Gendered Quests: Analysis, Revelation and the Epistemology of Gender in Neera's "Teresa", "Lydia" and "L'indomani"

Silvia Valisa, University of California

Abstract

This essay is devoted to Milanese fin-de-siècle writer Neera, more specifically to the three novels composing her “ciclo della donna giovane” (the young woman’s cycle). I examine the striking similarity of the epistemological projects of the three heroines, i.e. their attempt to combine an analytical project with a revelatory structure in order to overcome their contradictory status of narrative subjects and social objects. I consider these projects "gendered" in that they are quests disturbed by a structural and epistemological bias that forecloses a full access to experience and knowledge. The different outcomes of the quests are determined by these women’s ability (or not) to negotiate between phantasmatic social structures and the (narrative) reality.