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LA MAMMA
Interrogating a National Stereotype
S T U D I E S
A M E R I C A N
I T A L I A N
A N D
I T A L I A N
edited by
penelope morris
perry willson
Italian and Italian American Studies
Series Editor
Stanislao G. Pugliese
Hofstra University
Hempstead, NY, USA
This series brings the latest scholarship in Italian and Italian American his-
tory, literature, cinema, and cultural studies to a large audience of special-
ists, general readers, and students. Featuring works on modern Italy
(Renaissance to the present) and Italian American culture and society by
established scholars as well as new voices, it has been a longstanding force
in shaping the evolving fields of Italian and Italian American Studies by
re-emphasizing their connection to one another.
More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14835
Penelope Morris • Perry Willson
Editors
La Mamma
Interrogating a National Stereotype
Editors
Penelope Morris Perry Willson
School of Modern Languages and School of Humanities - History
Cultures University of Dundee
University of Glasgow Dundee, UK
Glasgow, UK
Italian and Italian American Studies

ISBN 978-1-137-55986-9 ISBN 978-1-137-54256-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54256-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018937885
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
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Preface
This book stems from an interdisciplinary project, entitled “La Mamma:

Interrogating a National Stereotype,” led by the editors of this volume
and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC),
UK. This project included four interdisciplinary workshops and two pub-
lic events which explored Italian motherhood and the maternal in both
Italy and its diaspora from the Risorgimento to the present day, with a
particular, albeit far from exclusive, focus on the stereotype of mammismo.
The workshops, held in Scotland and Italy between May 2012 and May
2014, brought together scholars from a range of disciplines.1
All but one of the contributions published in this book originated as
papers in these workshops. The project as a whole demonstrated the
importance of understanding the stereotype of mammismo within the
context of a wider investigation into the lived experience and representa-
tion of Italian motherhood. The selection of papers for this volume is
guided by the same rationale, with some focusing on the stereotype itself,
or areas of Italian life where the stereotype has made its presence felt,
while others point instead to conspicuous absences or completely different
understandings of motherhood.
The first of the interdisciplinary workshops—“The Maternal Role and
Representations of Maternity in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth
Century”—was held at Dundee University in May 2012. Alongside the
academic workshop there was a public event—“La Mamma: The
Invention of a Stereotype”—in which sociologist Chiara Saraceno dis-
cussed the themes of historian Marina d’Amelia’s book La mamma with
the author herself. Papers in the workshop, presented by historians and
v
vi PREFACE
literary scholars (Ursula Fanning, Benedetta Gennaro, Katherine Mitchell,

Enrica Moretti, Marjan Schwegman, Katrin Wehling-Giorgi, Perry
Willson and Sharon Wood), examined the ways in which maternity and
mothers had been represented (and, to a lesser extent, the lived experi-
ence of Italian mothers) during the period from the Risorgimento to the
Fascist ventennio.
The next workshop, “Mammismo, the Emergence of a National
Stereotype,” focusing on the mid to late twentieth century, was held at the
University of Glasgow. The papers, given by historians and literary schol-
ars (Joyce Antler, Maud Bracke, Niamh Cullen, Adalgisa Giorgio, Ruth
Glynn, Gabriella Gribaudi, Penelope Morris, Silvana Patriarca and Molly
Tambor) and a sociologist/psychoanalyst (Lesley Caldwell), ranged over a
number of areas, including politics in the postwar years; literary and cine-
matic representations of motherhood; personal diaries, magazines and
advice columns; female terrorists; feminism in the 1970s; and comparisons
with stereotypes of the Jewish mother.
The third event of the project, “La maternità in Italia: un percorso ad
ostacoli” (Motherhood in Italy: An Obstacle Course), was a public one,
held in the Parliamentary Library in Rome, which focused on mother-
hood in present-day Italy. Keynote papers were given by sociologist Chiara
Saraceno and historian Sandro Bellassai, and they were then joined by
Senator Livia Turco, trade unionist Lidia Obando and journalist Alessandra
di Pietro for a lively round-table discussion.
In the final workshop, “The Stereotype Abroad: Mammismo in the
Italian Diaspora,” held in Edinburgh in May 2014, our focus shifted from
Italy itself to Italian diaspora communities. There were papers on North
America by Silvia Barocci, Maria Susanna Garroni and Maddalena Tirabassi,
on Australia by Francesco Ricatti and on New Zealand by Adalgisa Giorgio.
The workshop explored both how motherhood and maternity has been
represented as well as how such representations in the host countries have
contributed to the development of the stereotype itself.
The formal academic workshop was followed by a public event which
turned its attention to the local context. This event—“Maw or Mamma:
Mothers and Motherhood in the Italian-Scottish Community”—held in
the Edinburgh Story-Telling Centre, focused, as its title suggests, on the
Italian-Scottish community. Combining personal testimonies, a photo-
graphic display and a theatrical performance, it engendered a lively debate
that pointed to a notable depth of feeling about mothers and motherhood
among present-day Italian-Scots.
PREFACE
vii
We owe thanks to many people who have helped us in the course of this
project. First and foremost, we would like to thank the AHRC (and their
anonymous peer reviewers) who chose to award us funding for this proj-
ect. Our grateful thanks are also due to Emily Ryder, the project’s very
efficient administrator; to Carlo Pirozzi, who generously gave up his time
to help organise the project’s public event in Edinburgh; and to Marina
d’Amelia, who provided us with invaluable assistance in organizing the
Rome workshop. We would also like to thank the many contributors to
the four workshops, who are far too numerous for us to have included all
their papers in this book (although some of their papers, we are delighted
to note, have resulted in publications elsewhere). Over the course of a suc-
cession of interesting discussions and debates, their contributions helped
us and the various chapter authors to think through and develop our ideas
on the issues raised in these pages. We would also like to thank those
involved in the public events and the audiences of those events, who also
contributed interesting ideas and questions. Silvana Patriarca, Ursula
Fanning, Gabriella Gribaudi and Mark Seymour all provided extremely
helpful comments on an earlier draft of the first chapter. Finally, our thanks
are due to our translator Stuart Oglethorpe for his excellent, careful work,
to the series editor Stanislao Pugliese and to the production team at
Palgrave Macmillan.
Glasgow, UK Penelope Morris

