What It Means To Be a Woman in Italy, According to Its Female Writers

Feb 04, 2025 74

BY: Elizabeth Djinis

In the hands of any other writer, Natalia Ginzburg’s short story “The Mother” could have been maudlin, a tragic tale of two young sons who lose first their father and then their young mother too early. 

But from the start, we enter an atmosphere where little is spoken and tension hums just below the surface. The young mother wants freedom from the stifling environment of living with her parents. Her father berates her, “wearing his overcoat on top of his pajamas,” when she comes home in the middle of the night: “Don’t speak because I know what you are. …You run around at night like the mad bitch you are.” 

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SOURCE: https://italysegreta.com

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