Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-21T05:51:14.468Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Amazons for Garibaldi: women warriors and the making of the hero of two worlds

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2016

Marjan Schwegman*
Affiliation:
Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
*

Abstract

This article analyses the place and meaning of female heroism in the process of the making of modern Italy. Beginning with Garibaldi's first wife Anita in Brazil, a great number of women all over the world were attracted to Garibaldi and his movement. Theirs was a sentimental and political engagement, which in some cases turned them into real soldiers, like those who joined the ranks of Garibaldi's troops. Whereas until 1860 the Garibaldinian volunteer was not understood as an exclusively male category, this changed around that key year, both in reality and in the collective imagination of the Risorgimento. Women were denied the right to be soldiers in Garibaldi's legendary Thousand. Subsequently, stories of militant women like Anita Garibaldi were softened in the foundation fictions that narrate the birth of Italy, turning women into passive members of the Italian nation. This change is analysed in depth by focusing on the emblematic case of Esperance von Schwartz, one of Garibaldi's biographers, and for a time, one of his female companions in arms.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Association for the study of Modern Italy 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Banti, A.M. 2000. La nazione del Risorgimento. Parentela, santità e onore alle origini dell'Italia unita. Turin: Einaudi.Google Scholar
Banti, A.M. 2005. L'onore della nazione. Identità sessuali e violenza nel nazionalismo europeo dal XVIII secolo alla Grande Guerra. Turin: Einaudi.Google Scholar
Banti, A.M., and Ginsborg, P., eds. 2007. Il Risorgimento. Storia d'Italia. Annali 22. Turin: Einaudi.Google Scholar
Blok, J.H. 1991. Amazones antianeirai. Groningen: Rijksuniversiteit Groningen.Google Scholar
Calabrese, O. 1982. Garibaldi tra Ivanhoe e Sandokan. Milan: Electa.Google Scholar
Campanella, A.P., ed. 1981. Garibaldi's memoirs from his manuscript, personal notes and authentic sources assembled and published by Elpis Melena. Sarasota, FL: International Institute of Garibaldian Studies.Google Scholar
Collet, A. 1994. Alexandre Dumas et Naples. Geneva: Slatkine.Google Scholar
Croce, B. 1927. Uomini e cose della vecchia Italia. Bari: Laterza.Google Scholar
Cuneo, G.B. 1932. Biografia di Giuseppe Garibaldi, ed. Pratesi, Luigi (1st ed. 1850 Turin: Fory e Dalmazzo). Livorno: Raffaello Giusti.Google Scholar
Davey, M. 1860. Icnusa or pleasant reminiscences of two years' residence in the island of Sardinia. London: Binns & Goodwin.Google Scholar
De Grazia, V. 1993. Le donne nel regime fascista. Venice: Marsilio.Google Scholar
De Longis, R. 2002. ‘La donna italiana’. Un giornale del 1848. Genesis. Rivista della Società Italiana delle Storiche 1: 261–76.Google Scholar
DuBois, E. 2003. Margaret Fuller in Italy. Women's Writing 10: 287307.Google Scholar
Dumas, A. 1849. Montevideo ou une nouvelle Troie. Paris: Napoleon Chaix.Google Scholar
Dumas, A. 1860. Mémoires de Joseph Garibaldi. Paris: Levy.Google Scholar
Dwight, T., ed. 1861. The Life of General Garibaldi written by himself with his sketches of his companions in arms, translated by his friend and admirer Theodore Dwight. 2nd ed. (1st ed. 1859). New York: Bamen & Burr.Google Scholar
Garibaldi, G. 1932. Edizione nazionale degli scritti di Giuseppe Garibaldi. Vol. II. Bologna: Cappelli.Google Scholar
Garibaldi, G. 1933. I Mille. Edizione nazionale degli scritti di Giuseppe Garibaldi. Vol. III. Bologna: Cappelli.Google Scholar
Garnett, R.S., ed. 1929. On board the Emma: Adventures with Garibaldi's Thousand in Sicily, by Alexandre Dumas. New York: D. Appleton.Google Scholar
Gasparini, L. 1932. Un amore di Garibaldi. Corrispondenza con Speranza von Schwartz. Milan: Treves.Google Scholar
Gillis, J. 2004. Islands of the mind: How the human imagination created the Atlantic World. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Ginzburg, L. 2005. Anita. Storia di Anita Garibaldi. Rome: E/O.Google Scholar
Goethe, L. 1859. Garibaldi. Sa vie, son enfance, ses moeurs. Ses exploits militaires. Paris: Lebigre-Duquesne.Google Scholar
