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Nel corso dell'anno scolastico 2021/22 con la classe V ALM ho trattato la "questione femminile" e le figure delle scrittrici nella letteratura inglese e in ambito europeo, nel corso del novecento. Alcune studentesse della classe: Martina Iandolo, Mariarita Lavanga, Francesca Laudando e Gabriella Giro si sono dedicate particolarmente a questo lavoro e attraverso una ricerca più dettagliata hanno sviluppato questa tematica con una breve introduzione e con dei PowerPoint su alcuni famosi romanzi, soffermandosi in particolare sull'analisi di alcuni personaggi femminili.

— THE WOMAN QUESTION —

“

The best thermometer to the progress of a nation is its treatment of its women. There is no

chance for the welfare of the world unless the condition of women is improved.

”

Throughout the centuries the condition of the woman has always been characterized by a situation of inferiority on social, juridical and political plain. This situation that improved slowly during the last years, was a big issue of the previous ages. The term “Woman Question” was used in England in the Victorian era, during the 17th and 19th century in coincidence to the ideological and social change of European society. On the ideological side, the philosophy of the Enlightenment and its political application (democracy) stated that all human beings and therefore also women, were equal and had the same rights. On the social side, the Industrial Revolution destroyed the old family economy and needed women as single workers and so, again, in theory made them equal to men in social status and money-earning power. In reality although many women now worked with men in workshops and factories, they were subject to discrimination, with worse jobs and wages, and had to work at home. During that period even elementary schooling was thought to be superfluous for women, let alone higher education. And we should remember that woman in higher classes enjoyed less freedom because of the rigid code of sexual and social behaviour imposed by the Victorian standards. In the early 19th century the advance of the middle-class in Europe worsened women's condition. Despite single voices of protest, such as Mary Wollstonecraft's with her A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, usually considered the first feminist pamphlet, the Napoleonic civil code spread in many European countries. It sanctioned woman’s legal inferiority with respect to man. This reflected the bourgeois idea of the family. But at that point things were about to change. Women's meetings and demonstrations started to be common and thanks to that, some women started to gain access to colleges and professions. One of the most famous examples was certainly Florence Nightingale, who became a national legend for her work in hospitals. An influential voice of support for women came from John Stuart Mill, who spoke in favor of female emancipation. Another important step in this process was also the introduction of the so-called Married Women’s Property Act in 1882. With this act women were allowed by law to own property after they got married. By the end of Queen Victoria’s reign the situation had improved on the educational side, but especially on the social side. Women during this phase were very active and they began to organize in associations. Even if women didn’t get the right to vote until 1918, the first petitions to Parliament asking for Women’s Suffrage dated back to the 1840s. Since the appearance of the first novels in the late 18th century women usually emerged simply as characters. They could be lovers, objects of their man’s sexual desire, or in a more spiritual view, they may be praised as goddesses or they may be heroine, as Shakespeare’s tragedies showed. But under every perspective they were always subordinated to the ethical, social and political values created by men in male-dominated world. In fact we shouldn’t forget that all the portraits of women we have in literature and arts until the Romantic age, were done by men. Women will become the makers of literature only with the successful works of Jane Austen and Mary Shelley. Women also became Romantic heroines, with strong and independent minds, thanks to Dickens and Brontë sisters’ works. In their masterpieces women began to be described as intelligent, independent people often in contrast with the accepted ideas of their role as wives,

mothers, sisters.

— THE NEW WOMAN AND THE FEMALE CHARACTERS OF THE 19TH CENTURY NOVEL —

In the course of the 19th century a new figure of woman was presented. She became, unlike tragic heroines, aware of their destiny as social being. A new myth was described, the one of the “fallen woman”, a woman who, in order to fully live her own life, especially her sentimental life, escapes from the control of the traditional male figures (father, husband, brother. As a result, she becomes a social outcast and ends up badly. This is the case of Tess of the D’Ubervilles, written by Thomas Hardy. Tess is first cheated and seduced by a man, and when she later marries another man, she finds prejudice against womens’ sexual experience is so strong that it ruins her life. Two of the most influential Romantic figures were the Swiss-born, aristocratic Madame de Staël, a novelist and a literary critic, and George Sand, a novelist and a poet whose life-style was, at the time, very unconventional. In Italy women writers came later with Matilde Serao and Grazia Deledda, internationally acclaimed. If we have to talk about the first convincingly modern portrait of a woman, we should talk about Madame Bovary, by the French writer Gustave Flaubert. It is the story of a married woman’s life, her aspiration to love and happiness, her unfaithfulness to her husband and her final tragic death. But we shouldn’t make a mistake by considering her a “ fallen woman”, because Flaubert succeeded in proposing her tragedy with dramatic objectivity rather than passing judgment on her. Against all the conventions we have also Anna Karenina, by Lev Tolstoy. In this work there isn’t the poor woman who is left alone but her own husband, but, surprisingly, we are witnessing a reversal of roles. As a matter of fact the main character, a young noblewoman, leaves her husband and son in order to live with the love of her life. A similar example can be searched in the famous play Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen. In this work, the female protagonist, Nora, suddenly discovers that her husband has always treated her like a doll, not as an existing and real human being. When she realizes this enormous lack of love, she decides to leave home. As we can imagine the play made a huge scandal throughout Europe, since it was a pitiless attack on middle-class values, founded on the subordination of women.

