The Transformation of Motherhood: From a Neglected Mother to The Mother of a Whole Nation

Abstract

The aim of this article is to explore how the perception of Italian women and their different roles — especially that of a mother — changed from ancient times to the Risorgimento period. In this context, the article seeks in particular to clarify the role played by the image of the Italian mother in forming a unified and common national identity during the Risorgimento. It illustrates how, from this point in time, women started to play a new role in society — a role which until then history had prevented them from enjoying. In an Italy which before 1861 was heavily split and divided into areas of different foreign domination, women, and mothers in particular, began to be used to create, in the minds of the ‘new Italian citizens’, a new unifying symbol that would serve as a measure to keep the nation together. What emerged was a new image of women, and especially of Italian mothers, that was imbued with religious and romantic symbolism. This did not exactly mean emancipation for women — often, in fact, these visions of mothers were full of sexist images — but it nevertheless helped all Italian women to come in from the shadows to which they had been relegated historically and culturally.