School Memories in Women's Autobiographies (Italy, 1850-1915)

No doubt women’s writing reminds us the courage to venture into a universe perceived as a construction declined on masculine paradigms, and therefore not easily accessible to women. This belief feeds on the one hand the choice on the type of literary genre – most often diaries, memoirs, autobiographies – the other testifies the significant presence of the self, traces of which are evident even in the narration of something else. This is the case for many women, in which the strong will to narrate their world crosses the boundary of shame and the claimed word often becomes social protest and rebellion. Between XIX and XX centuries we are witnessing a turning point in training programs targeted at young: mass education, strongly supported by the new unified Italian state, brings more and more girls in the classrooms – as diligent, studious, tenacious pupils – and increasingly women – as teachers “gardener” in kindergartens, as teachers graduated in elementary schools, as “teachers of teachers” in the Normal schools that were spreading across the country, from North to South, really a numerically visible presence. In the paper this particularly condition will be explored through high relevance sources as the autobiographies written by women involved in schools, at different levels. Memory brings us episodes, feelings, experiences, all necessary to highlight the “remembered school” not just as it was but as it is painted by the selection (and censured) work of individual memory.