The ‘Daughter's Construction,’ or What Happens to Italian Novels When the Daughter Tells the Story

Abstract

The present study responds to Zwinger's general question with respect to those Italian female writers who wrote using the novel as a literary construct for family relations, particularly with the father. In fact, the main argument is that a major thematic shift has taken place within the Italian romanzo di famiglia. While the analysis of the family relations in novelistic writing relies on naturalistic effects that depict the most conventional issues at the core of Italian society, the family novel by women writers dealing with the father-daughter relationship opens new areas of reflection on the various forms of psychological dependence, identity formation, subjection to power and authority as potestas, and social construction which define the woman as a whole.