«Nor the futurists we will launch a manifesto to the young ladies. We will open a formidable investigation into these martyrs and these wretches, we will indicate (…) the possibility of their emancipation towards love.” It was 1918 when Emilio Settimelliauthor of this invective, turbulent futurist author, fascist (later repentant), took to heart, in his own way, the issue of “spinsters”.
«They – explains Settimelli – either wait and don’t find, or they wait and find badly, or they don’t wait and fall into the most rapacious hands». Settimelli’s thesis is that «society demands from the young lady the masterpiece of a well-made marriage, before granting her an internshipa study, a quantity of wrong evidence.” The proposal follows that more freedom should be given to womenso that “his education is formed more by facts, by life, than by books and words”. How much modernity in these sentences!
Yet, the path towards the emancipation of “young ladies”, future singles, in Italy has been very slow compared to that achieved in other more secular countries. Reading Italian women from unification to today by Michela De Giorgio (Laterza), we learn that «English unmarried women in the early 1900sdemonstrate psycho-social behaviours, self-esteem, a spirit of competition, unimaginable in unmarried Italians.”
Antonella Baccaro (photo by Carlo Furgeri Gilbert).
This category of females who develop the concept of independence is called “spinsters”previously used in a derogatory way: they are girls who invade the fields of professions, commerce, arts and sciences.
The teachers: symbol of independence
And in so much modernity “spontaneous celibacy” appears, an idea that in Italy still appears pretentious. The only exception is that of the teachers, the graduates who provide themselves with an independent future at the cost of losing the opportunity of a marriage, caught up as they are in the pursuit of a teaching position.
Rewinding the thread that brought us here, to this column that can talk proudly about single women, moves me a little. The suggestion of read these pages of our history at school It may seem theoretical to you, but personally I have already brought the topic to many classes. Dear teachers, let’s talk about it.
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