La scrittura come avvio alla conquista della cittadinanza femminile nell’Italia di un ‘lungo Ottocento’

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article offers an analysis of women’s writing as a way to express their sense of self in the wider context of the path towards emancipation. The Ottocento has been often described as a century dominated by an ever-growing emphasis on women’s maternal function, thus restricting them to the domestic sphere and reinforcing the centuries-old division of the public and private spheres as two domains pertaining to men and women respectively. In the nation-building effort of post-Unification Italy, however, Italian women began to carve out roles beyond the home and became more and more involved in the education of new generations of Italians; in this early phase of transition towards female emancipation, writing played a key role. Several texts dealt with the working conditions and status of women, testifying to a clear demand for inclusion. Particularly from the second half of the nineteenth century onwards, women began to express their thoughts in new ways which can be read as new forms of education into an ever-widening sense of citizenship.