Gender and Genre in Italian Feminist Literature in the Seventies Author(s): Carol Lazzaro-Weis Reviewed work(s): Source: Italica,

Vol. 65, No. 4, Women's Voices (Winter, 1988), pp. 293-307 Published by: American Association of Teachers of Italian Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/479008 . Accessed: 13/02/2013 05:30
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Gender and Genre in Italian Feminist Literature in the Seventies

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beenthe domainof male criticswho used it theoryhas traditionally to establisha primarily male literarycanon,and it could easily be

manypersuasions generally regard concept Feminist of genrewith suspicion,if not downright contempt.First,genre

criticsof

the

construed as a facile means to construct and maintain unequal social and literary hierarchies.' Second, although rigid theories of generic classification have been, in Fredric Jameson's terms, "thoroughly discredited by modem literary theory and practice" (105), attempts to historicize and temporalize generic categories, including his own, have made no serious attempt to incorporate women's writings. While not specifically addressingthe shortcomings of contemporary genre theory in dealing with women's writing, Adena Rosmarin identifies a basic contradictionbetween the beliefs of genre critics and the nature of genre criticism itself. No matter how many modern critics have redefinedgenre, she argues,they still fall into the trap of defining genre as a preexisting entity-a trapthat betrays the vestiges of the traditional belief in the possibility of representation.2Generic theory, Rosmarin states, is necessarily at odds with representation, which only tolerates an inductive movement, while generic criticism is ineluctably deductive, always moving from the general to the particular (33). Rosmarin is not arguing that genre theory is useless. Rather, she maintains that critics should openly concede the necessarily pragmatic and rhetorical nature of generic criticism instead of trying to ground it in an ultimately verifiable fact or horizon. Genres, she states, are designed to serve the explanatory purpose of critical thought, not the other way around(25).Rosmarinarguesfor what she terms an "expressly deductive genre criticism," one which simultaneously makes the readeraware of its premises and its explanatory power. She describesher approachas both deconstructive and readercentered, since the job of the generic critic is to act rhetorically and
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pragmatically, that is, to exploit the invented and rhetorical nature of generic schemes and to uncover how the text does the same.3 This line of argumentproves extremely useful when we examine both the form and function of several Italian feminist writings of the seventies which, aside from their revolutionary claims, demonstrate marked generic affinities. Armanda Guiducci's Due donne da buttare: una donna di buona famiglia e una ex-prostituta confessano il fallimento della loro famiglia (1976), while expressing radical feminist ideas, often in characterisitically contemporary vulgar language, is still very much a confessional piece, and the author defines it as such. Dacia Maraini's published narrative of a female thief, Memorie di una ladra (1972), bears a distinct resemblance to the picaresque on several counts;4 and her Donna in Guerra (1976), besides being a quest narrative, includes many elements of fantasy and illusion normally associatedwith the romance genre.What,then, is the connection between these works and genre, andhow should we explore affinities with their respective generic traditions? When speaking of these and other feminist novels of the early to thid-seventies, critics like Anna Nozzoli emphasize their radical content and assume a neutrality of form (147-70). Certainly, the link between ideological debates on feminism and recent feminist literature cannot be denied. Furthermore,in contrast to the selfcontained structures of verbal play that characterizedmuch avantgarde prose of the sixties, these narratives indeed appeared more "traditional,"at least on a formal level. Since they were intended to disseminate information concerning women's lives, a concern to representsomething, to "mirrorreality"remains fundamental. Their language as well was purposely straightforwardand non-literary. Nozzoli terms it a kind of "degr6zero stilistico."5 Their nemesis, as Nozzoli describes it, was the "privatizzazione" of the femine role (152).Despite the many political andjuridicalvictories of the feminist movement, women were still viewed as the affective center of the household when affective values were undergoing constant devaluation in a capitalist economy. The popular slogan of neofeminists, "the personal is political," expressed the belief that political and personal realms were inseparable: the relegation of women to private domains that society consideredunproductive was a political action, the roots and ramifications of which feminist writers strove to define, examine, and expose. Nonetheless, despite certain pragmatic goals which demanded a
more representational to portray realistically perceptions of these progress made on the writing style, these writers did not simply aim women's problems. They also sought to alter difficulties. Disillusioned by the fact that political front could be annulled by cultural

