Fatte per essere madri? Il rifiuto della maternitá nella letteratura femminile in Italia fra Otto e Novecento

Abstract

The rebellion against the so-called maternal instinct is one of the last taboos of women’s studies and, in a certain sense, of feminist criticism. While the idea of maternity —and its iconography— has characterized Italian arts and letters for centuries, the argument against the widely accepted idea that all women were meant to be mothers remains a delicate and controversial theme and few are the scholarly studies in this topic. My article focuses on this potentially contentious subject in the works of several Italian women writers who operated between the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century. Anna Franchi, Marchesa Colombi, Mantea, Annie Vivanti are among the few dissenting figures who (more or less) openly disputed the idea of motherhood as the pinnacle of an ideal feminine perfection