Abstract
In today’s Italy the term mammismo is often used to denote an allegedly Italian peculiarity which sets the country apart from that advanced Europe to which it aspires to belong. This stereotype resonates both in Italian culture and abroad in part due to the centuries-old feminized image of the country. Patriarca argues that the appearance of the term in the post-Second World War period was connected not only to the impact of military defeat and occupation, but also to the American idea of “momism,” which blamed “moms” for various societal problems. She then discusses the gendered debate on Italy’s “maternal civilization” that took place in the 1950s, and the role of film in creating, popularizing and stigmatizing the figure of the dependent and cowardly male, the mammone.
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Notes
- 1.
D’Amelia, La mamma. Alvaro’s article actually first appeared in the Turin daily newspaper La Nuova Stampa in 1951 with the title “Rose di maggio”, and was subsequently reprinted in a more extended version and with the title “Il mammismo” in his collection of essays Il nostro tempo e la speranza.
- 2.
This absence of mockery towards the mother figure contrasts remarkably with the stereotype of the Jewish mother studied by Antler, You Never Write!
- 3.
Wylie, Generations of Vipers.
- 4.
Antler, You Never Write!, p. 74. Momism had also an impact in American film: see Chopra-Gant, “Hollywood’s ‘Moms’ and Postwar America.”
- 5.
Gabrielli, “Le nostre donne.”
- 6.
Even in an anti-fascist, neo-realist film such as Rome Open City (1945) the figure of the collaborator is displaced onto a woman, Marina, who loves luxury and has an affair with a Nazi woman.
- 7.
See Mafai, Pane nero, ch. 11.
- 8.
At times, women protesting the loss of their jobs noted this occurrence: see for example the letter written by a “committee of working women in Palermo” who in May 1945 stressed how they had to suffer the burden of the war and then lost their jobs to benefit some war returnees who had formerly been manganellatori (fascist thugs): see Archivio Centrale dello Stato.
- 9.
I elaborate on this trope in my Italian Vices.
- 10.
Buchanan, “Good morning, pupil!”
- 11.
Alvaro, Ultimo diario (1948–1956), p. 31 (the year of this entry is 1948).
- 12.
Alvaro, Quasi una vita, p. 243 (the year is 1940).
- 13.
Alvaro, Quasi una vita, p. 340 (the year is 1944; I am quoting from the 1959 edition).
- 14.
Alvaro, Quasi una vita, p. 432 (1947).
- 15.
Alvaro, Quasi una vita, p. 403 (1947). Anxiety about interracial sex is evident in this and other entries.
- 16.
Alvaro, Ultimo diario, p. 27 (1948).
- 17.
Alvaro, Ultimo diario, p. 32 (1948), p. 33 (1949).
- 18.
Alvaro, “Il mammismo,” p. 187.
- 19.
Alvaro, “Il mammismo,” p. 186.
- 20.
Marotta, Le madri. On this work see also Benedetti, The Tigress in the Snow, p. 76.
- 21.
See in particular some of the stories collected in Gente in Aspromonte.
- 22.
Moi, Simone de Beauvoir, p. 154. On the ambivalent relationship of de Beauvoir to the female see Moi, Simone de Beauvoir, ch. 6.
- 23.
Cusin, L’italiano.
- 24.
Some signs of it were present even earlier in anti-fascist milieus trying to explain the victory of Fascism: see for example the analysis of Borgese, Goliath: The March of Fascism. Borgese saw the dominance of the family in Italian society as the result of the loss of liberty and independence at the end of the Middle Ages. The family was dominated in a tyrannical (but overt) way by the father, but this tyranny was “balanced” by the (covert) tyranny of the wife (p. 49). The tyranny of the family group in society was in turn seen as a breeding ground for political tyranny (p. 88).
- 25.
Erich Neumann, a student of Jung and an important art historian, was also a vehicle for the diffusion of these ideas in Italy: see his beautifully illustrated The Great Mother.
- 26.
Passerini, Europe in Love, p. 96.
- 27.
For a sampling of Jung’s views of the feminine archetype see Jung, Aspects of the Feminine.
- 28.
Bernhard, “Il complesso della Grande Madre.”
- 29.
Bernhard, “Il complesso.”
- 30.
Wylie, Generations, p. xvii.
- 31.
Jung, “Woman in Europe” (1927) discussed by Passerini, Europe in Love, pp. 93–96.
- 32.
Passerini, Europe in Love, p. 99.
- 33.
