Women writing on language

This chapter looks at how women finally made their first appearance in the field of linguistic codification, bringing out works on Italian grammar and on language etiquette in a changed political and social context. In their contribution to the creation of a national form of entertainment in the years when radio and television were still far away, women writers took a less traditional approach to the language of their works in order to overcome the fact that discussions on the Questione had come to a standstill. Their first, scattered remarks on the topic show less preoccupation with form and a more generous approach to and understanding of their audience's needs. The language they used, imperfect as it may have been, did not stop women of all classes from being caught up by the fate of young heroines and sharing their passions and misfortunes. Women writers bent language to fit their own requirements, refusing to let it stand in the way of their long-awaited right to express their full imaginative drive.

Prologue: On grammar and women

This chapter begins with a brief review of various personifications of grammar. It suggests that whichever personification Grammar is given, the underlying point — that she holds a central position in the system of education of the liberal arts — remains. She is the cradle of knowledge and the point of entry to a whole range of disciplines, skills, and methods that in turn lead to further literary and textual knowledge. This is followed by discussions of how teaching and learning grammar was considered unsuitable for women; the impact of the invention of printing on the form, content, and transmission of knowledge; and the emergence of the literary vernacular alongside Latin in the sixteenth century. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

Women and the mother tongue in the Ottocento

This chapter first outlines the linguistic situation of Italy in the first decades of the nineteenth century. It then investigates the role that schooling had in spreading Italian in the post-unification period, with particular attention given to issues that concerned the female sex, now that state schools catered for young girls as well as boys. Controversies surrounding women's education were as alive as ever in the second half of the nineteenth century, with a decisive role being played by the question of how mothers could effectively and competently contribute to make Italian the language used in the family. If mothers could not instruct their children to use the national language competently — something that was now perceived as a good citizen's duty — female teachers, the ‘maestre’, were called to step in. They were entrusted with the quasi-religious task of spreading education and language to children, irrespective of the hardships and sacrifices that their poorly paid and unjustly undervalued profession imposed upon them. In a difficult linguistic situation, in which access to Italian still had to be gained with effort and study, Tuscan women (even if uneducated) were, contrary to the majority of women across the peninsula, in the privileged position of being considered the repository of an unspoilt form of language which flowed naturally from their lips. Some renowned non-Tuscan men of letters actively sought their help and assistance to give the language of their works that spontaneity they so much aspired to and did not possess.

Women and vernacular grammar

With the opening up of literary society and the erosion of its hierarchy that came about during the course of the Cinquecento, vernacular grammars ceased to be works only for scholars and authors tried to extend their reach also to beginners, foreigners, and women. This chapter examines this process of relative popularization of grammar works and, at the same time, of the Questione. The first section outlines the shift in the envisaged readers of these works, with reference to social and political issues. The next two sections focus on women as addressees of grammatical works, both at the higher end of the social scale and more in general alongside the less learned, respectively. Continuing to follow the development of grammatical production in time, the last section investigates the reasons for the setback that the relationship between women and grammar suffered in the seventeenth century.

Epilogue

This chapter presents some concluding thoughts from the author. The end of the nineteenth century was a further landmark in women's long battle for the literary, and now also national, language and its grammar. The journey started with Nicostrata holding a hornbook and a key to access a symbolic tower (that of learning) from which she herself was excluded. It continued in the Cinquecento with the female addressees of some of the first vernacular grammars and with the refined portraits of women readers, such as Lucrezia Panciatichi and Maria del Berrettaio. In the Settecento they were followed by Pietro Longhi's ‘dame’, so eager to learn and instruct themselves, and with a preference for anything fashionable and French. But alongside these figures, fixed forever in time by the artist's paint and brush or the writer's pen, there were those women for whom, over the centuries and across the peninsula, acquiring even just a smattering of literacy was a small victory.

Knowledge and language ‘for the ladies’

Across Europe, as early as the seventeenth century (and even more so in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries) women became the target of scientific treatises which aimed to explain new scientific knowledge to an unspecialized audience. Women were the privileged recipients of popularizing works of science and literature, and therefore indirectly contributed to introducing the new philosophers. In view of women's limited education, and their ignorance of Latin, works ‘for the ladies’ became synonymous with something adapted so as to become elementary and easy to grasp. Knowledge ‘for the ladies’ extended also to language, with the production across various countries of grammatical works which claimed to be, according to their titles and prefaces, expressly meant for the female sex. In agreement with the viewpoint that saw women as being incapable of real intellectual efforts, authors of these grammars shunned dry, boring, and taxing ways of learning, in favour of quicker and more pleasant and entertaining ones.

Women and language in the ‘Secolo delle donne’

This chapter discusses the complex linguistic situation of Italy in the eighteenth century, taking into account its broader implications as well as, specifically, women's relationship with spoken and written language. Throughout the century, Italian continued to be above all a written tool and still had to withstand competition from the dialects and from Latin, both in terms of writing and in the context of schooling. A new front of rivalry opened up with French, which, especially in the highest classes, occupied a privileged role at the expense of Italian, with women in particular often being attacked for indulging in its use. The debates on the education of women that enlivened the Settecento did not overlook the question of language: the Enlightenment re-evaluation of women's role in society, as educators and as citizens, explains the frequent pleas by educationalists and men of letters that the female sex should learn Italian. If, on the one hand, female periodicals and novels allowed women access to written Italian to an unprecedented degree, on the other a large number of female writers, journalists, and translators were able to offer their own direct contribution to language and the literary world.

Women, the vernacular, and classical languages

This chapter examines women's linguistic education in Cinquecento Italy and the role played by the vernacular in making knowledge more accessible to the less educated, and particularly to women. Women's language, according to men of letters and theorists, was simple and devoid of refinement, but also pure and conservative. Women's role as linguistic educators of their offspring could only be a limited one, circumscribed to the first years of childhood: a girl's education usually remained confined within a domestic environment dominated by the vernacular, and removed from the universe of classical languages and more advanced studies that was a privilege of the lucky few. With the development and spread of the printing press, women came to be seen as a new, profitable sector of the publishing market. They became the target of a variety of works that brought the literary vernacular within their reach. A determining role in helping to spread the literary vernacular across different social classes was played by Petrarchism, and the prestige of the written vernacular allowed for the expression of the voices and talents of women writers. Discussions on language were not merely arid scholarly lucubrations. They had become a fashionable topic that pervaded courtly and upper-class society and concerned men and women alike, with women's presence also occasionally directly gracing the more traditional realms of male linguistic erudition.