Mutiny in the House: Domestic Rebellion in Fausta Cialente’s Natalia

Abstract

The cult of domesticity positions women into a state of subservience while reinforcing gendered roles. The ideology was propagated in post-Unification Italy by Catholic doctrine as well as Fascist propaganda and practices that consigned women to the roles of wives and mothers. The physical site of the cult of domesticity was the home where traditional values were honored and upheld. In Fausta Cialente’s novel Natalia—originally published in 1930 and censored by the Fascist regime, then reissued in 1982—the home becomes a site of rebellion and resistance, which challenges ideology that limits female autonomy. In Natalia, a verdant house in the country is the scene of illicit sexual activity between the female protagonist and a young woman, and an ancestral home becomes the threatening locus of the protagonist’s marriage, as well as the setting of her failed attempt at motherhood. Throughout the text, the explicit connection between physical space—the home—and female autonomy, acts as a critique of female oppression and pervasive societal expectations.