Guidi, L. 2000. Patriottismo femminile e travestimenti sulla scena risorgimentale. Studi Storici no. 2: 571–87.Google Scholar
Infusino, G. 1972. Alessandro Dumas giornalista a Napoli. Naples: Del Delfino.Google Scholar
Isnenghi, M. 1997. Garibaldi. In I Luoghi della memoria. Personaggi e date dell'Italia unita, ed. Isnenghi, Mario, 2545. Bari: Laterza.Google Scholar
Kluveld, A. 2000. Reis door de hel der onschuldigen. De expressieve politiek van de Nederlandse anti-vivisectionisten, 1890–1940. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.Google Scholar
Laqueur, T.W. 1989. Bodies, details and the humanitarian narrative. In The New Cultural History, ed. Hunt, Lynn, 176204. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Matsuda, M.K. 2005. Empire of love: Histories of France and the Pacific. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Melena, E. 1860. Hundert und ein Tag auf meinem Pferde und ein Ausflug nach der Insel Maddalena. Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe.Google Scholar
Melena, E. 1861a. Recollections of General Garibaldi; or travels from Rome to Lucerne: comprising a visit to the Mediterranean islands of La Maddalena and Caprera. London: Saunders, Otley & Co.Google Scholar
Melena, E. 1861b. Garibaldis Gedenkwürdigkeiten nach handschriflichen Aufzeichnungen desselben und nach authentischen Quellen bearbeitet und herausgegeben. Vol. 2. Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe.Google Scholar
Melena, E. 1862. Excursion à l'île de Caprera. Geneva: Fick.Google Scholar
Melena, E. 1877. Gemma, oder Tügend und Laster, Novelle. Hamburg: G. Franz.Google Scholar
Murray, P.S. 2001. ‘Loca’ or ‘Libertadora’? Manuela Saenz in the eyes of history and historians, 1900–c.1990. Journal of Latin American Studies 33: 291310.Google Scholar
Palazzi, M., Sarti, R., and Soldani, S.. 2002. Introduzione al tema patria e appartenenze. Genesis. Rivista della Società Italiana delle Storiche 1: 920.Google Scholar
Passerini, L. 1999. Europe in love, love in Europe: Imagination and politics between the wars. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Raffa, A., ed. 1997. Elpis Melena. In Calabria e alle Isole Eolie nell'anno 1860. Soveria Manelli: Rubbettino.Google Scholar
Reynolds, L., and Belasco Smith, S., eds. 1991. These sad but glorious days: Dispatches from Europe, 1846–1850, Margaret Fuller. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Riall, L. 2007a. Garibaldi: Invention of a hero. New Haven–London: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Riall, L. 2007b. Eroi maschili, virilità e forme della guerra. In Il Risorgimento. Storia d'Italia. Annali 22, ed. Banti, A.M. and Ginsborg, P., 253–89. Turin: Einaudi.Google Scholar
Ridley, Jasper. 1974. Garibaldi. London: Phoenix Press.Google Scholar
Schwartz, Marie Esperance von. 1944. Garibaldi aneddotico e romantico. Milan: Sonzogno.Google Scholar
Schwegman, M. 1996. Gualberta Alaide Beccari. Emancipazionista e scrittrice. Pisa: Domus Mazziniana.Google Scholar
Schwegman, M. 2005. In love with Garibaldi: Romancing the Italian Risorgimento. European Review of History 12, no. 2: 383401.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schwegman, M. 2009. ‘Garibaldisten’ in Nederland. Over mediterrane hartstocht, huiselijkheid en heroïek in een land van kleine gebaren. In Het eenzame gelijk. Hervormers tussen droom en daad 1850–1950, ed. de Haan, I., et al., 235–49. Amsterdam: Boom.Google Scholar
Smith, B.G. 1998. The gender of history: Men, women and historical practice. Cambridge MA: Harvard Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Soldani, S. 2007. Il Risorgimento delle donne. In Il Risorgimento. Storia d'Italia. Annali 22, ed. Banti, A.M. and Ginsborg, P., 183225. Turin: Einaudi.Google Scholar
Sommer, D. 1991. Foundational fictions: The national romances of Latin America. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Sorba, C. 2001. Teatri. L'Italia del melodramma nell'età del Risorgimento. Bologna: Il Mulino.Google Scholar
Sotgiu, G., and Sega, A.. 2005. Inglesi nell'arcipelago. Da Nelson alla fine dell'ottocento. La Maddalena: Paolo Sorba.Google Scholar
Steverlynck, A. 2005. To what extent were Amazon women facts, real or imagined, of native Americans? Ethnohistory 52, no. 4: 689726.Google Scholar
Warner, Marina. 1981. Joan of Arc: The image of Female Heroism. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.Google Scholar