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prejudices,neofeminists focused on the changing of mentalities as a means of freeing women from the many inherited perceptions of themselves and their role in society. Highly polemical discussions of the cultural and religious roots of women's oppression, of their treatment as objects of consumption in capitalist society, prevailed in the many consciousness-raising groups formed around 1968 and which continued to be organized into the late seventies.6 Nozzoli views the first-person narrativetechnique in feminist writings in the seventies as a reflection of this commitment to self-analysis (163). However, in the texts to be examined here, form also plays a role in the process of unmasking basic assumptions concerning the roles of women and of promoting recognition of these roles as social constructions.7 In Due donne da buttare, Memorie di una ladra, and Donna in Guerra, the authors exploit generic constraints to give impetus to their portrayalof how women's privatelives arestructured by external, patriarchal values and demands, many of which the narrators have internalized. In all of these texts the inductive observations andreasoningsof the narratorsboth criticize society and challenge generic demands.Yet their ultimate cooperationwith such constraints demonstrates the impossibility of separating personal from political oppression. Genre becomes the "deductive," explanatorylaw which will be both obeyed and refuted, but above all exposed for what it is. Guiducci's confessions deconstruct the patriarchaland generic myth, upheld by the confessional form, of the existence of a strong, independent self-image unsoiled by society; Maraini's picara, Teresa, must by definition cooperate with the society that has formed her. Donna in Guerra participates in the romance form to expose the political base of theories of genderderived from biological or ontological premises and to demonstrate the difficulties inherent in breaking traditional patterns of behavior. The confessional genre has dominated much women's writing, although it has rarely,if ever, depicted the successful liberation of the female writer. ElisabettaRasy attributesthe preferenceof women for confessional and other private genres to tradition: women's active appearanceon the literary scene was linked, as in her example, the Princesse de Cleve, to the promise to give the real story behind the scenes, the truth about the mysterious and silent feminine domain (37-40). Romanticism's emphasis on nostalgia and subjectivism helped keep women writers in private genres such as the diary and the memoir. Women's personal narratives, including their autobiographies,have been criticized for certain formal deviations
from male confessions and autobiographies, such as, for example, their disconnected, fragmentary, and cyclical nature, their concentration on personal and marginal details, and their failure to

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develop the writer'srelationship to establishment history.8However, despite such deviations, these writings are still characterizedby the same search for self-understandingand self-possession found in male autobiographies.According to Claudine Hermann, this search for a private, autonomous self is the lot to which women have been confined historically for lack of any self-acquired,social identity (77). However, Janet Gunn, in her phenomenological approach to autobiography,argues convincingly that the self as an absolute and ineffable essence outside of and apartfrom society is itself a generic construct of classical autobiographicaltheory, a construct based on the self's privileged position in the Cartesian cogito (7-8).9 Gunn, herself, demonstrates only how male autobiographical writings challenge rigid, fallacious generic restraints. However, the fact that women's attempts to do so are different from men's and are interpreted differently helps expose the extent to which women conform to ratherthan challenge patriarchalassumptions when they attempt to define an independent,unified self. In a confessional mode this paradox is further complicated by the generically determined need to prove innocence. Both confessions included in ArmandaGuiducci's Due donne da buttare openly flaunt the circular, repetitive, detailed nature criticized in women's personal narratives. Guiducci's frustrated housewife immerses the reader in descriptions of her endless and repetitive duties as housekeeper, wife, and mother to which society assigns no productivevalue. The remarksof the housewife about the incapacity of household appliances ("elettrodomestici")to save time reflect topical protests of feminists against a powerful consumerism that reinforced images of the traditional housewife and that of the superior male provider.'0 These and other criticisms of society judiciously reinforcethe presentation of an intelligent and lucid self that has somehow remained intact despite banal adversity. The housewife is careful to separate herself from other more obsessive acquaintances who frantically swallow hormones to defeat the aging process, or who have allowed the tedium of their lives to drive them into insane asylums. Women, she explains, are innately rational beings, endowed with a "senso pratico,"as opposedto men who think in theoretical and abstract terms. However, her much vaunted common sense leads her to isolate herself from feminist groupssuch as the Comitato delle Arrabbiate, which she denounces as being too unrealistic in their demands. Thus, her need to achieve a rational presentation of self createsa paradoxwhich critic Elissa Gelfandnotes
in many women's confessions: having confronted the difficulty of her situation, the narrator adopts survival mechanisms such as

