From Mater Dolorosa to Mater Degenerata: Sacrifice and Subversion in Deledda’s Cenere and Duse’s Film

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this article, I explore the presence of positivist and proto-Eugenic discourses in Grazia Deledda’s novel Cenere (1904) and the eponymous film adaptation by Febo Mari and Eleonora Duse, Cenere (1916). I introduce the term ‘mater degenerata’ as a trope that shows a direct influence of Lombrosian ideas on Italian literature and early Italian cinema. I argue that both authors are obsessed with the mother’s body, and their work reflects a diffused anxiety in Italian culture regarding unfit mothers. The essay has two main parts. In the first part, I introduce the ‘mater degenerata’ trope. In the second part, I offer a comparative analysis of Grazia Deledda’s novel and Febo Mari and Eleonora Duse’s film and highlight how Lombrosian positivist imageries were used in early twentieth-century Italian literature and cinema to depict the degenerate mother and to express social concerns regarding motherhood, reproduction, and national identity in liberal Italy.