Affidamento and (Pop)-Feminism: Advocating for Women’s Rights in The Handmaid’s Tale and Luna Nera

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Handmaid’s Tale ([1985] 2017), a must-read feminist dystopian novel by Canadian author Margaret Atwood, and Luna Nera [Black Moon] (2019), a recent historical-fantasy novel by Italian writer Tiziana Triana, present narratives that encourage their readers to question traditional models of femininity. Set in different times, yet in settings that are in many ways similar, both narratives describe societies where women are perceived as individuals to be controlled and at the same time where sisterhood helps them to succeed. Following the rise of right-wing governments and ideologies on both sides of the Atlantic and the backlash of the patriarchy against women’s hard-won rights and freedoms, Atwood’s twentieth-century masterpiece has regained visibility thanks to its on-screen adaptation as a TV series. Similarly, Triana’s Luna Nera has also recently been adapted as a Netflix original TV series directed by Francesca Comencini, Paola Randi and Susanna Nicchiarelli, thus revealing the neglected history of witches in seventeenth-century central Italy to global viewers. Through some fictional examples as a starting point for the discussion, this article will reflect on the following questions: at a time when women’s rights, particularly reproductive rights, are under threat, what can novels and TV series inspired by them tell us about contemporary gender concerns? How can symbolic motherhood and sisterhood help women in these challenging scenarios to escape patriarchal control? And how, in turn, might their actions influence the audience? Building on feminist discourses on the practice of affidamento [entrustment], I will discuss a series of sociocultural issues relevant to contemporary women, with particular attention to reproductive rights, represented in the novels and their TV series adaptation in the context of the current political debates on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond.