MODERN ITALIAN WOMEN.

(St. James's Gazette.)

Curious survivals of past times can be unearthed by those who will investigate the hidden corners of societies and nations. Many criminals (say the new school of criminal jurists), with their large moveable ears, their obtuse angle from ear to jaw-bone are, as it were, belated specimens of old-world savagedom who have remained stationary amid general advance.  The same scientists, examining nations instead of individuals, and observing the stunted moral development of the Italian women, comparing the low level of her intellectual life with that of her average  English sister, would be inclined to believe that here, too, we have to deal with a survival of times long passed away. To the independent resolute Englishwoman of the middle class, the life of her Italian sister would seem a bad and extravagant dream.

Can a young woman, accustomed to go out when she will and where she will, put herself into the state of mind of one who only crosses the threshold of her door well-dragooned by a watchful mother, to show her toilette at mass, in the streets, or at some friend's house ? Is it really possible for a liberal-minded Englishwoman to identify herself, even for a short time, with a society in which two or three visits from a young man to a house where there are unmarried daughters morally binds him to ask the hand of one of them—a society in which it is more likely than not that very old ladies have never known how to write, and that middle-aged ones have forgotten the art from sheer want of practice ? Yet such is the state of things at the present day among the middle classes of Italy.

In considering the modern Italian woman we must bear in mind that we are considering a woman formed by man to an extent not realisable in countries which are not Catholic and know not the real working of the institution of clerical celibacy. The character of an Italian girl is moulded in important particulars not by the mother, but by a man and a stranger—the confessor—acting either indirectly through the mother or directly through, the confessional. It is through a grating, in the gloom of a church, that a pure-minded and morbidly conscientious girl seeks relief from some peccadillo which may weigh on her mind—not in the healthy quiet of her home, where a wise mother can treat the matter as lightly or seriously as the girl's character requires. In the confessional everything grows exaggerated. The confessor can get those impressionable natures entirely into his power. He moulds them at his will, and often, by shutting them up in a convent, robs Italy of her finest feminine spirits, who, if left at large, would do much to redeem their country from its present social rottenness. And once in the convent they are still moulded by the priests, since there are no women confessors. It may be, however, that the girl, desirous of leaving the world, enters some nursery or teaching sisterhood. All the better for her personally; but for Italy all the worse, for the teaching sisterhoods in especial do much to hinder the development of freer ideas. Slaves to their spiritual directors, thoroughly imbued with the antiquated and narrowing literature provided for them by the Church, those sisters help to keep down the standard of female education. The sisterhoods are rich; they can take pupils, whom they board and lodge well, and to whom they give what sounds a liberal education at rates impossible to private institutes (£1 8s a month is considered a fair price); and they consequently get into their hands the education of a good proportion of Italian women of the upper and middle classes, giving a training directed to repress and cramp them in all important particulars. The proverb says, " Give a dog a bad name and hang him." Din into a woman's ears that she is a poor frail creature, certain to do wrong (there is only one kind of wrong apparently for the Italian woman), and she will, of course, be true to her training, and show, in fact, that she has thoroughly learnt her lesson. She has never been taught that self-respect which, displayed by American and English women, excites admiration among Italian men. She knows that the stronger sex do not think of her with respect, for she sees that she has to be closely guarded even from the one who intends to make her his wife. She is taught that the only way to please is to display her physical attractions to the greatest possible advantage. She lives in an atmosphere of prevarication, which goes by the name of "tact." She is answerable in nothing to herself, in all to her confessor, from whom she can at any time get absolution. Is it any wonder if, after such a training and living among such influences, an Italian woman has not that high idea of the value of womanhood which should be her best support and shield in the moments of temptation to which the hot impulsive blood of the nation exposes her ? These temptations come all too soon in an Italian lady's life. Scarcely has she left school when her whole attention is turned to getting married. The question of dress now occupies her mind almost  exclusively, and if she continues to take English or French lessons it is chiefly to fill up the anxious time of waiting for a parti. The work is done in the most superficial manner, for a thorough knowledge of a foreign language will make no more impression at an evening party