The Teaching of the French Language and Fascist Ideology: Manuals for Young Women

Abstract

This article analyses how, by revising the school syllabus, by molding action and by the censure of textbooks, the Fascist regime in Italy imposed its own vision of women in the teaching of the French language. First we trace the figure of the woman and her role in the ideal of the Fascist regime and then we concentrate on the measures taken for the education of school-girls. The conception of feminine, explicit or allusive, and the teaching indications present in some school manuals will be taken into consideration. The following teaching texts of the French language will be studied in detail: Grazia Maccone (1940), Adalgisa Zmaievich (1930), Francesco Frigero (1936) and Erminia Silicani (1929).