Women Worthies? Ascriptions of Masculinity to Exceptional Women Writers in Early Nineteenth-Century Italy

Biographical writing in the early nineteenth century offers a window onto the malleability of gender norms for Italian women in the period. In the world of letters, women writers deemed worthy of biographical treatment after their deaths were often ascribed masculine traits. Attributes such as intelligence and courage, when they complemented a women’s “feminine essence,” served to illustrate her superiority over her female peers. In this sense, posthumous, laudatory biographies constituted signs of both intellectual and social success of women who could simultaneously abide by the constraints of femininity and move beyond them. The current essay demonstrates the conditions that made departures from gender norms possible following the French Revolution in Venice by studying the cases of Giustina Renier Michiel and Isabella Teotochi Albrizzi.