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Una donna : Autobiography as Exemplary Text

1990; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 11; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.33137/q.i..v11i1.10546

2293-7382

Fiora A. Bassanese,

Linguistic Studies and Language Acquisition

Since its debut in 1906, Sibilla Aleramo's Una donna has been interpreted as a book which is simultaneously autobiography and novel, confession and paradigm, personal and universal.Starting with the earliest reviews, some critics have focused on its factual matrix and interiority, while others have highlighted its feminist message.Arturo Graf proposed that "più che di un romanzo, ha carattere di giornale intimo"' while, seventy-five years later, Olga Lombardi would declare that "si tratta di una lunga, appassionata con- fessione in cui l'autrice rifa la storia della propria vita" (737).At the same time, Graf's contemporary, Alfredo Gargiulo, understood its seminal nature, placing it "nella bibbia del femminismo, al posto della genesi" alongside Ib- sen's plays, an opinion echoed in 1975 by Lanfranco Garetti: "è certo il primo libro femminista in Italia.""For Aleramo herself, Una donna was memoir, avowal, exposé, and, most profoundly, self-examination: "Ho dovuto, sempre, fare un grande sforzo per rievocare il passato che volevo, che dovevo narrare, e dal quale ormai ero del tutto estranea."^Inkeeping with much women's writing, autobiography and novel merge creating a work which is both private and public: indeed, Una donna originated in a handful of diary annotations written in June 1901, a year before the neo-novelist began the composition of her first book."This "nucleo generatore" was carefully inte- grated into the text, emphasizing its confessional tone and sincerity.Aleramo was extremely concerned with the veracity of her fiction, as though any dis- tortion of the facts would negate the validity of her message for, although her heroine's tale was exemplary, it was also her story whose telling was an act of self-revelation.In the diaries kept late in life, the writer would comment that Una donna was "se non proprio una menzogna, per lo meno una mutilazione della verità,"'' because she had not told her entire personal history, a misrepresentation remedied in 11 passaggio (1919).