Amazons and fallen women: transgressive female behaviour in the novels of Giuseppe Garibaldi

Abstract

This article draws attention to the understudied literary career of one of Italy's most famous patriots, Giuseppe Garibaldi. From 1868 to 1874, Garibaldi wrote and published three novels: Clelia (1870), Cantoni (1870), and I Mille (1874). Scholars have recognised the works as evidence of Garibaldi's anticlericalism and dissatisfaction with Italy's political moderatism, but have not yet sufficiently shown how the novels reveal the influence of Garibaldi's involvement with the female emancipation movement and his personal relationships with unconventional women. While Garibaldi is less well-known for his feminism than other men of the left, like Giuseppe Mazzini, his fictional heroines celebrate female physical strength and violence, offer women a means of participating in the nation outside the home, and challenge the predominant sexual double standard. While acknowledging that Garibaldi often conformed to prevailing patriarchal literary conventions, this article argues that his novels simultaneously offer support for the values of female emancipation.