What Makes An Italian Heroine Different?

I am delighted to present the first day of the book tour for Kate Furnivall’s brand new book, ‘The Italian Wife’ and today Kate answers the question on everyone’s lips.

What makes an Italian heroine different?

It was tough being a woman in Italy in 1932. It was a macho world out there that condemned women to cooking and child-rearing. Men had all the advantages, and domestic violence was rife. So it took guts to stand against the tide.

When Benito Mussolini took power in 1922, he was determined to increase the population from 40 million to 60 million to boost his workforce as he pushed Italy doggedly towards becoming a modern industrialised nation. So in 1927 he launched the Battle for Births. Mussolini was big on Battles – he had the Battle for Land, Battle for Grain, Battle for the Lira and now the Battle for Births. This meant women were expected to stay at home and produce bambini, as fast as shelling peas. A man with six or more children was granted tax concessions, but a man with ten or more children paid no tax at all. No wonder Italian women had headaches! Married couples were offered loans, with part of the loan cancelled for each new child.

On the national railways, no woman of child-bearing age was employed, only older women. This was true of many industries, so it was often hard for women to find decent jobs. They had to fight for them.

[amazon_link id=”0751550760″ target=”_blank” ][/amazon_link]So in ‘The Italian Wife’ when Isabella is wounded and cannot bear children, she knows that in Il Duce’s eyes she has become worthless to Italy. But Isabella’s spirit has been forged in the violent heat of the pain and suffering she endured after she was shot in the back, and when she has healed, she sets herself the seemingly impossible task of becoming one of Mussolini’s top architects. Through guts and sheer willpower, she achieves the impossible and is put to work on the new town of Bellina. Italian women possessed a gritty determination because they had so much male prejudice to overcome.

Isabella lost her mother when she was young, which was immensely sad for her, but it meant she grew up in a household where the only role model was a man, a successful decisive doctor. It was inevitable that she would absorb into the soft young tissues of her mind her father’s ability to make decisions and his belief in his right to carve his own path in life. From him she learnt how to make her own choices. Even if it means she chooses a Blackshirt husband for herself against her father’s wishes and has the courage to deny Mussolini what he wants from her. But it is only when she falls in love with Roberto Falco that her defences come down and the damage inside her can heal properly.

Isabella would be the first to say that yes, Italian heroines are indeed different – because they have to be.

You can buy [amazon_link id=”0751550760″ target=”_blank” ]The Italian Wife from Amazon [/amazon_link] and will be available to buy from good bookshops.