"A Perfect Heroine in Forign Travel." Female Mobile Identities and Southern Italy in the 19th Century Non-feminist Periodical Press

Abstract

This essay focuses on the inteaction between the publication of female travel writing abouth the South Of Italy in non -feminist 19th century British periodicaldìs and the circulation of a transgressive model of femininity centred on the concepts of mobility, vitality and visibility. the choice of Southern Italy, and anti-tourist destination that since the era of the Grand Tour had been considered dangerous for men, let alone for women, magnifies female heroic attitudes and contaminates female conventional domestic purity enhancing the concept of an unfixed female identity. The publications of a travelogue, a mostly non fictional genre, on an innovative and reactive medium, was a manifest act of transgression with respect to fixed social order, which gave visibility and credibility to a different adventurous model of femininity,an anti-Angel icon.