Diana Moore's insightful and extensively documented monograph Revolutionary Domesticity in the Italian Risorgimento: Transnational Victorian Feminism, 1850–1890 focuses on the role of five Anglo-Italian women activists – Jessie White Mario, Giorgina Saffi, Sara Nathan, Julia Salis Schwabe and Mary Chambers – in Italy's unification movement. Examining the interrelated lives and actions of these women, who came into contact with exiled Italian left-wing revolutionaries in Britain in the 1850s, most notably Giuseppe Mazzini and Giuseppe Garibaldi, Moore offers an in-depth and thorough analysis of the connections between Victorian feminism and Italian unification. She demonstrates how these women influenced the creation and development of the Italian state, through activities such as fundraising for the revolution, the formation, operation and maintenance of secret revolutionary networks, educational projects and the memorialisation of the revolution's radical figures. They succeeded in transforming activities typically associated with gendered domesticity, such as gift-giving, charitable campaigns, childcare, motherhood and letter writing and conservation, into forms of political and revolutionary activism, generally considered a male phenomenon. In this way, they evaded traditional gender roles and conceptions of the time and ultimately challenged ideas regarding appropriate feminine behaviour.
Moore is quick to point out that, like most aspects of British history, British feminism must be considered within the context of imperialism. The activism of the women examined provides a lens for the consideration of the apparent contradiction between their support for the politics of emancipation and revolution and the simultaneous use of domestic and imperial discourses. As Moore notes, the Victorian feminists managed to achieve their most radical, egalitarian and emancipatory goals by using domestic, conservative or elitist language.
The book focuses on the period 1850–90, which spans from the start of these women's involvement in Italian politics, Italian unification in 1861 and beyond to the early decades of nation-building. The political and social instability which characterised this period of Italy's history, Moore explains, allowed for non-traditional and non-state agents, including women, to impact the new state's political and social development, and provided the space for these activist women to contribute their own ideas regarding the future of the Italian state. The 1890s brought an end to this period of opportunity for political involvement, due to the growth of organised movements, large political parties and state-controlled agencies.
The book is divided into eight chapters, including an Introduction and Conclusion, organised thematically around the various methods adopted by these women as part of their revolutionary activism. There is also a chronological progression to the chapters, which move from these women's pre-unification activism, as examined in the first four chapters, to the discussion in the remaining chapters of the post-unification efforts they undertook. In Chapter One, ‘Introduction: British Women in the Italian Risorgimento’, Moore presents the overarching themes and objectives of the volume and provides an overview of the existing scholarship on the subject, which has failed to examine the transnational context for Italian feminism and the network that existed between nineteenth-century British and Italian activists. In Chapter Two, ‘Presents and Passports: Friendships and the Formation of Revolutionary Networks’, Moore examines how these activist women took advantage of friendships and emotional and familial bonds to forge political networks within the Italian exile community. Chapter Three, ‘Bazaars for Bullets: Fundraising for the Revolution’, analyses how charitable campaigns were used as a means of engaging in foreign politics and supporting an overseas revolution. Chapter Four, ‘Reforming Revolution: Cultural Translation in the Propaganda Campaign’, discusses how these women drew from their transnational identities to repackage the revolutionary message of the Risorgimento for anti-Catholic British audiences, serving a pivotal role in the movement's propaganda campaign abroad. In Chapter Five, ‘Emancipating Education: Primary Education in the New Italian State’, Moore examines the ways this group of women utilised their individual wealth and connections to form independent educational institutions and shape Italian educational policy at a time when the new Italian state relied heavily on private donors to form independent schools. Chapter Six, ‘The Personal is Political: Companionate Marriage, Republican Motherhood, and the Campaign against State-Regulated Prostitution’, investigates how the British-Italian activist women found emancipation and agency through their roles as wives and mothers and sought to reform practices, such as prostitution, that were so often used to confine and oppress women. In Chapter Seven, ‘From Scrapbooks to State Archives: Memorializing the Radical Risorgimento’, Moore discusses the ways these women helped shape the formation of Italian national memory by repurposing the traditionally feminine practice of maintaining familial history to produce archives, edited volumes and biographical works that celebrated the contributions and sacrifices made by the radical left to unification. In Chapter Eight, ‘Conclusion: Continuing the Legacy after 1890’, Moore suggests that the growth of the Italian state in the 30 years after unification came to limit the possibilities for non-state actors, especially women, to continue to play a leading role in institutions and organisations, as Italians began to support foreign expansion and colonialisation over the internal reforms these women had promoted.
As primary sources, Moore utilises a combination of printed materials, such as contemporary newspaper articles, diaries and memoirs published in Britain, Italy and the United States, as well as private archival documents, such as letters and diaries, all of which allow an understanding of the role these women played behind the scenes as well as publicly. Moore also examines the work of these women as authors, editors, archivists and biographers, active in the large-scale publishing of histories of the Risorgimento as well as letters and documents belonging to family members, friends and colleagues, to reveal how they were active agents in the transnational public sphere.
Revolutionary Domesticity in the Italian Risorgimento: Transnational Victorian Feminism, 1850–1890 makes an important contribution to the field of research on nineteenth-century women's activism and the transnational political culture of the Italian Risorgimento. The volume expertly demonstrates how the Anglo-Italian women activists examined succeeded in redefining what constituted political behaviour, reappropriating traditionally feminine and domestic behaviours for revolutionary purposes and claiming a space for themselves as political agents.