Quinzio, “La Grande Madre mediterranea.” On the Catholic Church’s idea of the Italian character see Logan, “The Clericalist Counterpoint.” Another positive take on the great mother can be found in the film review by Elisabetta Ferrarelli, “Retorica del mammismo.”
- 34.
Gambino (1926–2009) was originally from Sicily but spent all his life in Rome: see his obituary in La Repubblica of 3 May 2009 (Ajello, “Addio ad Antonio Gambino”). The obituary underlines how Gambino had a strong passion for psychoanalysis, particularly Jung’s.
- 35.
Gambino, “La civiltà materna.”
- 36.
Discussed by Gabriella Gribaudi in a later chapter in this volume.
- 37.
Ironically the play represents a strong woman of the Neapolitan lower classes, hardly an example of traditional motherhood: see Fischer, “Strong Women and Nontraditional Mothers.”
- 38.
I am borrowing the term from La Rovere, L’eredità del fascismo, p. 17.
- 39.
Fernandez, Mère Méditérranée, p. 149.
- 40.
Banfield, The Moral Basis of a Backward Society, pp. 150–52.
- 41.
Gambino, Inventario italiano, p. 63.
- 42.
Even then Gambino continued to rely on views about femininity and the maternal that derived from Jungian psychology and even from nineteenth-century German classicist Johann Jacob Bachofen, who saw matriarchy as an archaic form of civilization preceding the more evolved (albeit less harmonious) patriarchal culture and equating it “with a condition of homogeneity, materiality, and harmony with nature, a primitive social order embodying a lost happiness … The emergence of civilization was understood in terms of a development from an archaic, chthonian feminine sphere of undifferentiated unity to a patriarchal culture governed by ‘higher spiritual laws’”: see Felski, The Gender of Modernity, p. 51. At the same time Gambino claimed that he was aware that Italian society was patriarchal and that he only spoke of maternal values, not of a matriarchy.
- 43.
On the currency of this idea in contemporary Italy see Alessi, “Famiglia, famiglie e identità italiana.”
- 44.
[l.b.] “Il matriarcato conviene?” Look magazine in fact published a series of three articles devoted to the state of the American male: the first (referred to by the Italian journalist), which had the title “The American Male: Why Do Women Dominate Him?” appeared in the issue of 4 February 1958, pp. 77–80. The other two appeared in the 18 February and 4 March issues respectively.
- 45.
Flaiano, Diario notturno, pp. 391–92. The terms appear in notes that he wrote in 1951. On Flaiano see also Trubiano, Ennio Flaiano and His Italy.
- 46.
On Sordi’s characters as representing a caricature of the “mama’s boy” see also Ferrarelli, “Retorica del mammismo,” p. 728.
- 47.
The episode is in I nuovi mostri directed by Dino Risi, Ettore Scola and Mario Monicelli (1977). There is an English version of the film entitled Viva Italia!
- 48.
On the patriarchy reproduced in Italian cinema see Cottino-Jones, Women, Desire, and Power in Italian Cinema.
- 49.
For a critical review of these films see Bergogna, “Tre registi ‘contestano’ il mammismo.”
- 50.
Montanelli, “Eventualmente.” On Montanelli see also my Italian Vices, ch. 8.
- 51.
Veneziani, “Uccidiamo finalmente Alberto Sordi.”
- 52.
On the issue of youth unemployment and the infelicitous term used by Padoa-Schioppa see Diamanti, “La falsa leggenda dei ragazzi bamboccioni.”
- 53.
On the maternal as a patriarchal or Christian construction see Kaplan, Motherhood and Representation.
- 54.
See Bravo, “Madri fra oppressione ed emancipazione,” p. 111. The article discusses working-class families of the 1930s, but this model persisted also after the war, especially in lower-class families. Laura Benedetti (The Tigress in the Snow, p. 81) has noted the absent father theme in Elsa Morante’s postwar fiction, which contrasted with the constant presence of mothers trapped in irrational and instinctual roles.
- 55.
From a radio speech by Pius XII broadcast on 11 May 1957, quoted by Koch in “La madre di famiglia nell’esperienza sociale cattolica,” p. 239.
- 56.
Accati, “Il marito della Santa,” subsequently expanded in Il mostro e la bella. Accati’s interpretation is brilliant, even though the issue of variation over time would require more attention.
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Patriarca, S. (2018). Mammismo/Momism: On the History and Uses of a Stereotype, c.1940s to the Present. In: Morris, P., Willson, P. (eds) La Mamma. Italian and Italian American Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54256-4_2
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