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withdrawal, isolation, and establishment of personal boundaries instead of directly contesting these difficulties (126). The force of the housewife's criticisms and her search for selfunderstandingare most seriously undercut, however, by her need to prove her innocence. To fulfill this generic prerequisite, she must frame much of her social criticism in the context of her cooperation. In so doing, she revertsto portrayingherself as a stereotypical,passive, obedient, self-sacrificing housewife. The housewife is not a rebel, nor is her confession a plea for the reevaluation of her activities; she in fact acknowledges their trivial and useless nature. Her only crime, to which she pleads guilty, is that she conformed. As a child she had believed the dictums of her father and schoolteachers: "Chi non ha casa e una poveretta, una spostata"; "Una donna senza casa e una lumaca senza chiocciola" (11ff).She had dutifully and proudly given birth to the required"figli maschi" and had successfully fought dust andfound breadon Sundaymornings all her marriedlife. Cooperation with the patriarchy is inevitable, as her example of how even the preparationof food, the fundamental function of the housewife and mother, has been reducedto a macabreencounter with pollution and death:
Poi si dice il cancro sfido io! Anche il manzo lo imbrattanodi genuino non c'e neppurel'arianel latte delle vacche c'e smog veleno. Una donna si sbatte venti anni in cucina per preparareveleni e pranzi funebri mangiare per morire non ha senso (33). Public cooperation and revolt in isolation is bound to fail, and the housewife's rational self dissolves in the reservoir of male prejudices she herself retains. Her increasingly intense fear of aging confirms her inability to formulate an identity independent of male judgment. Overwhelmed by helplessness and fear, she capitulates to an apocalyptic vision of an uncontrollable and hostile environment:

generic constraints of rationality andinnocence conspireto create the

image of a crazed stereotypical housewife who is helpless in any attempt to effect social change: ... ah gir vedo un immenso polverone si spaccherannole fogne tutte d'un colpo si alzerannocolonne nere di smog tutto l'unticcio del mondo dal profondodel mare in granbollore tutta la polvere scacciata tornerA offuschera la terra... (66).

The prostitute Stella's confession of her experiences as a professional call girl beforemeeting GFc, who forcedher to go straight
and get a job as a salesgirl in a department store, despite differences,

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will follow roughly the same pattern. Her belief in the myth of the strong independent self is evident in her rational and humanist view of the individual in society and her refusal to be considered a victim: e fa sentiretantonobili, UnavittimadellasocietA. E un belpensierino il Ma nessuno di questi compassionevoli. sfiori cervelloneancheuna a scaricabarile. in mutande, onorevoli gli studentitiraseghe-giocano di sensopratico.... Voltano Cherazza dimancanza Poverina la societA. la societA dove loro nell'angolo (gli uomini)semprela testa a cercare non stanno(102). Stella's narratedself-image is, however, not an independent one, but rather the result of an attempt to appropriatepatriarchalvalues and language. Stella attributes her rise from a simple streetwalker to a better-paid call girl to her ability to suppress weak, feminine characteristics: she flaunts frigidity as a safeguardagainst becoming dependent upon men for sexual gratification,as is the case with other weaker prostitutes who have become dependent upon drugs as well. Stella views feminine power in capitalist terms: if women are commodities in society then the only logical thing to do is to raise one's price. Because Stella rejects, on the surface,patriarchalimages of women and blames individuals instead of society, she can, like the housewife, point out many contradictions and injustices in society. In the end Stella admits, however, that, all things considered,the prostitute has even less power than the housewife: "le prostitute sono fra le donne che non possono fareniente, quelle che possono fare meno di niente" (115). The female trickster must inevitably be tricked by the society with which she, like the housewife, has cooperated. Feelings of alienation, anonymity, and guilt cause Stella to reenter a society in which she claims, as G&c's girlfriend,she is againan "individual."Yet, just as Stella cooperates with patriarchalvalues to leave society, so much she cooperate with them to return. Not surprisingly, as an "individual" Stella speaks of new feelings of marginality and lack of solidarity with other women: "Non ho piti confidenza con la gente, specie le donne" (110). Dirt, the symbol of the lost battle with the patriarchy that defines both the housewife and the prostitute as worthless and guilty, becomes an obsession for Stella as well. Her last words reflect pathetic hopes that her new bath lotion will absolve all guilt and make her feel clean again: "Spero tanto nel mio nuovo dopobagno"(124). While Guiducci depicts two females who aremarginalizedby their attempts to conform in Memorie di una ladra, Maraini depicts the
life of a willfull outsider. The seemingly indestructible narrator, Teresa, survives innumerable beatings, bombings, inhumane prisons volta che la societAe ognuno di noi. Invece gli uomini ... tutti: gli

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to mention only a few andinsaneasylums,andfamilypersecution, linearplot."1 The picaresque of the adventures in this action-packed, genrederivesfromcriminalconfessions,causingClaudioGuill6nto
identify it as the "confessions of a liar" (120). However, if the confessional pieces of Guiducci display the aporiaof the belief in the view that the personal self can be kept separatefrom the social, the picaresque tradition has always reaffirmedthat there is no material survival outside of society. Like the traditionalpicaro, Teresa prefers estrangement androgueryto any traditionallyprescribedfemale role, but she will always somehow adjust to social demands, however defined, which are imposed upon her. Once again revolt will reveal itself as cooperation. Memorie di una ladra is a result of extensive research done by Maraini in the late sixties on the deplorableconditions in women's prisons. In an interview that introduces Bompiani's reedition of the work, she speaks of how reeducation in women's prisons aims at producing model housewives (V).But in the episodic, action-packed narrative itself, such ideological points are given short shrift by the practical, down-to-earth Teresa who moves from one adventure to another, never improving except to learn from experience how to become a better thief. Like the traditionalpicaresque orphan,Teresa is thrown unpreparedinto a harsh society whose values she has to learn anew. Society, its hardships, inequalities, and oppressions, becomes the naturalfoe of the picarowho, in his judgments, displays a strong sense of moral rectitude. Typically, Teresa rails incessantly against the cowards, many of them male, who betray her both in sex and in burglaries,and thus have "forced"her to go to jail. Her sense of honor is based on the rigidstandardsof "omerth,"the underworld's code of solidarity, which is based on remaining loyal and silent while taking the rap alone. The picaro's actions, however, usually betray his desire not to challenge but rather to conform to and enjoy the system. Maraini identifies with Teresa's rather concrete relationship to food and admires what she terms her total estrangement from the values of a consumer society. However, Teresa's obsession with food and the many descriptions of meals bought with stolen money-"soldi spesi bene" (215)-, besides being generic traits, betray the fact that she is not totally indifferent to improving her material existence either (VIX).If Teresa does not marryand settle down like many of her female cohorts in crime and in tradition, she is most happy when she finds a "good job," such as the one passing on stolen American traveler's checks. The hours and money are good, the workload light; most
important, she feels a sense of fulfillment since the job allows her to display her native intelligence and her acquired shrewdness:

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& Hotrovato unbelmestiere il lavoro mi diverto e guadagno leggero pure senzafatica.Toccava averun po'di cervello,questosi, toccavaessere tirava sapersi quando intelligentie furbie sapere parlare, disimpegnare un bruttovento (213). Such burlesquingof society's values reveals a spirit of cooperation that is indeed as hypocritical as the society the narrativecriticizes so well. However, the form defines both possibilities and limits. Although Teresa may appear free to refuse any involuntary involvement with the traditionalfeminine role, her success, however much it reflects the economic changes in postwarItalian society, still depends on her ability to manipulate the patriarchal institution. Cooperationwith the picaresqueform does not, however, invite selfdeprecation: in contrast to Guiducci's narrators, Teresa is an unrepentant female who can unabashedly unmask society's hypocrisies since she is society's model student. Although Guiducci's narratorsexpose strategies of oppression in society, their cooperationwith generic restraints,especially the need to prove innocence, prevents them from challenging stereotypical images and assuming responsibility for their lives. Likewise, by constructing her identity according to the rules of the picaresque, Teresa typically blames others or the force of destiny for her actions, thus beggingthe question of whether she experiences true autonomy or any sense of personal responsibility. In Donna in Guerra, Maraini confronts the theme of accepting responsibility forone's life, as difficult as that may be, in her depiction of the transformation of a withdrawn, dependent female who hides behind her traditional subservient role into one ready to accept the risks involved in assuming responsibility for one's life. Narrator/ protagonist Vanninais a meek and mild elementary schoolteacher of Sicilian origin married to a Neapolitian mechanic Giacinto who, despite many good qualities, is hopelessly paternalistic. Giacinto's paternalism is not consciously malicious but instinctive and natural, or so he believes. He blatantly disregardshis wife's intellectual and sexual needs, relying on her to cook, wash, clean, accompany him to the cafe foran evening ice creamwhile they areon vacation-in short, to represent the feminine which he defines as a natural, biological state: "Tu, di natura (my emphasis) sei buona, calma, affettuosa, paziente, remissiva." Thus, he considersany action of Vanninawhich contradicts this restrictive definition of the female as wrong because it is "contro natura" (141). Theories of gender difference rooted in ontology or biology govern the behaviorand self-image of the women
as well as the men. Vannina complies with Giacinto's requests because she believes in his superiority. When Suna, one of the catalyst

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in Vannina's triesto pointout the self-serving transformation, figures andbehavior, Vannina thinksto herself: nature ofGiacinto's attitudes
Non pensavoniente. Non sapevo che rispondere. Quello che dice Giacintolo facciomio. Non mi e maivenutoin mentedi contraddirlo. che lo amo,che quelloche Pensochee miglioredi me, cheha ragione, dice ha valorepertutti e due (90).

