ideologies and gendered narrative identities but additionally create new figures that redirect women’s representations. Milani’s novel, La ragazza di nome Giulio, written in the early 1960s, provides a retrospective account of women’s experience of Italian fascism, building upon the discourses of her predecessors, Masino and Drigo, in order to create a new female textual imaginary and a feminist narrative voice. Milani’s novel provides a fractured yet compelling image of a female narrative self that illustrates simultaneously women’s repression by and resistance to a limited patriarchal imaginary. Milani’s novel constitutes a link between the cultural resistance by female writers such as Masino and Drigo to women’s cultural and political oppression during the fascist era, the wartime and postwar letteratura partigiana and memorialistica resistenziale authored by women such as Ada Gobetti, and the narrative acts of iii resistance that would continue to shape women’s narratives in the period of the elaboration of Italian feminist thought and practice in the 1970s. iv The dissertation of Carmen Marie Gomez is approved. Claudio Fogu Thomas Harrison Lucia Re, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2013 v TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION .....................................................................................................1 CHAPTER 1............................................................................................................35 The Myth of the Mother in Paola Masino's Monte Ignoso CHAPTER 2............................................................................................................99 “Queste donne (buone)”: Femininity and Rurality in Paola Drigo’s Maria Zef CHAPTER 3..........................................................................................................154 Toward a Feminist Narrative Voice: Milena Milani’s La ragazza di nome Giulio CONCLUSION .....................................................................................................198 Bibliography..........................................................................................................209 vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would first like to acknowledge Professor Lucia Re, who opened my eyes to an incredibly valuable collection of literature by Italian women. I am very thankful for her patience, support, and guidance throughout my coursework, during my exams, and in the process of completing the dissertation. Her constant mentorship has inspired and shaped my work as a literary scholar and feminist. Special thanks goes to Professor Thomas Harrison for his encouragement in moments of difficulty. Thank you to Professor Claudio Fogu, for patiently reading and providing extensive comments to this dissertation. To my colleagues and friends in the Italian Department: thank you for being my companions throughout this process. I would like to thank especially Sarah Carey, for being an extraordinary mentor and friend; Claire Lavagnino and Melina Madrigal, for providing me with endless love and support; and Christopher White for his camaraderie and, at times, commiseration. My special gratitude goes to Emily Davidson for almost single-handedly reviving my spirit and for inspiring me to trudge through the daily writing practice. Together we have dispelled the myth of the solitary scholar. Thank you to my family: for everything, always. To my mother, Diana, who lives by example and, like her powerful namesake Artemis, has shown me that there is no limit to women’s potential. Thank you to my father, Robert, who borrowed fifty dollars to pay his college tuition—the first contribution to what would become a lifetime investment—and initiated a legacy of education, community involvement, and social responsibility. His support has made every goal within reach. To my brothers, Antonio and Rafael, and my sister, Felice, for paving the way. And finally, my infinite gratitude goes to Randy Schwartz for remembering to believe in me when I had forgotten to believe in myself. vii VITA EDUCATION June 2013 PhD in Italian, University of California, Los Angeles 2008 M.A. in Italian, University of California, Los Angeles 2003 B.S. International Business and Legal Studies, University of San Francisco HONORS AND AWARDS UCLA Dissertation Year Fellowship (2010-2011) UCLA Graduate Research Mentorship (2009-2010) Cecchetti Graduate Research Award (2010) UCLA Center for European and Eurasian Studies Pre-Dissertation Fellowship (2009) UCLA Graduate Summer Research Mentorship (2009) UCLA Graduate Summer Research Mentorship (2008) TEACHING EXPERIENCE 2009 Guest Lecturer Fiat Lux Freshman Seminar University of California, Los Angeles Los Angeles, California 2006-2009 Teaching Associate/Instructor Italian Levels 1-5 Department of Italian University of California, Los Angeles Los Angeles, California 2007-2008 Teaching Associate/Instructor Accelerated Advanced Italian and Conversation UCLA Study Abroad Program Florence, Italy Teaching Associate “Language, Meaning, and the Making of Poetry” Honors Collegium, University of California, Los Angeles Los Angeles, California PUBLICATIONS “Gender, Science, and the Modern Woman: Futurism’s Strange Concoctions of Femininity,” Carte Italiane 2.6 (2010). “Milena Milani’s La ragazza di nome Giulio: A Forgotten Feminist Novel.” MLN 125.1 (2010). Review of Re-writing the Journey in Contemporary Italian Literature, Figures of Subjectivity in Progress by Cinzia Sartini-Blum MLN 124.5 (2009). Contributor, BiGLI (Bibliografia generale della lingua e della letteratura italiana). Rome: Salerno, 2009. viii CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS February 2012 Scripps College, California Interdisciplinary Consortium of Italian Studies, “La vita nella strada: Suburban Spectacle and Familial Fictions in Paola Masino’s Periferia” April 2010 UCLA, International Institute and the Postcolonial Theory and Literature Colloquium, “Islands of Otherness: Representations of Sardinia in the Work of Grazia Deledda.” April 2010 University of Wisconsin-Madison, GAFIS Symposium, “Scientific Subjugation and the Deformation of the ‘Feminine’ in Italian Futurism” October 2009 UCLA, Graduate Student Conference, “La pasta passatista e il pasto futurista: Food, Gender, and Feminine Identities in Futurist and Fascist Italy” May 2009 Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, California. Presenter: “Futurism + 100” ix INTRODUCTION Beginning in the 1980s, Italian literary and cultural studies witnessed an influx of valid contributions on women writers, thanks primarily to the efforts of literature scholars (most of them women themselves) dedicated to recuperating this all but forgotten literature.1 Yet much work is yet to be done in defense of feminist critical readings of Italian texts. Despite the nearly forty years separating current research from the radical feminism of the 1970s, few literary critics embrace feminist interpretations of narrative. Feminists, however, have tackled the issue in their critical work of the last