Narrativizing women's experiences in late nineteenth-century Italy through domestic fiction

Abstract

Drawing upon the domestic fiction by Italian women writers of the late nineteenth-century, in this article I argue that we can use this as evidence of history as a cultural undertaking. Through a reading of a selection of popular novels and short stories intended for a female readership, I demonstrate how domestic fiction provides crucial textual evidence for us to rediscover and reinterpret the (hi)story of women's sentiments and experiences in late nineteenth-century Italy. In so doing, I align the role of the narrator with that of the historian to conceive of history as representation; that is, not as fictional, but as fictive.