For the most part, however, the narrativedoes not dwell on Vannina's internalthoughtsbut focuses on her social andpolitical in politicalmeetingsandwitnesses encounters. Vannina participates new acquaintances her who kidnap exercised terrorism by political
a corruptprison wardenand force a confession from him at gunpoint. Along with Suna, she interviews exploited poor and uneducated women in Naples involved inlavoro nero, piecework done at home for meager wages. Throughout these and many other adventures, Vannina's narrative stance remains descriptive and objective. Augustus Pallotta emphasizes this objectivity when he argues that the text is not a novel, or "the psychological treatment of individual rapportwith reality," but a "utilitariandidactic approach... capable of demonstrating lucidly the intellectual tenets of feminism and the social problems affecting women" (360). But if the representation of socio-political problems takes precedence over that of psychological development, the narrativeis still not a documentary but a fictional representation of political, psychological, and feminist theories that again both unmask and comply with the romance genre. Fromthe beginning of the romance tradition in Greek and Roman literature,throughits many displacements until the present time, the actions of romance stereotypical charactershave been justified with philosophical, psychological, and even proverbialtheories or truisms. The characters, who could be extremely realistic, even radical at times due to the inclusion of many topical theories and attitudes, had no need to learn and develop. Ruled by chance, fortune, or God, and immersed in adventures which took place in hostile environments peopled by various types motivated by self-interest or uncontrollable passions, romance charactersneeded only to survive the adventures and reach a certain tranquillity. Human dependency upon higher powers for survival was implied by the unchanging nature of the characters,the interpolatednarrativesor disgressions which, as they still do in Donna in Guerra,demonstrate the failure of those seeking independence and the general chaos resulting from individual searches for self-satisfaction.2
The romance today, as Kenneth Bruffee tells us, instead of preaching man's dependency upon the higher powers, explores the difficulties encountered in freeing oneself from long-standing social

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structures, traditional human relationships, and the dependent mentalities they foster and maintain.13 Describing the male elegiac romance in this century, Bruffee lists several characteristics of the genre which also apply to Donna in Guerra.In elegiac romance, the traditionallypassive protagonistconfrontshis own complexly-rooted resistance to change as well as a cultural, social, and political milieu undergoing profound and irresistible change. Due to its adventure plot, romance does not try to rendermental processes directly, as is the case in some modem novels and the Bildungsroman; rather, it creates a thematic relationshipbetween the outside world,the hostile social environment, and the narrator's quest. The quest is most often unknown at the beginning, and the recalcitrant narratorlearns late that he or she must create something new: a self which is responsive to new needs and which can survive without heroes and nostalgic illusions (59-72). Donna in Guerra reverses the archetypal romance quest. The adventures and separations do not lead to the marriage of the essentially passive protagonists. Instead, a married woman, after a series of adventuresand a brief separationfrom her husband, decides to divorce and, in her own words, start all over again. The symbolic nature of the adventures is announced clearly by the abrupt arrival of Vannina's menstrual period, "un rivolo di sangue benefico" (4), which occurs on the first day of the couple's vacation in a poor southern fishing village where the liveliest moment is in the early evening when the bored wives of rich German "industriali" leave their villas and come to the piazza to find bed partners among the willing, adaptablevillage youth. However, this obvious symbol, as well as others in the narrative, is isolated by the mundane events which immediately follow. Giacinto leaves early every morning to fish, and Vannina fills the day by shopping, cleaning, washing, and ironing, banalactivities she describesin the same matter-of-fact,nonjudgmental way in which she narrates the story. This banality is underlined in Vannina's oft-repeatedmock chants of the housewife: "Ho lavato i piatti, ho sgrassatole pentole. Ho sciacquato i bicchieri," first appearingon page 4, and which varies only slightly during the narrative. Often this litany is repeated in the place of a reaction or judgment from Vannina to some controversy she is reporting, thus making any progressive change in her more difficult to gauge. Initially, Vannina's only unusual excursions are trips to the laundry of Toto and Giottina, two strong, lively Sicilian types who, in mock allegoricalfashion, tell of magical transformationsand wild
sexual acts which supposedly take place in the villas of the rich at night:

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-Alla VillaTrionfol'amoresi fa sputazza -La sputazza si fa semenza -La semenzasi fa veleno -La servasi fa padrona.... (12-13) However, neither of these women who chant in witch-like fashion, eat pastries, iron, and recount these "inquietanti giochi dell'immaginazione" (14)to a passive and slightly nauseatedVannina preaches revolt. Rather, they offer consolation and relieve boredom in this private and isolated feminine world.14 Typically, Vannina, as well, is not anxious to effect change and is suspicious of those who advocateit. Therefore,her passiveness, more than her "reasoningand reflection," as Pallotta suggests, makes her appeara less stereotypical and strongercharacter.She copes with the noisy Neapolitan family rooming upstairs, who throw their garbage on her or in her courtyard,by following Giacinto's advice to grin and bear it: "Quella gente li bisogna fare finta che non c'&,se reagisci e peggio" (60). To complicate matters further, this philosophy seems justified by narrativeevents. A brief outburst of rageresults in a door being slammed in her face, and when Vannina is convinced by Suna to file a complaint, the family successfully accuses her of attacking the grandmother in public. Likewise, among Vannina's acquaintances, those who revolt end up causing more trouble for themselves. Furthermore,since most of the characters' actions are motivated by topical philosophical, psychological, and political theories, their actions become more predictable and they become more stereotypical as the narrativeprogresses.Suna, a beautiful and relatively well-off paralytic,throughwhom and with whom Vannina participates in the adventures, preaches female emancipation, independence, and sexual liberation. Yet she herself falls into the easily recognizable trap of using sexual promiscuity to compensate for her handicap and, despite her fervent rhetoric against male domination, she develops a traditionaldependenceon her fickle lover Santino. She dies from a fall brought on by her depression when Santino is arrested and she loses him as a lover. In so doing Suna appearsno less stereotypical than many fictional male counterparts who kill themselves or waste away for love of unfaithful prostitutes. Suna is not the only characterwho reverts to traditional patterns. Vittorio, the leftist terrorist, despite his radical political views, still views women as objects who in revolution should remain as subservient as before. His marriageto a submissive and rich Swiss virgin is a critically parodic, but typical and predictable ending for such a macho-terrorist type. Vannina herself, in a rare moment of introspection, defines her love for Giacinto as a need to depend on a

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strong male figure:"hauna forzaterribilein quelle sue bracciebionde e con questa forza tiene in piedi il nostro matrimonio. Io sono innamorata di quelle braccie" (142). Such commonplaces that have always served in romance to enhance the verisimilitude of the charactersand their actions emphasize here the difficulty of freeing oneself from the archaicpatternsof behaviorandmeaning which have and continue to inform judgments and perceptions. Donna in Guerra, however, ends with a call for solidarity and courageto continue to overcome one's limits. True to romance form, the narrative ends on an epiphanic note: Suna appearsin a dream to Vannina to offer her crutches to a now-crippled Vannina who, after attempting to fly had crashedto earthand lost both legs. In the elegiac romance, the narrator's liberation is often announced when his admiration for another deceased male ceases (Bruffee 15, 27-28). Patricia Merivale points out that in the female variant the bond between narratorand the person she reportsupon is one of only faint interest since female solidarity, in contrast to its male counterpart, is slowly and unexpectedly revealed (46-48). Vannina's relationship to Sunais indeed cool at the beginning,and Sunais never a role-model for her.'5 Her crutches, however, give Vannina the strength to decide to abort Giacinto's child, a pregnancywhich resulted from a surprise sexual attack, and to strike out on her own. However, as is also typical of romance, the call for commitment to change includes no specific advice on how to implement such transformations.Romance charactersreceive no magic wand; and, if Suna's crutches appearto be a dubious aid, it is, in part, because in modern romance all who depend upon archaic myths, theories, philosophies, and truisms which reappearin displaced and disguised forms, are crippled in some way. To begin again, Vannina must abandon her passive nature, become involved, despite her vulnerability to those fundamental structures of meaning that shape her understanding. With literary conventions as crutches and guides, Guiducci and Maraini revealed similarities in strategies of oppression and unmasked the illusion that political fact could be separated from private life. The strict relationship between the personal and the political implied at times in the above narrativesby the gender/genre relationship may appear too mechanical for feminist critics in the eighties who argue for a different rapportbetween the personal and the political.'6 Nonetheless, despite certain differences, the more recent novels of both Maraini and Guiducci, I1 treno per Helsinki
(1984) and A testa in giht (1984) respectively, continue to examine many of the crippling myths and social conventions that were revealed by the generic experiments of the seventies. With these