Dundee, UK Perry Willson
Notes
1. Abstracts of the papers from the Dundee, Glasgow and Edinburgh work-
shops are available on the La Mamma: Interrogating a National Stereotype
project website at https://lamammaitaliana.wordpress.com
Contents
1 La Mamma: Italian Mothers Past and Present 1

Penelope Morris and Perry Willson
2 Mammismo/Momism: On the History and Uses

of a Stereotype, c.1940s to the Present 29
Silvana Patriarca
3 Mothers, Workers, Citizens: Teresa Noce

and the Parliamentary Politics of Motherhood 51
Molly Tambor
4 Problems and Prescriptions: Motherhood and Mammismo

in Postwar Italian Advice Columns and Fiction 77
Penelope Morris
5 Conceptualizing the Maternal: Representations, Reflections

and Refractions in Women’s Literary Writings 105
Ursula Fanning
6 Neapolitan Mothers: Three Generations of Women,

from Representation to Reality 131
Gabriella Gribaudi
ix
x CONTENTS
7 Mammas in Italian Migrant Families: The Anglophone

Countries 161
Maddalena Tirabassi
8 Queer Daughters and Their Mothers: Carole Maso, Mary

Cappello and Alison Bechdel Write Their Way Home 185
Mary Jo Bona
9 Beyond the Stereotype: The Obstacle Course

of Motherhood in Italy 215
Chiara Saraceno
Index 237
Notes on Contributors
Mary Jo Bona is Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies, Italian

American Studies and Chair of the Department of Cultural Analysis and
Theory at Stony Brook University. She is past president of the Italian
American Studies Association. Her publications include: Women Writing
Cloth: Migratory Fictions in the American Imaginary (Lanham, MD:
Lexington Books/Rowman and Littlefield, 2016); By the Breath of Their
Mouths: Narratives of Resistance in Italian America (New York: State
University of New York [SUNY] Press, 2010); and Claiming a Tradition:
Italian American Women Writers (Carbondale: Southern Illinois
University Press, 1999). With Irma Maini, Bona co-edited Multiethnic
Literature and Canon Debates (SUNY Press, 2006) and is editor of the
Multiethnic Literature Series at SUNY Press. http://www.stonybrook.
edu/commcms/cat/people/cat_faculty/MaryJoBona.html
Ursula Fanning is Senior Lecturer in Italian at University College
Dublin. Her research interests lie in the areas of nineteenth- and twenti-
eth-century women’s writing, as well as in Pirandello studies. Publications
include Gender Meets Genre: Woman as Subject in the Fictional Universe of
Matilde Serao (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2002); a chapter on
“Maternal Descriptions and Prescriptions in Post-Unification Italy,” in
Katharine Mitchell and Helena Sanson (eds), Women and Gender in Post-
Unification Italy: Between Private and Public Spheres (Bern: Peter Lang,
2013). Her most recent book is Italian Women’s Autobiographical
Writings in the Twentieth Century: Constructing Subjects (Madison, NJ:
Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2017). http://www.ucd.ie/
research/people/languagesliterature/drursulafanning/
xi
xii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Gabriella Gribaudi is Professore Ordinario in Contemporary History at

