Woman as Outlaw: Grazia Deledda and the Politics of Gender Susan Briziarelli Traditional criticism has leaned toward categorizing Grazia Deledda’s writing as regionalist, and with such a gesture has closed the book on her: the danger inherent in such labelling is the discouraging of further investigation, and the compartmentalization and dismissal of her work. Popular gauges as well as partial culprits of the oversimplification of Grazia Deledda, are the numerous Storie della letteratura that abound on library shelves and whose writers, because of space limitations, engage in an often detrimental exercise in critical synthesis. 1 Guglielmino’s 1975 edition of Guida al novecento for example, praises . . . la sua lunga e paziente disciplina che dalle prime opere non esenti dai toni deteriori del romanzo d’appendice l’ha portata con un costante lavoro di scavo . . . ad un’arte che frequentemente ha saputo mediare la lezione della tradizione nostrana con una dimensione europea. 2 A recently renewed interest in Deledda has led to some more probing analyses which have contributed to extricating her from the stagnating categorization of her work. In a recent article Ada Testaferri notes that Dopo aver tentato di spiegare l’opera della Deledda ricorrendo inutilmente ai vari ‘ismi’ del momento, la critica è ormai concorde nel riconoscere [End Page 20] come caratteristica saliente della scrittrice sarda, la sua incapacità di aderire completamente ad uno dei movimenti letterario-culturali del tempo. 3 One aspect that has not been sufficiently investigated, and which I propose to address in this essay, is that of gender in Deledda’s later writing. What makes this issue particularly interesting is that Deledda did not actively participate in the growing feminist movement of the period; nonetheless the insistence on, and I would say anxiety regarding gender identity in her female protagonists, belies the author’s more than passive awareness of feminist issues. 4 Set against a backdrop of one of the more, if not the most traditional Italian community, Deledda’s female protagonists offer an unusual vision of the struggle between insular tradition and the changes occurring in gender history during the early twentieth century. My purpose in the pages that follow is to examine Grazia Deledda’s writing as a writing inscribed by the societal and class-determined circumstances that inform her politics of gender. Although a number of Deledda’s works lend themselves to such a reading, in the present analysis I will look principally at two of her later texts: La chiesa della solitudine and Cosima. The common denominator for these two works is the presence of a strong female protagonist who in some significant manner rebels against her community. Deledda gives to each a specific mark of difference, a “scarlet letter” that distinguishes her from more traditional Sardinian women. With Maria Concezione, the protagonist of La chiesa della solitudine, Deledda introduces a woman dealing with self-induced isolation and the fear that occur as a consequence of a serious illness. 5 Her mark of ‘difference’ is the mutilation of her body caused by a mastectomy, a secret she vows never to disclose. Maria Concezione’s consequent rejection of various suitors further marks her as an outcast in the eyes of a judgmental and suspicious community for whom marriage is an obligation she must fulfill. As the voice of community authority, her priest tells her that “[l]a donna è fatta [End Page 21] per sposarsi, per crearsi una famiglia, compiere il proprio ciclo” (94). Cosima, published after the author’s death in 1936, is an autobiographical work through which Deledda records the adversity and the struggle that she must face in order to become a writer, and to leave her home town of Nuoro for the city, and ultimately for the mainland. What sets Cosima apart from her peers within the community is her ‘non-feminine’ behavior displayed through her career ambition and her dedication, even as a child, to books. One of the mechanisms that informs both texts is the presence of a politics of gender, albeit an unarticulated one, that the author grounds in a number of assumptions. The first premise around which this ideology is set into motion is the acceptance of woman as ‘other,’ socially and culturally distinguished...
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Jun 1, 2000
Peter J Fuller 
Open Access