Abstract
Along with the general problematization of gender issues in nation building seen in cultural and historical studies, the family and the role played by women in the making of the nation have appeared with increasing frequency on the agenda of Risorgimento historians in the past decade.1 The broader base of case studies on the family cultures of patriotic milieus and of female behaviours has not put an end to interpretive differences, and historians’ opinions still differ, especially with regard to the new opportunities for action that opened up for women of varying social groups, and the possible links between patriotism and the first attempts at female emancipation. These differences of interpretation are most evident among feminist historians and have become the subject of wider debate as to what the years of the Risorgimento left unfinished in the history of Italy in terms of female liberty, equality and citizenship.2
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Notes
For an overview of the historiography see L. Riall, Risorgimento. The History of Italy from Risorgimento to Nation-State (London, 2009). On relational networks and female mobilisation in particular, as expressed through the creation of newspapers and publications of various kinds, see N. M. Filippini (ed.), Donne sulla scena pubblica. Società e politica in Veneto tra Sette e Ottocento (Milan, 2009), and L. Guidi, ‘Donne e uomini del Sud sulle vie dell’esilio. 1848–60’ in A. M. Banti and P. Ginsborg (eds), Il Risorgimento. Storia d’Italia, Annali 22 (Turin, 2007), 225–252, both of which summarise the results of different research approaches. Much information can also be gleaned from the various biographical dictionaries, from A. G. Tedeschi and N. Torcellan (eds), Donna lombarda 1860–1945 (Milan, 1992), already a classic of its kind, to the more recent M. Fiume (ed.), Siciliane. Dizionario biografico (Siracusa, 2006).
See I. Botteri, Galateo e galatei. La creanza e l’istituzione della società nella trattatistica tra antico regime e stato liberale (Rome, 1999).
In the ancien régime primacy is attributed to the role of the wife rather than the mother. There is a rich literature dating back to the medieval period on behavioural roles for wives, at least in Italy and France, but texts only begin to address the relationship between mother and child and take an interest in maternal behaviour from the middle of the eighteenth century. See M. D’Amelia, ‘La presenza delle madri nella Italia medievale e moderna’, in idem., Storia della maternità (Bari, 1997), 4–52.
According to Alberto Mario Banti, three different versions of the mother figure were present in national patriotic narratives: ‘the brave mother who encourages her children to fight against their countries’ enemies; the weak mother who weeps for her departing children; and the suffering mother, who mourns the death of her children’. More than the mothers, it was the young women who ‘performed a strategic narrative function’, in the sense of actually moving the plot forward: see A. M. Banti, ‘Discorso nazional-patriottico e ruoli di genere (Europa, secc.XVIII–XIX)’ in G. Calvi (ed.), Innesti: Donne e genere nella storia sociale (Rome, 2004), 122–127.
Alberto Mario Banti insists particularly on the reception and internalisation of the Risorgimento ‘canon’: see A. M. Banti, La nazione del Risorgimento. Parentela, santità e onore all’origine dell’Italia unita (Turin, 2000), especially 190–196.
S. Patriarca, ‘Indolence and Regeneration: Tropes and Tensions of Risorgimento Patriotism’, The American Historical Review, 110, 2 (2005), 380–408, and R. Bizzocchi, Cicisbei. Morale privata e identità nazionale in Italia (Rome-Bari, 2008).
M. L. Lepscky Mueller, La famiglia di Daniele Manin (Venice, 2005), 77–91.
Ibid., 90–91. Lepscky Mueller makes a direct comparison between the concerns and educational proposals formulated by Daniele Manin and Pietro Verri on pp. 100–103; cf. P. Verri, ‘Ricordi a mia figlia’, in G. Barbarisi (ed.), Manoscritto per Teresa (Milan, 2002 edn), 196.
On Franceschi Ferrucci’s moderatism, see, G. De Donato, ‘Donna e società nella cultura moderata del primo Ottocento’, in La parabola della donna nella letteratura italiana dell’Ottocento (Bari, 1983), 11–96; and more generally, cf. S. Soldani, ‘Prima della Repubblica. Le Italiane e l’avventura della cittadinanza’, in La democrazia incompiuta, 41–90, 59–60.
Cf. M. T. Mori, ‘Le poetesse del Risorgimento tra formazione letteraria e controllo morale’, Passato e presente 75 (2008), 33–56.
See R. Pesman, ‘Mazzini in esilio e le inglesi’, in I. Porciani (ed.) Famiglia e nazione nel lungo Ottocento Italiano. Modelli, strategie, reti di relazione (Rome, 2006), 55–82.
