Book Description

Challenges assumptions about Italian women writers under fascism. In fascist Italy between the wars, a woman was generally an exemplary wife and mother or else. The "or else", mostly forgotten or overlooked in accounts of femininity under fascism, is what concerns Robin Pickering-Iazzi. Reading works by women of the period, Pickering-Iazzi shows how they refuted stereotypes that were imposed on them by the fascist regime and continue to be accepted and perpetuated into our day. The writers Pickering-Iazzi considers comprise both the popular and the critically acclaimed, including the illustrious Grazia Deledda (winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1926), Ada Negri, Sibilla Aleramo, Alba De Cespedes, Paola Drigo, Maria Goretti, and Antonia Pozzi. She situates their work -- short stories, romance novels, autobiographies, neorealist novels, poetry, and avant-garde writings -- not only within the context of fascist discourse but also within that of intellectuals and artists who did not keep to the fascist line. In each case, Pickering-Iazzi examines specific issues of gender and genre -- notions of women and the nation, rural life, the metropolis, technology, consumer culture, and modern forms of femininity and masculinity.