Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Racconti di silenzi e di anarchie

Abstract

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935), one of the greatest female figures of social, cultural and literary fin-de-siècle history, is generally mentioned for her wide contributions given to the feminist movement during the first decades of the XX century. The narrative traits of some of her short stories, collected in the volume also in their Italian translation (all of them but “The Yellow Wallpaper” are the first Italian translation), are of great value in so far as they are closely linked to contemporary age both from a thematic and formal point of view. The short stories, besides focussing on crucial aspects of the trans-formation of the gender relationship, are instrumental in interrupting the discoursive circuit of patriarchal origin of late XIX century. A diachronic and synchronic analysis allows to photograph an existential and relational female journey which from an alleged ‘madness’, culturally constructed, leads the main female characters to a plain awareness of themselves.