Anna Maria Mozzoni

Anna Maria Mozzoni

Anna Maria Mozzoni (born May 5, 1837 in Milan ; died June 14, 1920 in Rome ) was an Italian suffragette , writer , journalist , translator, and campaigner for women's suffrage . She is considered the founder of the Italian women's movement .

Life

Anna Maria, entered in the birth register as Marianna, was born in Milan. Her parents, her father was an engineer and architect with a liberal and risorgimental disposition, were both of aristocratic descent and owned some real estate in the Po Valley west of Milan. Shortly after her birth, the parents moved to Rescaldina , the birthplace of their mother. Anna Maria spent the first years of her life in the rural surroundings of Rescaldina. At the age of five, her father sent her to a boarding school run by Catholic sisters for aristocratic and poor children, because otherwise he would not have been able to finance the studies of Anna Maria's two older brothers. The bigoted and ultra-conservative upbringing in boarding school she endured only with troubles, but influenced her later writings and ideas. In 1851 she returned to her parents' home early and continued her self-study training. One of her role models in her youth was Adelaide Cairoli , one of the most famous politically active women in the Risorgimento, whom she also frequented. But it was also influenced by the writings of Cristina Trivulzio Belgiojoso , Giuseppe Mazzini , Charles Fourier and George Sand .

In 1855 she published her first work, a three-act comedy in French. Little is known about her further private life. It is unclear whether Beatrice or Bice del Monte, born in the winter of 1873/74, who Mozzoni herself referred to as her adopted daughter, was really an adopted child or her biological child from an extramarital relationship. In 1886 she married a count and public prosecutor who was about ten years her junior, but separated from him after seven years in tough legal consequences. In 1894 she moved from Milan to Rome with Beatrice.

Anna Maria Mozzoni died in Rome on June 14, 1920.

All her life she fought against conservative, nationalist currents. Anna Maria Mozzoni thought the church was morally depraved and rejected the institution of marriage. The historian Donald Meyer summed up the fact that she did not have to fear any negative consequences for her private life: "As long as private life remained private, Italians of high class were not subject to the official rules."

position

First, Anna Maria Mozzoni joined the Utopian Socialism of Charles Fourier . She later stood up for the poor and advocated equality for women. She argued that women had to work outside the home in order to develop their feminine personality outside of the monarcato patriarcale (German: patriarchal domain ). She rejected the supposedly feminine values ​​such as willingness to make sacrifices, motherliness or emotionality and instead advocated the development of a male model of femininity.

Political activity

As a book author

Article by Maria Mozzoni in La donna : Del voto politico delle donne , 1877

Under the Habsburgs in the Kingdom of Lombardy-Veneto and in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, noble women with landed property had the right to vote. With the Risorgimento in 1861, class differences in male suffrage were abolished. But women were not allowed to vote or hold public office. This became law despite the fact that women had previously given massive support to the patriotic cause and leaders such as Giuseppe Garibaldi had advocated women's participation in public life.

With the book La donna ei suoi rapporti sociali , (German: The woman and her social relationships ) published in 1864 , which she dedicated to her mother, she achieved general fame. With the script in which she quoted Mazzini, Morelli , Ausonio Franchi , Charles Fourier and Henri de Saint-Simon , she addressed the young women of every rank and status in the recently founded Kingdom of Italy and urged them to stand up for the centuries Becoming aware of the oppression of women that would be exercised by general opinion, religion, family, society, science and law. She called on women to actively work towards changing their status, because the initiative for liberation lies with the oppressed themselves.

In 1865 the text La donna in faccia al progetto del nuovo Codice civile italiano followed in response to the draft for the civil code submitted to the Italian Senate . In it she criticized the family law, which equated women with minors and the moronic, in the strongest possible terms: "For a woman, a husband means the intellectual castration, permanent inferiority, the destruction of her personality." After publication, she held her first on April 2, 1865 public speech, which was also the first public speech by a woman in the Kingdom of Italy.

As a journalist

From 1868 Anna Maria Mozzoni was the driving force behind the feminist magazine La Donna . It was edited by Alaide Gualberta Beccari , the daughter of a leading patriot. She campaigned for a reform of family law and spoke out against the regulation of prostitution. From the late 1870s, La Donna actively supported the struggle for women's suffrage. But the newspaper was criticized for its supposedly foreign image of women; the predominant image of women in Italy still revolved around the angelic mother.

As a translator

1869 translated Anna Maria Mozzoni so Jad Adams, The Subjection of Women by John Stuart Mill into Italian.