than a shallow one; therefore, according to a charmingly utilitarian mode of reasoning, a shallow one is preferable. Very dreary is this waiting time in a well-to-do family. The girl, now a young woman, has no taste for reading ; in fact, she cannot understand that a book may possibly serve as a means of recreation; "to read" and "to study" are for her interchangeable terms. Besides, there is no library in an Italian household. There may be a few shelves with the classics—Ariosto, Petrarch, Monti's Iliad, and so on; but these she is not allowed to touch. All her intellectual food (if she desires such) consists in sensational French and English novels translated into slipshod Italian, which appear day after day in the newspapers, and excite her emotions without appealing to her imagination. The well-to-do unmarried girl is thus at a complete loss as to how to fill up her day. "When do you get up?" one such young woman was once asked. " Oh, at 9 or half-past; the day is so long I lie in bed as late as possible." "And when do you go to bed ? " At, 10 or half-past ; I have nothing to do in the evenings." And this is a typical life for unmarried girls, of the upper classes. In the middle classes fine dressing out of doors is to be combined with an ability, real or supposed, for keeping house. Fond mammas regale young men with stories of their daughters' prowess in cooking in a manner worthy of Goldsmith's Mrs. Primrose, and have even been known to set the hopeful young women to sweeping and cleaning as soon as the expected ring was heard at the door, in order that the hesitating aspirant might be brought to a declaration by the sight of the girl's capacity as a menial servant. Under those circumstances marriage becomes simply an escape from intolerable dreariness. The idea of choosing a husband to whom she can prove a faithful wife rarely enters the Italian girl's head. She must be married that she may be free. Some man of her acquaintance thinks she makes a good figure in the society he frequents, finds that her dowry is sufficiently large, and, tired of " living," or desirous of settling down, proposes for her hand. The young wife, if she belongs to the upper classes, finds herself suddenly in the possession of unbounded liberty. Her chief duty is to act as a sort of clothes-peg, that the world may praise her husband's liberality. She can now go out alone, and, having little to do at home, spends most of her time calling, promenading, and gossiping. The evenings are especially trying to an Italian woman settled out of her native town Her husband goes out to his café, his club, or to visit his friends. She takes this as a matter of course, and can form no picture of a society in which men spend their evenings with their wives. If by any chance he asks her to go with him, she probably discovers that she has no new dress, and will run the risk at sacrificing her husband's sympathy rather than appear in an old one. So she remains at home, sometimes alone, sometimes with some woman friend who lives in one of the apartments of the same house, too often with one of those insufferable coxcombs who think young married women fair game. The  result of this state of things, of the ennui, empty-headedness, encouraged childish vanity, can easily be imagined. It is a well-known fact, too, admitted by Italian women, that it is this wide-spread immorality which renders possible the extravagant dress worn by the wives of small Government officials.  The priests "have wide sleeves" for sins of this kind, and the Church has provided a special confessor, called a penitentiary, to absolve such "sins of the flesh." There are signs, however, here as elsewhere, that the leaven of progress is at work. Families returned from South America, where they have grown rich, are bringing new and more energetic blood into the country, and the girls in those families ( often half Spanish) are kept under less strict surveillance and are far more intelligent than the pure Italians. Men show an increasing tendency to marry English and American women, which meant that they begin to appreciate real feminine companionship—a fact which the quick-witted Italian mother will surely not be slow to mark and act upon. Girls in poor circumstances are beginning to feel it no disgrace to gain their livelihood by taking some Government employment, such as a teacher or telegraph clerk. Even the Universities are becoming acquainted once more with girl graduates. In Genoa, one of the most conservative cities in this respect, there have been several ; at Turin a woman recently took her LL. D. degree, but was not allowed to plead, at Bologna there is actually a lady professor of Zoology. Many, too, are the women labouring in woman's cause. Among them are the Signora Cimino, who has lately founded an agricultural school for girls at Cesena and Signora Fanny Zampini, who is founding a Women's international Institute in Rome. We may well hope that the seed thus being sown in the fruitful soil of the quick Italian mind will soon grow into a flourishing tree and that the time is not very far off when those who talk so loudly of their devotion to Mazzini will at length lay to heart one of his most cherished maxims—that no country can be truly free whose women are enslaved and lightly esteemed.

Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 - 1954), Wednesday 14 May 1890, page 5