Le vie dell'eroismo femminile. Guerra e violenza in Margaret Fuller

This article investigates Margaret Fuller’s life and (self)identifications, models and images that revolve around the sphere of violence and war, and which in general engage the relationship between femininity and traditionally masculine issues like honor, pride, authority, and bodily strength. Contrary to most recent interpretations of Fuller, which emphasize her investment in specific feminine values, this essay argues that such figurations have the effect of undermining the binary logic of gender and its hierarchy, questioning its «natural» origin. Fuller’s examples of female strength and heroism recur in virtually all her writings, ranging from imaginary suffering knights to the physically vigorous frontierswomen to come, from classical allegorical figures like Minerva to actual revolutionary servicewomen like Emilia Plater. What appears to be most challenging, however, is Fuller’s own condition as a wife, mother, and (virtual) combatant during the Roman revolution (1848-49): the image of the fecund woman who defends war and violence by using writing as a weapon proved to be troubling to Fuller’s contemporaries, but even today has not yet lost its unsettling potential.