La Resistenza: Gendered narratives on women’s contributions to the Resistance

Mountain, Lucy (2024). La Resistenza: Gendered narratives on women’s contributions to the Resistance. University of Birmingham. M.A.

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Abstract

This thesis examines women’s narratives on the Italian Resistance over the span of 50 years. Through analysing three sources, Liliana Cavani’s La donna nella Resistenza (1965), Bianca Guidetti Serra’s Compagne (1977) and Lidia Menapace’s Io partigiana, La mia Resistenza (2014), I compare and contrast women’s representation and narratives over time. Through analysing these texts in light of the social context of the time, and through a gender-political lens, I identify a shift over time in the representation of women’s Resistance narratives and contributions to the Resistance. A shift can be seen, from an essential narrative of women’s roles in the 1960s, through a progression of these roles in the 1970s, to a more emphatic focus on women as political agents in the 2010s. In analysing these texts as both gendered political narratives and testimonies, this thesis proposes a more nuanced and varied understanding of women’s experiences of the Resistance. Considering women’s normative gender role in Fascist Italy during the Resistance, this thesis demonstrates a more diversified and nuanced experience of the Resistance that has been neglected in general Italian historiography.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Masters by Research > M.A.)

Award Type:

Masters by Research > M.A.

Supervisor(s):