The Silent Duchess (37 page)

Jules Verne, and especially of Conrad, who remains one of my favorites of all time. But the author I particularly enjoyed was Samuel Beckett, who influenced my writing at a very early stage. The first story I published, "La mia storia tornava sotto l'albero carrubo" (my story came back under the carob tree), was completely Beckettian." *10

When her parents separated in 1954, Maraini

moved with her father to Rome, where she still resides. She soon became part of the Italian intelligentsia, counting among her friends prominent writers, directors, and literary critics such as Alberto Moravia, Giorgio

Manganelli, Nanni Balestrini, Pier

Paolo Pasolini, Bernardo Bertolucci,

Edoardo Sanguineti, Enzo Siciliano, and Renato Barilli.

From the beginning, Maraini's works--whether they be novels, collections of poetry, or plays-- have always been received with great interest by the media. But too often the media coverage of her work became a pretext for discussions of the lifestyle of the famous Italian artists with whom she was so closely associated. In addition, Maraini's activism and identity as a feminist, especially during the 1970's, alienated part of the still-paternalistic literary Italian community, so that her feminist positions rather than her literary work became the primary subject of commentary. Her provocative and nonconformist stories shook the moralistic Italian mentality and divided the critics. At the same time, her refusal to be aligned with any particular feminist group or leftist political party roused some suspicious reactions, even among the more progressive elements in Italy.

With the passing of years, however, critics began to appreciate Maraini's qualities more consistently and to write more deeply about her work. The Silent Duchess definitely represented a turning point, winning unanimous praise in the cultural, political, and feminist worlds. Nevertheless, there remain far too few critical works and serious studies thoroughly examining Maraini's writing, of the kind that could secure her much-deserved place in the canon of the Italian literary tradition.

Maraini's first two novels were published within one year of each other: La vacanza (the holiday) in 1962, and, in 1963, L'et@a del malessere (the age of discontent), which won the international Prix Formentor and has been translated into twelve languages. At that time Maraini was closely associated with the eminent Italian fiction writer Alberto Moravia. Maraini and Moravia were also close friends with the internationally renowned writer, poet, and film

director Pier Paolo Pasolini; the three regularly spent time together and traveled frequently to Africa.

From 1966 until 1969, Maraini published book after book. Her novels included A memoria (by heart) and Memorie di una ladra (published in English as Memoirs of a Female Thief), which was later made into a film, Teresa la ladra, directed by Carlo di Palma and starring the famous Italian actor Monica Vitti. She also published the collection of poetry Crudelta all'aria aperta (cruelty in the open air) and such plays as La famiglia normale (the ordinary family), Ricatto a teatro (blackmail at the theater) and Manifesto dal carcere (manifesto from prison). She also founded new theatrical companies as a means of dramatizing social injustice--poverty, homelessness, and the plight of prisoners.

During this period, Maraini began writing articles on the condition of women for the Italian newspaper Paese Sera. In 1967 she became involved with the feminist group Rivolta femminile, but she soon she left the group because, she says, she found it too "mystical": "For me feminism came out of my interest in combating social injustice. Only later did it become more political and ideological, when, along with other women, I started discussing our history: a history of repression and silence." In 1973 Maraini founded a feminist group that was "based on the experience of theater by women, with women, and for women." The group called itself Teatro della Maddalena, after the neighborhood where it held its meetings. "We did everything together," Maraini recalls. "We discussed our projects collectively, without fixed roles or areas of expertise. We were trying to eliminate hierarchies, to be all equal, but artistically it did not work, because the talents of every person are different." *11 Nevertheless, the group became a national cultural center for women. In addition to its theatrical activities, it published a magazine, Effe, maintained a bookstorestlibrary of feminist works, and sponsored frequent conferences, seminars, roundtables, art shows, film series, writing and music workshops, and other cultural

activities organized by women and for women.

During the 1970's, Maraini's literary production was enormous. The first women's theatrical production at La Maddalena was the play Mara, Maria Marianna, written by Maraini in 1973. It was followed by many other plays, including Se io muoio, ti dispiace? (do you mind if I die?) in 1976, which addressed health care conditions in Italy, and Dialogo di una prostituta con un suo cliente (dialogue of a prostitute with her client), which was translated into French and played in Brussels for three years. *12 She also wrote two collections of poetry, Donne mie (my women) in

1974 and Mangiami pure (devour me too) in 1979, as well as the powerful feminist novel Donna in guerra (published in English as Woman at War) in 1975.

During the 1980's Maraini published more than twenty books. *13 One of the best known, Storia di Piera (piera's story), published in 1980, is a dialogue between the writer and the actor Piera degli Esposti, whose memories of family life reveal a very intense relationship with her mother. Storia di Piera was made into a film in 1983 by the director Marco Ferreri, with an international cast including Hanna Schygulla, Isabelle Huppert, and Marcello Mastroianni. Maraini's novels of the 1980's include Lettere a Marina (published in English as Letters to Marina) in 1981 and Il treno per Helsinki (train to Helsinki) in 1984, both featuring female protagonists struggling with the patriarchal world. While the former continues to explore the legacy of the mother figure, as begun in Storia di Piera, the latter deals with feminism and politics, as represented in Donna in guerra. As Maraini illustrates in these novels, women have had to contend with stereotypes and sexist behaviors even among those young Italian men with whom they fought side by side for progressive political and social change. Maraini's keen attention to this imbalance reveals the deeply ingrained male habit of seeing women as inferior human beings. In 1985 Maraini published Isolina, a novel inspired by real events that took place in the northern Italian

region of Veneto at the beginning of the century, when a young pregnant woman was accidentally murdered. Maraini inquired into the life of the woman's lover, who involuntarily killed her and then tried to cover up the crime. In order to save the reputation of the Italian Army in which he served, the man was never condemned-- another example of the power of the patriarchy. *14