the Università di Napoli Federico II. Her publications include “Donne di
camorra e identità di genere,” in Donne di mafia (special issue of Meridiana
co-edited with Marcella Marmo), 67 (2010); (ed.) Traffici criminali.
Camorra, mafie e reti internazionali dell’illegalità (Turin: Bollati
Boringhieri, 2009); Guerra totale. Tra bombe alleate e violenze naziste—
Napoli e il fronte meridionale 1940–44 (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2005);
Donne, uomini, famiglie. Napoli nel Novecento (Naples: L’ancora, 1999);
A Eboli. Il mondo meridionale in centi’anni di trasformazione (Venice:
Marsilio, 1990). She is on the editorial board of Quaderni Storici. https://
www.docenti.unina.it/mariagabriella.gribaudi
Penelope Morris is Senior Lecturer in Italian in the School of Modern
Languages and Cultures at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, UK. Her
research interests lie in the social and cultural history of women in modern
Italy and in the role of emotions in history. Her publications include
Giovanna Zangrandi. Una vita in romanzo (Verona: Cierre, 2000); (ed.)
Women in Italy 1945–1960 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2006); (co-editor with
Francesco Ricatti and Mark Seymour), Politica ed emozioni nella storia
d’Italia dal 1848 ad oggi (Rome: Viella, 2012). She is General Editor,
with Mark Seymour, of the journal Modern Italy. http://www.gla.ac.uk/
schools/mlc/staff/penelopemorris/
Silvana Patriarca is Professor of History at Fordham University,
New York. Primarily a cultural historian, her publications include (co-
edited with Lucy Riall) The Risorgimento Revisited: Nationalism and
Culture in Nineteenth-Century Italy (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan,
2012); Italian Vices: Nation and Character from the Risorgimento to the
Republic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), Italian transla-
tion: Italianità. La costruzione del carattere nazionale (Rome-Bari:
Laterza, 2010); Numbers and Nationhood: Writing Statistics in Nineteenth-
Century Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), Italian
translation: Costruire la nazione. La statistica e il Risorgimento (Rome:
Istat, 2011). http://www.fordham.edu/academics/programs_at_ford-
ham_/history_department/faculty/silvana_patriarca_70076.asp
Chiara Saraceno former Professor in Sociology at the University of Turin
and Research Professor at the Berlin Social Science Centre, is currently
Honorary Fellow at the Collegio Carlo Alberto in Turin. Her, often com-
parative, publications on families and gender include: Coppie e famiglie.
Non è questione di natura (Milan: Feltrinelli, 2013); (with Manuela
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
xiii
Naldini), Sociologia della famiglia (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2013), 3rd edn;

(with Manuela Naldini) Conciliare famiglia e lavoro (Bologna: Il Mulino,
2011); (ed.) Families, Ageing and Social Policy (Cheltenham: Edward
Elgar, 2008); Mutamenti della famiglia e politiche sociali in Italia
(Bologna: Il Mulino, 2003); (with Marzio Barbagli), Separarsi in Italia
(Bologna: Il Mulino, 1998). She has also co-edited with Jane Lewis and
Arnlaug Leira the two-volume reader Families and Family Polices
(Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2011). http://www.carloalberto.org/people/
faculty/honorary/chiara-saraceno/
Molly Tambor is Assistant Professor of European History at Long Island
University Post campus in New York. Her publications include The Lost
Wave: Women and Democracy in Postwar Italy (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2014) and the English translation and preface of Gian
Giacomo Migone, The United States and Fascist Italy: The Rise of American
Finance in Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015).
Maddalena Tirabassi is Director of the Centro Altreitalie sulle Migrazioni
Italiane in Turin. She is also Editor of the journal Altreitalie. Rivista di
studi sulle migrazioni italiane nel mondo and Deputy Director of the
Association of European Migration Institutions. Her publications include
I motori della memoria. Le piemontesi in Argentina (Turin: Rosenberg and
Sellier, 2010); Ripensare la patria grande. Amy Bernardy e le migrazioni
italiane (Isernia: Cosmo Iannone Ed., 2005); Il faro di Beacon Street.
Social workers e immigrate negli Stati Uniti (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1990).
http://www.altreitalie.it/Chi_Siamo/CV_Maddalena_Tirabassi.kl
Perry Willson is Professor of Modern European History at the
University of Dundee, Scotland. Her research interests focus mainly on
twentieth-century Italian women’s and gender history, particularly of the
Fascist period. Her publications include: Women in Twentieth-Century
Italy (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), Italian edition: Italiane.
Biografia del Novecento (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2011); (ed.) Gender, Family
and Sexuality: The Private Sphere in Italy 1860–1945 (Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2004); Peasant Women and Politics in Fascist Italy: The Massaie
Rurali (London: Routledge, 2002) and The Clockwork Factory: Women
and Work in Fascist Italy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). She
was Chair of the Association for the Study of Modern Italy 2006–9 and
is currently Vice-Convenor of Women’s History Scotland. https://www.
dundee.ac.uk/history/staff/details/perry-willson.php
CHAPTER 1
La Mamma: Italian Mothers Past and Present
Penelope Morris and Perry Willson
Motherhood, as an idea, has been and remains fundamental to how Italian

