Post-Unification Gender Dissonances and Ideological Counter-Discourse in Capuana’s Rassegnazione

The article offers a (re)reading of Capuana’s often neglected novel Rassegnazione (1907), which revolves around the notion of gender-based violence as a central thematic trope. My reading illustrates Capuana’s deployment of the theme of femminicidio as a narrative tool through which to develop a counter-discursive strategy, aimed at exposing the oppressiveness of a patriarchal social system in post-unification Italy. By emphasizing the sophisticatedly philosophical, Hegel-based argument through which Rassegnazione unveils the inherent masculinism of both the private and public spheres in Capuana’s times, the essay contributes to reassessing not only the novel itself but also the long-lasting debate on Capuana’s alleged lack of social impegno and/or his equally alleged reactionary conservatism. The essay first contextualizes the debate on Capuana’s (dés)engagement (1.1), and illustrates how Rassegnazione fits into this critical landscape (1.2). Subsequently, by drawing on a range of scholars including Terdiman (1985) and Valisa (2014) as well as recent feminist and gendered rereadings of Hegel, it postulates and discusses the coexistence, in the novel, of two intertwined, yet colliding ideological discourses: one, which is aligned to the paternalistic gender and sexual politics promoted by mainstream conservative elites in liberal Italy (2.1); and the other, which offers a dissonant and highly critical perspective by highlighting the incoherence and systemic fallacies embedded in the dominant narrative (2.2). The essay ends with a reflection on how Capuana’s philosophically-informed counter-discourse may be understood, à la Jameson, as one way in which symbolic resistance occurs in the intellectual production of post-unification Italy