M. D’Amelia, La Mamma (Bologna, 2005).
On Giovanni and Agostino Ruffini and their relationships with their mother, see the indispensable A. Codignola, I fratelli Ruffini. Lettere di Giovanni e Agostino alla madre dall’esilio francese e svizzero (1833–36), 2 vols (Genoa, 1925–31), and I. Cremona Cozzolino, ‘La donna nella vita di Giovanni Ruffini’, in Giovanni Ruffini e i suoi tempi. Studi e ricerche (Genoa, 1931), 335–362 in particular.
In the collected writings and letters of Olimpia Savio published in 1911 which serve as her memoirs, we find numerous biographical portraits of the various members of the Savoy dynasty; cf. R. Ricci, Memorie della baronessa Olimpia Savio, 2 vols (Milan, 1911).
Ibid, II. 162.
Ibid., letter to Emilio, 30 May 1859 (I. 235).
Ibid., letter to Emilio, 16 May 1859, I. 224. On the death and funerals of Alfredo and Emilo Savio as an example of the ritual forms of celebration of patriotic death after 1848, cf. Banti, La nazione del Risorgimento, 176–177.
See ‘L’Italia ai suoi figli’, in M. Gavelli, O. Sangiorgi and F. Tarozzi (eds), Un giorno nella storia di Bologna. 8 agosto 1848. Miti e rappresentazioni di un evento inaspettato (Florence, 1998), 57; also doc. no. 38 in A. M. Banti, Il Risorgimento italiano (Rome-Bari, 2004), 211–212.
Ibid.
See G. Prati, Poesie varie, ed. O. Malagodi (Bari, 1929), 101.
E. F. Fusinato, Scritti letterari raccolti e ordinati, ed. by G. Ghivizzani (Milan, 1883); quoted in Filippini, ‘Donne sulla scena pubblica’, 128. On Erminia Fuà Fusinato cf. Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, L. 653–654.
A. Russo, ‘Nel desiderio delle tue care nuove’. Scritture private e relazioni di genere nell’Ottocento Risorgimentale (Milan, 2006), 35–36; biographical information on the life of Luisa Granito and her formative influence is to be found on pp. 24–35 in particular. On Giuseppe Ricciardi, exiled for more than twenty years from 1836 to 1860 and then a left-wing deputy following Unification, cf. M. Petrusewicz, ‘Giuseppe Ricciardi, ribelle, romantico europeo’, in Stato e società nel Regno delle due Sicilie alla vigilia del 1848. Personaggi e problemi, ed. by R. De Lorenzo, special issue of Archivio storico per le provincie napoletane (Naples, 1999), 235–261.
G. Ricciardi, Memorie autografe di un ribelle (Milan, 1873), 134, quoted in Russo, ‘Nel desiderio delle tue care nuove’, 35–36.
F. Mazzonis, ‘Padri e figli negli anni del Risorgimento. I destini incrociati dei Pianciani e dei Campello’, in F. Mazzonis (ed.), Percorsi e modelli familiari in Italia tra’700 e’900 (Rome, 1997), 41–133.
See ‘Ai giovani’, preface by Giuseppe Mazzini to Scritti di Goffredo Mameli (Genoa, 1850) and Goffredo Mameli. La vita e gli scritti, ed. Arturo Codignola, 2 vols. (Venice, 1927), II. 401–405, in which various of the letters written by Mameli to his mother between 1847 and 1848 are published.
Letter dated 26 March 1859, in C. D’Azeglio, Lettere al figlio (1829–1862), ed. D. Maldini Chiarito, 2 vols (Rome, 1996), I. 1669.
In 1847–1848, many of Costanza D’Azeglio’s letters dwell on her husband Roberto’s public involvement and the consensus he obtained. On the figure and activity of Roberto D’Azeglio, see Lettere al figlio (1829–1862): ‘Prefazione’, 13–17, and N. Nada, Roberto D’Azeglio 1790–1846, 2 vols (Rome, 1965).
Ricci, Memorie della baronessa Olimpia Savio, I. 74, quoted by D. Maldini Chiarito in ‘Due salotti del Risorgimento’ in M. L. Betri and E. Brambilla (eds), Salotti e ruolo femminile in Italia tra fine Seicento e primo Novecento (Venice, 2004), 285–310. She concentrates on Olimpia Savio’s salon and its dévoués, comparing it with that of Clara Maffei.
M. Magni, Adelaide Cairoli (Turin, 1943), letter dated 3 September 1860, 184.
I. Nievo, Tutte le opere ed. M. Gorra, 4 (Milan, 1981), 672. On Adelaide Cairoli, see D’Amelia, La mamma, 74–82.
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d’Amelia, M. (2012). Between Two Eras: Challenges Facing Women in the Risorgimento. In: Patriarca, S., Riall, L. (eds) The Risorgimento Revisited. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230362758_7
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