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La figura della donna nel teatro di Eduardo De Filippo Edoardo Esposito (review)

2003; Modern Humanities Research Association; Volume: 98; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/mlr.2003.a827150

2222-4319

Donatella Fischer,

Educational and Social Studies

804 Reviews and their families, but without fully explaining exactly how they did this. This weak? ness apart, Spiritual Fun remains a wonderful example of how to use literature and history to understand early modern theatre, as well as the gendered dimension of the ltalian cultural tradition. University of Birmingham Silvia Evangelisti Lafigura della donna nel teatro di Eduardo De Filippo. By Barbara de Miro d'Ajeta. Naples: Liguori. 2002. 109 pp. ?11.50. ISBN 88-207-3446-x. Reperes culturels dans le theatre d'Eduardo De Filippo. By Edoardo Esposito. Toulouse : Editions Universitaires du Sud. 2002. 373 pp. ISBN 2-7227-0097-2. In his exploration ofthe Italian family and of its idiosyncrasies, Eduardo De Filippo created a number of formidable female characters, such as Amalia Jovine (Napoli milionaria !) and Filumena Marturano (protagonist of the eponymous play). These are women who, in differentways, fightagainst the roles that have been imposed on them. Amalia Jovine forfeitsher role as mother and wife to pursue her own dreams ofwealth and social promotion. Filumena rejects the label of 'ex-prostitute' and succeeds in locating herself right at the centre of bourgeois life through some canny strategies. Yet, although critical studies of De Filippo's plays are plentiful,to date there has been no critical study of his representation of women. Barbara de Miro d'Ajeta, lecturer in history of theatre and performance at the University of Naples, has filled this gap with La figura della donna nel teatro di Eduardo De Filippo. Her book explores the development of female characters from De Filippo's earlier plays to the later ones, and offersa new reading in that she focuses on the differentideas of femininity that emerge from his work. In her analysis of Filumena Marturano, for instance, the cri? tic underlines the role reversal that takes place in the play. Filumena achieves her social promotion by shedding her stigma of 'ex-prostitute' and acquiring the role of 'mother', but there is no return to a traditional family. It is the man who serves the woman, thus undermining the traditional patriarchal structure. And we should add that, very importantly, Filumena challenges and ultimately refuses the concept of 'fatherhood', by never revealing to her husband the identity of his son. He has to accept all her three children as his own. When looking at other plays, such as Mia famiglia and Bene mio e core mio, de Miro d'Ajeta rightlypoints out the importance of the female characters who, with great effort,manage to go against a prevalently male world of power and money by conquering that world themselves. She insists that characters such as Elena Stigliano (Mia famiglia) or Chiarina Savastano (Bene mio e core mio) achieve a new self-awareness through which they mature as human beings. They are on the way to emancipation, although here we must add that it would be rash to define De Filippo's theatre as feminist. De Miro d'Ajeta's work is an important addition to the current criticism on De Filippo, especially because it offersa freshperspective in choosing the female charac? ters and their development as its vantage point. It is a welcome study, much needed to help dispel some long-standing and old-fashioned ideas about De Filippo's theatre as endorsing the concept of a traditional and hierarchical family. This book compels us to re-examine the relationship between De Filippo's male and female characters and to listen to the women's voices which so often overturn the old structures of the male world in his later dramas. Edoardo Esposito's Reperes culturels dans le theatre d'Eduardo De Filippo is a systematic study of the plays in chronological order, where the author identifies core 'themes' that recur in the various works. At the end of each chapter, these are clustered in a 'grille thematique' which sums up the main characters, the place, the type MLR, 99.3, 2004 805 of language, and the core thematic strands of each work. In the case of Gli esami non finiscono mai, for example, the themes are the social constraints, the family as a bour? geois environment, and the constant 'examinations' to which the main character...