The Tigress in the Snow: Motherhood and Literature in Twentieth-Century Italy (review)

Femininity is a troublesome subject in the field of Italian literature: plagued by stereotypical assumptions and faced with a dearth of historically relevant analysis, the topic is often misinterpreted. Thus motherhood, as one defining aspect of the feminine subject, suffers from the same lack of constructive critical attention. In her book, The Tigress in the Snow: Motherhood and Literature in Twentieth-Century Italy, winner of the 2008 Ennio Flaiano Book Prize, Laura Benedetti offers a superb introduction to works of fiction that have received insufficient critical attention. Benedetti's title, from Elsa Morante's novel, La storia, is haunting for those familiar with the work, in which a tigress tears pieces of her own flesh while trapped in a frozen hell in order to feed to her starving cubs. This powerful and disturbing image, rife with a grief often misinterpreted in discussions of Italian motherhood, confers a painful shade to Benedetti's work. Motherhood, as a sacrifice, is a difficult subject to broach even in modern society, and was far more so when the authors Benedetti examines were writing. The author enables us to see that though stereotypes about the topic may be alive and well, Italian motherhood is no easier to categorize than any other familial institution in any other country, and a historically viable approach is necessary in order to reach a comprehensive understanding.

Theoretically, Benedetti is reliant on Nancy Chodorow and Adrienne Rich, as well as the Diotima group for her discussions on feminism. That said, though she cites these feminist theorists as fundamental to her process, Benedetti's explorations are essentially free of any effusive theoretical framework. Coupling feminist thought with an acute understanding of modern Italy, Benedetti ushers readers into varied texts with the suggestion that within Italian cultural reality there exists an ideal mother-child relationship: that between the mother and the son. This relationship is exalted by religion and given tangible supportive structure in familial arrangements (5). Psychoanalysis further encourages idealized mother-child relations by working to define and establish a specific "role" for mothers. An awareness of this actuality evidences the obvious yet little mentioned truth: when women reflect on motherhood they do so almost exclusively as daughters, a problematic set-up that does not often figure the mother as subject. As we come to see throughout Benedetti's work, however, and based on these prescribed roles, it is often women themselves who offer the most frank portrait of motherhood.

Benedetti initiates her examination with a historical discussion on how motherhood changed throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. At the dawn of the twentieth century, the institution had progressed into a fragmented enterprise: thanks to reliance on wet nurses, educators and other household help, women of a certain class redefined child-raising as a combination of activities, each belonging to a select individual. Prior to this, everything would have been encompassed under the sole figure of the mother. This fragmentation was countered by proponents of a more holistic approach to mothering, championed by Neera (Anna Zuccari), and was conversely furthered and expanded by women who sought less limiting roles, like Sibilla Aleramo. It is truly a boon that Benedetti includes a discussion of Neera, a complicated and controversial author. Aleramo, on the other hand, has received her fair share of critical attention; yet Benedetti, instead of examining her work as a strand divergent from Italian convention at the beginning of the last century, chooses to explore Aleramo's effect on the role of mothering. Thus, Aleramo, a fine counter to Neera, allows Benedetti to address the author's unique role in defining motherhood, not as an institution, but rather as the source for a woman's creativity.

Perhaps the most thoroughly explored section of the volume is that which focuses on the Fascist years. In her examination of how the Fascist regime attempted to assert control over reproduction and familial life, Benedetti observes that while there exists a glut of...