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Writing the Journey: June 1999

"Gender and Italian Nationalism in Mary Shelley's Rambles in Germany and Italy"


Jeanne Moskal
Columbia University
jm730@columbia.edu

In Rambles in Germany and Italy (1844), Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley includes a section of three letters (it is an epistolary travel book) advocating Italian nationalism by reviewing contemporary Italian authors and historians. I discuss the various gendered strategies Shelley uses, on the theory that politics still counted as an outré topic for women writers, even in travel writing, despite the long-standing tradition of travellers writing about "national manners". I also analyze the reviews of Rambles to assess the effectivenes of Shelley's strategies in winning her audience's approval and in gaining a hearing for her political views.

One area of particular emphasis is Shelley's strategy for making Italian nationalism attractive to a British public that even as late as the 1840s found Napoleon's name anathema. Mary Shelley had to fight the common perception, shared by both Liberal and Tory historians such as Sismondi and Alison, that Napoleon's declaration of the "Kingdom of Italy" and his unification of rivalrous duchies and city-states during the French occupation were the source of the Risorgimento. Mary Shelley stresses instead the native origin of Italian nationalism and also writes about the British role in "sowing the seed" of the hope for free institutions.


Jeanne Moskal
Columbia University
jm730@columbia.edu

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Updated May 23, 1999