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feminismbeganthe difficulttask of displacing experiments, literary the literatureof the past according to the perceptions of women as a historical group, a movement defined by Monique Wittig as unavoidableif women writers are ever to move on to revised andnew terminologies.'7 representations
SOUTHERN UNIVERSITY

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

NOTES
'In a paperdeliveredat the 1986 MLAConvention entitled "AuthorizedVersions," Nancy Miller used the example of Artaud'srecently publishedvolumes of Histoire de la litteraturefranqaiseto arguethat the classificationof women's works, which Artaud

effectof making to established now includes,according genreshas the paradoxical

in the table of contents, women women writersinvisible again.Ratherthan appearing writers are included under rubrics such as the "roman sentimental" and other secondary genres. A notable exception to this negative attitude toward generic criticism is The VoyageIn: Fictions of Female Development, a series of essays which show how the generic categoryof Bildungsromancan be fruitfully applied to various women's texts. 2Rosmarinprimarilyreviews the theories of E. D. Hirsch, RonaldCrane,Northrop Frye, Tzvetan Todorov, Ralph Rader,and Hans RobertJauss. 3Otherrecent argumentsfor genre theory stress the role of the critic in identifying genres as well. In his recent article "Historyand Genre,"RalphCohen arguesthat the same text canparticipatein severalgenericgroupingssince authors,readers,andcritics have different reasons for identifying texts as they do. 4Augustus Pallotta, in "Dacia Maraini:FromAlienation to Feminism," describes the text as a "remarkable,latter-daypicaresquenovel" (n. 362). s167-169. Nozzoli explainsthat alongwith vulgarlanguage,many feminist writers, especially Guiducci and Maraini,purposelyused faulty grammarand punctuation as well as dialectical expressions to attack the artifice of literary language and demonstratehow languageperpetuatesthe divisions between oppressedandoppressor. Many passages quoted in this article reveal elements of this technique. 'For a good discussion of Italiancultural or neo-feminism, see LuciaBirnbaum,La liberazione della donna, pp. 79-103. Anther more personal but very informative account of Italian neo-feminism can be found in Susan Bassnett's Feminist Experiences: The Women'sMovement in Four Cultures, Chapter3. 7Theargumentthat the idea of women is an artificialmale construct can be found in several cultural and historical interrogations on women. Two well-known and influential feminist inquiries include Maria Rosa Cutrufelli's, L'invenzione della donna:miti e tecniche dello sfruttamentoandGiannaPomata'sIn scienza e coscienza: donna e potere nella societh borghese.
8See Estelle Jelinek's introduction to Women's Autobiography, pp. 10-20.

9Although Gunn is not a generic critic, she agrees with other reader-centered approachesto genre: "genreis an instrument of reading... [that] enables the reader to locate himself or herself before the text" (21). 10Cf. Susan Bassnett, Feminist Experiences: The Women's Movement in Four Cultures, 116: "However in the marketing of the 'new life' through advanced technology (. .. Italiancoined a new wordelettrodomestico, an indication of the extent of the reorganization of the running of the home), care was taken to stress the

