WIDOWHOOD AND CONDUCT IN LATE SIXTEENTH-CENTURY ITALY: THE 'UNUSUAL' CASE OF LA VEDOVA DEL FUSCO (1570)*. (February 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Sanson, Helena
• Is Part Of: Italianist. Volume 35:Number 1(2015)
• Page Start: 1
• Page End: 26
• Publication Date: 2015-02
• Subjects: Italian language -- Periodicals; Italian literature -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; Italy -- Periodicals; 945.005
• DOI: 10.1179/0261434014Z.000000000105
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0261-4340

Abstract

<abstract> <title> <x content-type="archive" xml:space="preserve">Abstract</x> </title> <p>A rare conduct book text for women preserved in only a very few copies, <italic>La vedova del Fusco</italic> was printed in Rome by the Dorici printing press in 1570. Instead of resting on the essentially misogynistic assumption that women are frail, intellectually and physically inferior, and inevitably prone to sin, the traditional view of the female sex of Cinquecento Italy, this treatise on women and widowhood is a bold statement of women's natural inclination to virtue and good, and a denunciation of the inequities and injustices the female sex has to endure in a patriarchal society. Not much is known about its author, a certain 'Horatio Fusco Monfloreo d'Arimini', which is why some scholars have speculated that, in the light of the pro-women ideas it contains, <italic>La vedova</italic> might have been written by a woman. Women are the victims of many wrongdoings in their lives, right from the moment they were born, at the hands of their families, and then throughout the rest of their lives. It is the way they are raised by their parents and their experience of conjugal life which ultimately determine whether a woman will be a good or a bad widow, because it is only in widowhood, when she is finally free to make her own choices and take on responsibilities for her actions, that a woman will reveal her true nature.</p> </abstract>