Revolutionary Domesticity in the Italian Risorgimento: Transnational Victorian Feminism, 1850–1890 by Diana Moore (review)

Just over a hundred years have passed since Lytton Strachey published Eminent Victorians (1918), the collection of biographical sketches of Victorian luminaries that challenged the traditional approach of setting subjects high on pedestals. Biography has changed in many ways since then—both in whom scholars consider worthy of study and how they present their research. In her innovative new book Revolutionary Domesticity in the Italian Risorgimento: Transnational Victorian Feminism, 1850–1890, Diana Moore uses a select group of subjects to demonstrate how Victorian women navigated around social and cultural structures rooted in domesticity to enact revolutionary political change.

Revolutionary Domesticity examines five transnational women and their roles in promoting Italian unification. Rather than presenting a group biography or a series of parallel biographies, Moore has organized the book thematically, showcasing how “non-Catholic and non-Italian women” used social networks, philanthropy, education, publication, marriage/motherhood, and document collection to transform “the private sphere [into] an arena for change” (250). Because of the composite approach, it is difficult at times to distinguish each woman as an individual. Nevertheless, having multiple examples strengthens Moore’s case that these Victorian women “repurposed traditionally feminine behaviors for revolutionary ends and made substantial contributions to the Italian Risorgimento” (2).

The transnational approach has several advantages. In focusing on Italian issues, Moore expands the view of Victorian women’s history beyond the more frequently studied national activities conducted inside the United Kingdom and United States. And by examining women, Moore expands the male-dominated narratives of Italian Risorgimento history. Although the book appears as part of Palgrave’s Italian and Italian American Studies Series, it provides enough historical context for those not specializing in Italy to understand the geopolitics of the era without getting bogged down in the weeds of minutiae. Drawing from published and unpublished correspondence, Moore also utilizes an impressive range of other sources, from British, Italian, and American newspapers to Parliamentary debates to organizational records.

Moore has chosen an eclectic bunch to explore. These five middle-class women belonged to the same generation, and all identified as British to some degree, but only two of the book’s subjects were born in Britain (Jesse White Mario and Mary Pickens Chambers). Two were foreign-born Jewish women who married British men (Sara Levi Nathan and Julie Salis Schwabe). The last was born in Florence to British parents (Giorgina Craufurd Saffi). Some married Italian men; all worked closely with one or both of the main leaders of unification, Giuseppe Mazzini and Giuseppe Garibaldi. Chapter 6 (“The Personal is Political”) provides an excellent analysis of how their commitment to Italy informed the personal choices these women made regarding marriage and motherhood, even down to whom Schwabe hired as a governess (the radical Malwida von Meysenbug). Moore provides multiple instances of her subjects injecting Mazzinian ideals into their daily lives. And she acknowledges that they “used domestic, missionary, and imperial rhetoric to transgress established gender norms in radical ways” (19). Their class and national biases affected the work they set out to do, and Moore situates them squarely in their era.

Revolutionary Domesticity highlights how successfully these women made the home a place for politics and how they used their femininity to hide some of their truly radical activities from more moderate contemporaries. Most chapters aggregate the examples to show how these women participated in the Risorgimento, and Moore analyzes the varying levels of their willingness to transcend social norms. For example, in chapter 3 on philanthropy, “Bazaars for Bullets,” she notes that her subjects used traditional methods to raise funds but were split over how to spend them. Some wanted to use the money to support revolution and warfare, others wanted to use it to aid wounded soldiers, widows, and orphans, or to memorialize great men. The “explicitly revolutionary” bazaar of 1863 failed to raise the expected funds in part because the organizers did not couch the event...