— FEMALE CONSCIOUSNESS —

The role of women in the family and in society, their psychological and intellectual characteristics and their relationship with men were amply debated in the 20th century. In this debate a significant place was occupied by the literature itself, especially the literature of female writers. In fact this period was a very exciting time for female novelists, who produced unique works. Since literature began this was the first time that women not only tackled issues concerning women that were considered controversial like sexuality and feminism, but also did so in a way that put the reader in the mindset of the female protagonist. The highlight of this “new literature” has to be searched in Virginia Woolf’s essays or pamphlets. We’re talking about A Room of One's Own (1929), a series of lectures delivered by a woman to a women's audience at a women's college on the subject of women and literature. This masterpiece can be seen as the first phase of the modern consciousness of women. In her work Woolf's arguments are clearly presented: in the past, women had no existence save in the fiction written by men; even if a woman had the same gifts as a man, social disadvantages would prevent her from writing or performing any other important activity. Woolf stresses the necessity for women to gain economic independence and intellectual freedom and for this reason this work had, at that time, a great impact on the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Thanks to this, a new feminism began to form and express itself, especially in the United States with the founding of the National Organization for Women (NOW) and the institution by President Kennedy of a Commission on the Status of Women. The women's movement of the 1960s and 1970s drew inspiration from the civil rights protests and was made up mainly of women belonging to the middle class. They shared the spirit of rebellion that affected large segments of middle-class youth in the 1960s and which developed especially in schools and university campuses. Another factor linked to the emergence of the women's movement was the sexual revolution of the 1960s, which in turn was sparked by the development and marketing of the birth-control pill: this gave women the possibility of deciding if and when they wanted to become pregnant. Feminism reached its peak in the early 1970s, when in 1972 an Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution was passed by the American Congress. Later, in the last part of the 20th century, several women writers explored female consciousness with increasing awareness of their intellectual and emotional potential. They didn't just denounce the oppression of a male-ruled society and join in protest against sexual discrimination, they looked for and found new ways of expression, not any longer dependent on male cultural tradition. For example the American poet Sylvia Plath became a charismatic figure for the feminists of the 1960s and 1970s, when, after she committed suicide, she became a symbol of the tensions and the sufferings to which many women are subjected in society. Ideologically, Plath's poems start from the position stated by Virginia Woolf in A Room of One's Own - the limits imposed on women by historical and social circumstances - and then describe a woman's struggle for happiness and integrity in a sexist world. Another writer who showed great originality in dealing with the theme of female condition in society is the English Angela Carter. She chose to be provocative not by taking aggressive political or social stances, but by rewriting traditional stories and myths from a female point of view: in doing so she also explored sexual politics and fantasies in original ways. Her The Passion of the New Eve, an unusual female utopian story, centers on a man who undergoes a forced sex-change operation and re-evaluates everything he once believed about power, gender, and sexual identity. As we could expect it became a sort of feminine manifesto for women writers.

Another story and career to remember is the one of the American Toni Morrison. She was the first black woman writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. In her work she effectively combines the issues of race and gender in American society and she shows the effects of both racial and sexual oppression, describing the difficulties of African American women living in a society dominated by cultural values which are imposed by a white, male model.

The lighthouse is the central symbol of the novel both as a physical element and a metaphorical one. Its light marks the passing of time and reassures the sailors, or the people looking at it. In a certain sense, it could be argued that Mrs Ramsay was like a lighthouse, the essential point of reference in her family’s life. Refer to the texts you have read.

"La vita non è una serie di lampioncini disposti simmetricamente; la vita è un alone luminoso, un involucro semitrasparente che ci racchiude dall'alba della coscienza fino alla fine" .

— Virginia Woolf, 'To the Lighthouse' (1927)

'To the Lighthouse' è un romanzo della scrittrice britannica Virginia Woolf, fu pubblicato per la prima volta nel 1927. Il romanzo segue la tradizione modernista in cui la trama ha un'importanza secondaria rispetto all'introspezione psicologica dei personaggi. 'To the Lighthouse' prende ispirazione dal ricordo che l'autrice aveva delle vacanze passate ogni estate in Cornovaglia. La Woolf racconta che per circa 40 anni era stata ossessionata dalla prematura perdita della madre e che un giorno, attraversando Tavistok Square ebbe l'idea del romanzo, che scrisse di getto; alla fine, la sua ossessione sparì, come se la stesura del romanzo avesse attivato delle proprietà terapeutiche, che avessero, a loro volta, rimosso delle emozioni inconsce che riappacificarono Virginia con i fantasmi dell'infanzia.

Created by Luca Dello Russo 5ASA.

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