Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Nature vs Culture: Repression, Rebellion and Madness in Elsa Morante's Aracoeli

1994; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 109; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/2904930

1080-6598

Adalgisa Giorgio,

Italian Fascism and Post-war Society

In a recent volume on Italian women writers, two consecutive articles appear putting forward two diametrically opposed views of Elsa Morante's treatment of motherhood. Marise Jeuland-Meynaud claims that Morante upholds an essentialist view of women, who are reduced in her novels to instinct, irrationality and to the sole function of procreation.' Her work would thus endorse the nature/ culture opposition-one of the binary oppositions around which patriarchal ideology and thought are organized-where 'nature', traditionally associated with woman, is the negative, inferior and powerless pole compared to 'culture', traditionally associated with male superiority and dominance. Robin Pickering-Iazzi presents the counter-argument that La Storia promotes the view that Ida, who represents traditional motherhood, is a product of social conditioning, and not the embodiment of a female essence: motherhood is thus conceptualized as a social institution.2 The discrepancy between these two interpretations is an indication of the complexity and elusiveness of Morante's work with regard to gender issues.