From 1990 to the present, Dacia Maraini has published a total of nine books in five different genres. The atypical historical novel La lunga vita di Marianna

Ucr@ia (the long life of Marianna

Ucr@ia, published in English as The

Silent Duchess) appeared in 1990,

Voci (published in English as Voices) in 1994, Un clandestino a bordo (a secret on board) in 1996, and Dolce per s`e (sweet itself) in 1997. She also published the collection of poetry Viaggiando con passo di volpe (walking with the tread of a fox) in 1991, the dramatic text,

Veronica, meretrice e scrittora (veronica, whore and writer) in 1992, the autobiography Bagheria (also published in English) in 1993, and a lengthy essay on Madame Bovary entitled Cercando Emma (published in English as Searching for Emma) as well as the play Camille in 1995. Many of these books address a common theme: the problem of women's relationship with writing. It is this relationship between women and literature that captures Maraini's attention in most of her recent works. Taken together, these works reveal a contradictory and intricate association between writing and the gendered body. The identities of writer, protagonist, and reader often intersect and overlap for the sole purpose of demonstrating the "foreignness" of women in their encounter with language and communication. At the same time, these works are dominated by women's desire to express themselves and their joy in doing so--a desire that led Maraini herself to pursue the arduous task of writing.

Maraini concentrates on the female point of view in her approach to writing. She begins by condemning a determining factor in the history of literature: the lack of authority in the female literary legacy. This has led to the exclusion of

women from literary tradition, or, worse yet, indifference toward them on the part of the historiography that determines literary canons and criteria. Maraini's most urgent goal, therefore, is to reinsert women into the literary spaces from which they have long been forcibly barred and to restore authority to the female word. In order to carry out this theoretical, historical, and literary endeavor, Maraini writes during this period in a variety of literary genres that offer her the chance to experiment with different kinds of language.

In the theatrical text Veronica, meretrice e scrittora (veronica, whore and writer), for example, Maraini emphasizes the inescapable contrast between writing and the senses through the figure of a prostitute who practices the art of writing. The sixteenth-century Venetian courtesan and poet, the inspiration for the recent film Dangerous Beauty, is a very subversive character because, as Maraini states, "She violated the two traditional places prohibited to the female body: the street and the writing desk. The former was prohibited because she had to defend her and her own family's honourableness; the latter because she had to defend the female credibility related to her matrimony and maternity. Only a nun was allowed to sit down alone at the writing desk." *15 In Cercando Emma (Searching for Emma),

Maraini abandons the realm of self-representation in order to tackle male representations of one of the most famous female characters in French literature: Gustave Flaubert's lovedsthated heroine, Madame Bovary.

Maraini's interest in the difficulties of female communication, particularly in a medium that has excluded women, and her attempt to reconstruct the processes of creation involved in male representation of female characters are natural developments of a journey that began a long time ago. Early in her development as a writer, Maraini realized that in order to change the condition of women politically, socially, and culturally, one should start questioning the structure of the private realm of family and the role of women within it. Her extremely focused attention to the realities of women's everyday life, historically and materially, is present in all her work, and represents her most original

contribution to the life of Italian feminism.

The contemporary Italian feminist movement began at the end of the 1960's, but its roots lead back to women's labor struggles in the nineteenth century. Distinct from American feminism, which was more concerned with the primacy of individual rights, the Italian movement was always involved with political parties or labor unions, of which women were frequently a part, and has always seen women's individual rights as inseparable from collective political struggle. From the period between the two world wars, through the struggle waged by the Partisans (the antifascist underground), through the postwar reconstruction of the country, and up until the end of the 1960's, women's movements in Italy carried on mainly within political parties of the Left. Women's political emancipation from a segregated role in the labor force and the achievement of political equality with men were the main issues for these movements, which never questioned the structure of family and private life.

By 1968, in Italy, as in many countries in Europe and beyond, the younger generation had begun to question the authority of the ruling class as well as the patent economic and social injustice that surrounded them, demanding a more just and peaceful world. Women constituted a large number of the participants at the rallies. Students were allied with the working class and manifested their discontent in the universities, in the factories, and in the streets, with the intent of changing the status quo and fighting for a more balanced social order. The utopian slogan,

"Let's be realistic, let's ask for the impossible," which appeared in the streets of Paris in 1968, was emblematic of the political and social battles that appealed not only to the young and to poor and working-class people but also to women--all communities which had never before had access to the power needed to criticize or reform economic and social structures. For women, in particular, it had been unthinkable--and therefore impossible--before this time to even question the basis of male authority. This was true even among those activist women who, for example, had struggled for greater equality with men in the workplace through labor unions, or had worked side by side with men (or, too often, beneath

them) in the political parties of the

Left.

Now, however, women began to develop a new perspective, from which they also began to question the schizophrenic ideology and behavior of their male companions. In their public lives, these men were fighting against the old rules of the political order, while in their private relationships with women, they maintained and perpetuated the same patriarchal rules that had shaped society for centuries and determined male hegemony in Western culture and civilization. How was it possible, women wondered, to question the political realm without questioning personal behavior? How was it possible to change society without questioning chauvinistic habits and the established supremacy of one gender over another in the family as well as in the workplace? How was it possible to construct a just world without removing secular prejudices that led women to be considered second-class human beings?