As an activist

Anna Maria Mozzoni submitted a petition to parliament on women's suffrage in 1877.

In 1878 she represented Italy at the first Congrès international du droit des femmes in Paris, which took place there at the same time as the world exhibition . She gave the opening address there.

In 1881, the activist joined forces with other Republican, radical and socialist women in the struggle for universal suffrage and moved away from her liberal roots towards socialism . However, she always remained autonomous as a feminist. She founded the Lega promotrice degli interessti femminili (German: League for the spread of women's interests ) in Milan in 1881 , but complained about the slow progress: “Senate, nobility, clergy and the queen, who is very submissive, aristocratic and not very intelligent, hesitate with every reform measure. "

Works (selection)

• Del voto politico delle donne , in: La Donna , Volume IX, March 30, 1877, N. 2901877
• La servitù delle donne , traduzione di JS Mill, The Subjection of Women , Milano, Legroy, Tipografia Sanvito, 1870
• Sul regolamento sanitario della prostituzione , in "La Riforma del secolo XIX", Milan, 1870
• Il Congresso Internazionale per i diritti delle donne in Parigi , in “La donna” 10/305, 1878
• Della riforma sociale in favore delle donne , Roma, 1880
• I socialisti e l'emancipazione della donna , Alessandria, 1892

literature

• Elisabeth Dickmann: The Italian women's movement in the 19th century . Domus Editoria Europea, Frankfurt a. M. 2002, ISBN 3-927884-62-6 , Chapter 3: The Feminist Perspective: Anna Maria Mozzoni and the Beginnings of the Women's Movement , p. 91-122 .
• Simonetta Soldani:  MOZZONI, Marianna. In: Raffaele Romanelli (ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 77:  Morlini-Natolini. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 2012.

Web links

Commons : Anna Maria Mozzoni  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Maria Elena Dalla Gassa: Anna Maria Mozzoni. In: enciclopediadelledonne.it. Retrieved May 21, 2019 (Italian). 
2. ^ Giuseppina Salzano, Giovanni Verde: Great Italians of the Past: Anna Maria Mozzoni. In: wetheitalians.com. Retrieved May 21, 2019 . 
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Jad Adams: Women and the Vote. A world history. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-870684-7 , p. 302.
4. ↑ ^{a b c} Simonetta Soldani:  Anna Maria Mozzoni. In: Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI).
5. ^ Donald Meyer: Sex and Power: The Rise of Women in America, Russia, Sweden and Italy. Middletown, Conn., Wesleyan University Press 1987, p. 449, quoted in: Jad Adams: Women and the Vote. A world history. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-870684-7 , page 301.
6. ^ ^{A b c} Russell, Rinaldina (Ed.): The Feminist Encyclopedia of Italian Literature , 1st. Edition, Greenwood Press, Westport, Conn. [u. a.] 1997, ISBN 978-0-313-29435-8 , pp. 88-89.
7. ^ Judith Jeffrey Howard: The Civil Code of 1865 and the Origins of the Feminist Movenemt in Italy , in: Betty Boyd Caroli, Robert F. Harney, Lydio F. Tomasi: The Italian Immigrant Woman in North America. Toronto, Multicultural History Society of Ontario 1978, p. 16, quoted in: Jad Adams: Women and the Vote. A world history. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-870684-7 , page 301.
8. ↑ Lucy Riall: Garivaldi: Invention of a Hero. New Haven, Yale University Press 2007, p. 372, quoted in: Jad Adams: Women and the Vote. A world history. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-870684-7 , page 301.
9. ^ Judith Jeffrey Howard: The Civil Code of 1865 and the Origins of the Feminist Movenemt in Italy , in: Betty Boyd Caroli, Robert F. Harney, Lydio F. Tomasi: The Italian Immigrant Woman in North America. Toronto, Multicultural History Society of Ontario 1978, p. 17, quoted in: Jad Adams: Women and the Vote. A world history. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-870684-7 , page 301.
10. ^ Donald Meyer: Sex and Power: The Rise of Women in America, Russia, Sweden and Italy. Middletown, Conn., Wesleyan University Press 1987, pp. 222/223, cited in: Jad Adams: Women and the Vote. A world history. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-870684-7 , p. 302.
11. ↑ Karen M. Offen: European feminisms 1700-1950. A political history . Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA 2000, ISBN 0-8047-3419-4 , pp. 151-154 .
12. ^ Theodore Stanton, The Woman Question in Europe. London, Sampson Low 1884, p. 317, quoted from: Jad Adams: Women and the Vote. A world history. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-870684-7 , p. 302.