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continuation of old values." Bassnett quotes Italian feminist writer AdrianaSeroni, writing in the magazine Donne e politica (July,1973):"Enormousriches ... have all been sacrificedon the altar of chaotic development of twisted private consumerism. In the wake of all this, woman, her image, and her beauty have been degraded to serve a political vision. ... She has been shut out for the most partfromproduction,andhas been exalted as a symbol and instrument of twisted consumerism." Guiducci'sDue donne, Memoriedi una ladra is basedon a real-lifeaccount. 11Like However, Marainiadmits to making many changes in the presentation of the story. Forexample, Marainicomments that Teresa lacked any chronologicalconception of time; therefore,forpurposesof clarity,in the rewritingof the text, whichMarainiclaims to have done three times, she adheresto a strict, chronologicalorder(Memorievi-ix). 12For an excellent, in-depth discussion of the romance in antiquity, see Arthur Heiserman,TheNovel beforethe Novel: Essaysand Discussions about the Beginnings of Prose Fiction in the West. '3ElegiacRomance: Cultural Changeand the Loss of the Heroin ModernFiction, esp. Chapter2, "ElegiacRomance: A Modem Tradition." 14These scenes are reminiscent of the visits of Vittorini's narratorSilvestro to Ezechiele's cave in Conversazione in Sicilia. Joy Potter, in "An Ideological Substructurein Conversazionein Sicilia," defines Ezechiele'shumanist criticisms of the "mondo offeso" as impotent and useless since they representan intellectualist position of isolation and withdrawalfrom the world of experience and thus describe culture's main function as one of consolation. lSVanninafirst describes Suna as "una che fa teatro ... improvvisamente l'ho trovataridicolae antipatica"(59).Evenwhen she follows Sunato Naples to aidin Suna's investigations of exploited female workersin cottage industries, she admits that she is going to see Orio again. Vanninahad had a brief affairwith Orio who was dying of a stomach tumor in a hospital in Naples. '"See Teresa de Lauretis,in "Issues, Terms and Contexts," p. 9, who calls for "a recastingof the notion that the personalis political which does not simply equate and collapse the two .. . but maintains the tension between them precisely through the understandingof identity as multiple and even self-contradictory." '7See Rosalind Jones, "FrenchTheories of the Feminine," p. 91. WORKS CITED Abel, Elizabeth, Marianne Hirsch, and Elizabeth Langland, eds., The Voyage In: Fictions of Female Development. Hanover: UP of New England, 1983. Cultures. London: Allen and Unwin, 1986.

Bassnett, Susan. Feminist Experiences: The Women's Movement in Four Birnbaum, Lucia Chiavola. Liberazione della donna: Feminism in Italy. Bruffee, Kenneth. Elegiac Romance: Cultural Change and the Loss of the
Hero in Modern Fiction. Cornell: Cornell UP, 1983. Cohen, Ralph. "History and Genre." New Literary History 15:2 (1986): 203221. Connecticut: Wesleyan UP, 1986.

sfruttamento. Milano: Mazzotta, 1974. DeLauretis, Teresa. "Issues, Terms and Contexts," in Feminist Studies/ Critical Studies, ed. Teresa DeLauretis. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1987. 1-19. French Prisons. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1984.

Cutrufelli, Maria Rosa. L'invenzione della donna: miti e tecniche dello

Gelfand, Elissa. Imagination in Confinement: Women's Writings from

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Guiducci, Armanda.Due donne da buttare: una donna di buona famiglia e una ex-prostituta confessano il fallimento della loro vita. Milano: Rizzoli, 1976. . A testa in giui.Milano: Rizzoli, 1984. Guillkn, Claudio. Literatureas System. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1972. GGunn, Janet.Autobiography:Towardsa Poetics of Experience.Philadelpha: U of Pennsylvania P, 1982. Heiserman, Arthur. The Novel before the Novel: Essays and Discussions about the Beginnings of ProseFiction in the West. Chicago:U of Chicago P, 1977. Hermann, Claudine. La voleuse des langues. Paris: des femmes, 1976. Jameson, Fredric.The Political Unconscious. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1981. Jelinek, Estelle, ed. Women's Autobiography. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1980. Jones, Anne Rosalind. "Inscribing Feminity: French Theories of the Feminine," in Making a Difference: Feminist Literary Criticism, eds. Gayle Greene and Coppelia Kahn. London:Methuen, 1985. 89-92. Maraini, Dacia. Memorie di una ladra. Milano: Bompiani, 1972; repr. Milano: Bompiani, 1984. . I1 treno per Helsinki. Torino: Einaudi, 1984. in Drag:JoanDidion's A Book of Merivale, Patricia."ThroughGreene-Land Common Prayer,"Pacific Coast Philology 15 (1980): 139-152. Miller, Nancy. "UnauthorizedVersions." Paper.MLA (1986). e Coscienza: Lacondizione femminile nella letteratura Nozzoli, Anna. Tabizi italiana del Novecento. Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1978. Pallotta, Augustus. "Dacia Maraini:FromAlienation to Feminism," World Literature Today 58 (1984):359-362. Pomata, Gianna. In scienza e coscienza: donna e potere nella societai borghese. Bologna:La Nuova Italia, 1979. in Conversazionein Sicilia." Italica Potter,Joy."AnIdeologicalSubstructure 52:1 (1975): 50-69. Rasy, Elisabetta. Le donne e la letteratura: scrittrici, eroini e ispiratrici nel mondo delle lettere. Roma: Riuniti, 1984. Rosmarin,Adena. ThePowerof Genre.Minneapolis:U of Minnesota P, 1985.

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