Pleasure of Writing: Critical Essays on Dacia Maraini

Revolution in the Laundry

Pauline Dagnino Revolution in the Laundry In the early part of Dacia Maraini's novel Donna in guerra (Woman at War)1 the heroine, Vannina, travels with her husband from the everyday social reality in Rome to an island holiday so~ewhere off the coast of Naples. On this island she makes new friends and eventually decides to spend time in Naples without her husband before returning home. Among these new friends are Giottina and Tota, two women Vannina regularly meets in the laundry. Although these characters make only a minor appearance in the novel as a whole, I would like to suggest here that their presence is essential to the development of the heroine and serves to mark Dacia Maraini's importance as a feminist writer. Donna in guerra was first published in 1975 during a shift"'ing focus in the European femin.ist movement. While it is true that the relationship of women to both history and culture has always been subject to debate, in Europe in the late sixties this debate took the form of open militancy that in tum was replaced by the "post militant" feminism of the eighties and nineties. With their intense political activity, the European women of 1968 sought a place for themselves in a predominantly male world but this activity itself marked a break from established traditions and gave rise to a new generation of feminists who felt themselves different from the others. This later generation began to be aware of itself as having an experience that was "different" from that of men and endeavored to find articulation for this experience.2 Whereas in the sixties and early seventies gender was seen as sexual difference, from the mid-seventies onward the question ofdifference became the problem of articulating women's different experiences. 232 Revolution in the Laundry Like the feminists themselves, a feminist writer may also be classified by generation. Critical readings ofDonna in guerra h~lVe linked the work with the militant generation of feminists, suggesting that the act of war carried out in this novel is the militancy of its female protagonist who demonstrates that she is no longer content with the space of silence and absence designated for her by the male-dominated social structure.3 The development ofthe heroine ofthis novel from a traditional position of learned passivity to one where she is able to take control of her ownlife and power over her own body has generally been seen as the militant feminist act that demonstrates the political basis that much personal experience is built upon. Robin Pickering-Iazzi summarizes "Vannina's journey to authentic being" as one that "expands the poss~ble meanings and forms of women's existence" (336), while Carol Lazzaro-Weis concludes that Donna in guerra unmasks "the illusion that political fact could be separated from private life" (304).4 . In these readings, the heroine's achievement of autonomy is described as a movement that somehow traverses a terrain from private to public, or from the space of silence and absence to a privileged vantage point. From just such a reading, the private is still defined from the point of view of the public and the silent, absent space from the position of privilege. Notions of identity are still grounded exclusively.in male perceptions and experience.of self. There has been no identification of the articulation of women's different experiences, which is the concern ofthe feminist writers of the post militant generation. The articulation of women's experience of difference is itself problematk. To write about women, it is not enough just to be a woman who writes~ As Anne Cranny~Francis notes, "many writers work conscientiously within the dominant·ideologies of gender, race and class; after all, that is the best wayto make a living" (1). The skills and traditions involved inthe production of literature have been devised according to the needs and interests· of men. Traditional narrative forms and conventions have supported and perpetuated the cultural norms that have worked to define women in relation to masculinity. Through reading within these forms and conventions, a woman reader more often than not is required to learn to consider herself in relation to others. Conventional plot structures forwomenhave 233 Pauline Dagnino progressed toward the heterosexual relationship and marriage where man has been the active agent of courtship, seduction, or proposal and woman the passive object. The countless women who end...