The boundaries of unitarian Italy : gender and class between personal and public sources. Four intellectual couples compared

Abstract

The article focuses on the process of Italy’s unification from the particular perspective of gender and social boundaries. The period chosen is the ‘long nineteenth century’, before and after the unification of Italy, when many questions were raised about the country’s political and social development. Exploring the debate from the point of view of the history of sentiments and emotions, I move from the personal to the social and political spheres. In particular, I focus on four intellectual couples who discussed gender issues, as well as their political perspectives on citizenship and social responsibilities. The noble couple, Gianna Maffei and Ercole Trotti Mosti, who at the beginning of the nineteenth century encountered the Risorgimento process, were culturally immersed in the relationship between the Risorgimento and Romanticism and expressed a new political vision of human relationships. Their views are compared with those of Grazia Mancini and Augusto Pierantoni, who lived through the Risorgimento and the period of post- Unification Italy, and articulated the idea of the new nation in terms of rigid gender and class boundaries. In opposition to this perspective, Ersilia Bronzini and Luigi Majno developed a socialist and feminist perspective concerning the social and political boundaries of the State. At the end of the century, Angiolo Orvieto and Laura Cantoni responded to their Jewish heritage by again connecting Romanticism to the love for Italy. In this case, the discussion on class and gender roles integrated with the new meanings attributed to the nation at the beginning of the twentieth century, while the terms of political discussion changed rapidly to include the Great War and early Fascism.