Home, sweet home, 1982, n. 19-20

EDITORIAL, pp. 3-6

The negation of an autonomous female subjectivity has been a constant trait of the reflection on the organisation of living spaces. Even feminism, while striving to affirm women's subjectivity and individuality in the social sphere, has not conceived of the house as a place where to realise such a project. These are the premises informing the papers collected in this issue.

MUNTONI Alessandra, House Culture in Post War Italy, pp. 7-26

The essay is centred on the assumption that a proper "house culture" and - above all - "modern" house culture never really existed in Italy as it did in the Anglo-Saxon world. In Italy the outward dimension, the dimension of the city, of the street, of the square, seems to have prevailed over the inward dimension, that of the domestic space. Moreover, the transition from an agricultural economy and culture towards an industrial one - with all the associated problems of mass urbanisation - brought as a consequence a need for and a planning of flats rather than of houses. Women have so far had only two possibilities: total refusal on one side, or a passive acceptance mingled with feelings of hatred. The author traces the history of the relationship between women, houses and habitation through the three crucial phases of reconstruction, planning and the last which covers the present, in which despite resistance and oppositions the basis was laid for a public and decentralised policy of the building cycle.

CHIMENTI Cristina, The Categories of Hygiene and Decorum in the House of the-Fifties. Breakdown and Continuity, pp. 27-38

The house and the family have always been closely interconnected in the formulation of the various social policies in Italy. The author shows how the pursuit of social order has always privileged the housing sector, through the improvement of the people's living conditions.
This has had an influence on the various aspects of every day life and particularly on the sphere of hygiene and morality. This is why within the building standards of popular housing we move from hygienic indications typical of Fascism, to a "literature of the house" in which the psychological welfare of each individual comes first. The flat as dominating model becomes very popular during the Fifties. It allowed the virtues of the family to develop while it offered the opportunity of free time to be used in arrangement operations -a mainly male occupation - and routine upkeeping - basically a female one.

FRATICELLI Vanna, Parva sed apta mihi: Notes on Culture and House Politics in Italy during the Twenties, pp. 39-47

In its treatment of the housing problem, Fascism did not follow a coherent political line strictly linked to its ideology of the family and of women. It was strongly affected by the economic conditions of the country which differed greatly in the various geographical areas. Before developing a housing and urban policy which would involve enormous expenditures for housing facilities in the whole territory, Fascism had to build up the highest possible number of houses in order to put an end to urban overcrowding which threatened to become politically dangerous. This is why an urban project such as that of the "garden towns" in other European countries never appeared in Italy. A real architectural culture was generally alien to the planning of the Fascist regime and was the privilege of a few experts. The essay traces an outline of the various housing policies of those years, linking them to the key factors in the Italian situation.

MUNTONI Alessandra (edited by), Notes on the Guisa familistère, pp. 48-64

Short introduction followed by fifteen pages with illustrations from Le familistère de Guise ou les équivalents de la richesse. The familistère was an economic and town planning experiment undertaken by the businessman Jean-Baptiste-André Godin in France in 1858.

Houses in Literature, pp. 65-84

Through different associations, observations and assumptions, the authors (Vanna Gentili, Graziella Pagliano Ungari, Viola Papetti, Jacqueline Risset) suggest topics for research on the different literary portraits and representations of the house. From different views a common trend seems to emerge: it is the hypothesis of the house as a fundamental element in the time-space organization of literary production. Houses for literature then, and literature which never leaves them out. A necessary presence, even if in absentia.

BEER Marina, The Villa, the Temple, the House, the Classroom. The Interiors of A. Manzoni's "The Betrothed, pp. 85-94

The author points out how reading and the middle class home represent a time and a space which always go together, as the one reinforces the significance of the other. This is particularly true in the case of the XIX century novel. At the beginning of the l9th century we find only one novel in Italy, I Promessi Sposi, which has nothing to do with the domestic sphere. The reading of I Promessi Sposi as well as that of Gli Sposi Promessi and Fermo e Lucia shows the novel to be geared to the middle class domestic sphere, even though a detailed description of it never appears in the narration. In the various drafts of the novel we move from the description of the villa to that of the Church and to a novel of the outside and of landscapes.

SARACINO Maria Antonietta, Time for Dreaming: The Woman writes the House, pp. 95-106

The author shows how the novel can be taken as a privileged observation field of the relationship between the woman and the house and how this comes out particularly in women's literature in English which helps widen the range of observation. The idea is that the woman-writer necessarily starts off with a reflection on the space she lives in and with the objects that fill that space. But she soon moves from this towards a wider dimension, towards the discovery of her own inner space, towards self-knowledge. Examples are taken from the writings of Virginia Woolf, Doris Lessing, Charlotte Gilman, Francesca Sanvitale.

PERKINS GILMAN Charlotte, What's outside the house…? A selection from "Women and Economy", pp. 107-123

The editorial board have selected passages from Gilman's book; published in 1898 and translated into Italian in 1902 for the publishing house Giunti and Barbera, Gilman's reflections - her attempt to imagine different, more human houses - still retain their provocative force.

BUTTAFUOCO Annarita, Looking for a flat, pp. 124-126

A witty and sincere witness of the problems, wishes, changing moods, of a young emancipated and feminist woman, looking for a flat to call her home.

FRAISSE Geneviève, The chatterers - Feminism and moralism in France, 1800-1900, pp. 127-147

Analysing a specific historical period, the author looks at women's history as the history of a social subject, avoiding the opposition between class struggle and sex struggle. Discussing the feminist outbursts of the nineteenth century and of the beginning of the twentieth century, it is often forgotten that those women's aims, as well as their methods, were a source of tension with their socialist or reformist companions, and that their struggles always provoked clashes within greater social divisions.

The war between bread and love. The Italian debate on contraception at the beginning of the twentieth century, p. 148

This section addresses an issue which this far has been only marginally treated: the debate on contraception which took place at the beginning of the twentieth century in Italy as well as in other Western countries.

DE LONGIS Rosanna, In defence of woman and race, pp. 149-177

In the post-Unitarian period in Italy, as an industrial revolution took place, there were demographic changes both quantitative and structural that necessarily influenced economic analyses and political debates. The author retraces the development of neomalthusianism in Europe, especially in Anglo-Saxon countries (a movement which had remarkable ties with feminism in the U.S.A.) and later in France. With rare exceptions, on all cultural and political sides the debate on birth control in Italy would take eugenetic accents, and a supportive attitude towards the maternal role. The emancipationist movement does not take a stand on abortion, and does not take part in the debate on neomalthusianism. The ideological role of gynaecologists is extremely relevant.

BUCCI Susanna, The war between bread and love, pp. 178-189

At the beginning of the twentieth century, and until the First World War, the debate on contraception in the Italian socialist movement was linked with the issue of women's work and with the polemical attitude towards emancipationism. Those who defended women's right to work never advocated birth control and a freely chosen maternity. The general socialist tendency upheld woman-as-mother rather than the working woman.

TAGLIAFERRI Maricla, Oblivion and memory. An interview to Margarethe von Trotta, pp. 190-196

The interview is linked to the launch of the German director's film inspired by the collective "suicide" in gaol of some members of the Rote Armee Fraktion - a pretext to analyse, as von Trotta says, not so much terrorism as a country, Germany, which constantly removes its past: first Nazism, now terrorism.