women, whether mothers or not, think about themselves. It has also
strongly shaped how Italian men view, and have viewed, women and it is
part of how Italians have been perceived and represented by others in the
wider world. The Catholic Church, with its emphasis on women’s essen-
tial maternal duty and destiny, and its veneration of the Madonna as an
(impossible) ideal of chaste motherhood, has played an important part in
this. As historians and others have argued, however, both the lived realities
of Italian mothers, and the cultural constructions of their role, have varied
greatly over time, in different regions of Italy and between social classes.
Even the Catholic vision of maternal duty was not immutable. From the
middle of the twentieth century, the Church gradually began to accept
new roles for women, including in politics and employment, albeit without
abandoning an emphasis on the importance and sanctity of maternity.1
Translations from Italian source material are the authors’ own.
P. Morris (*)
School of Modern Languages and Cultures, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK
e-mail: penelope.morris@glasgow.ac.uk
P. Willson
School of Humanities - History, University of Dundee, Dundee, UK
e-mail: P.R.Willson@dundee.ac.uk
© The Author(s) 2018 1

P. Morris, P. Willson (eds.), La Mamma,
Italian and Italian American Studies,
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54256-4_1
2 P. MORRIS AND P. WILLSON
Beyond the Church there have been many lay figures, particularly
“experts” of various kinds such as medical doctors, who have been inter-
ested in how mothering should be done. In many of these discussions of
the maternal role there has been a tension between notions of mothering
as innate, instinctive or “natural” and ideas of different ways of doing it, of
motherhood as practice, with the two often coexisting uneasily. From the
Risorgimento to more recent times, moreover, various political movements
have, in their own and differing ways, based their arguments regarding
women’s role and destiny primarily on the maternal. The meaning of this,
however, has been far from uniform. While many have invoked women’s
maternal role as a reason to curtail their access to the public sphere, others,
including certain types of feminists, have presented it as legitimizing such
access. Italy has not, of course, always been entirely distinctive in its histori-
cal emphasis on women’s maternal role, nor in the diversity of opinions
about the meanings and practice of motherhood. Attitudes to and debates
about motherhood in other European countries have often been not dis-
similar, and indeed changed in similar ways, to the Italian example.
Mammismo
There is, however, one particular representation of motherhood that is
very much Italian—mammismo. Indeed, the idea of the “mamma itali-
ana” and her dependent, spoilt, offspring (particularly sons) is one of the
most widespread and recognizable stereotypes in perceptions of Italian
national character both within Italy and beyond its borders. As historian
Anna Bravo has described her, the mamma of the stereotype is:
Incomparably loving, servant and owner of her children, often in tears but
always on her feet holding the family together … Adored, feared and carica-
tured, in discussions about the Italian family, “la Mamma” has become a
glorious archetype … the enduringly popular image of the Italian mother is
of a strong woman who dotes on her son and dedicates herself to him inten-
sively. In exchange she gets the right to veto his choices, his constant
attentions and an unrivalled emotional and symbolic dependency. As eternal
sons, Italian men struggle to grow up and find it hard to accept new roles
for women: Italian women, whether mothers or not, treat men with the sort
of indulgence that is normally reserved for children.2
This primitively possessive, domineering and, at the same time, indul-

gent figure makes frequent appearances in jokes and other forms of popu-
lar culture, but references to it have also abounded in serious media
LA MAMMA: ITALIAN MOTHERS PAST AND PRESENT 3
debates about Italy’s social fabric. Mammismo has been cited, for example,
as a contributing factor to many of what are perceived to be recent and
current “problems” with the Italian family, such as Italy’s dramatically low
birth rate and the extremely unequal gender division of labour within
Italian households. Of all such “problems,” the one that gives rise to the
most persistent references to the stereotype is the advanced age at which
many Italian “children” (particularly, but not only, male “children”) leave
the parental home. The causes of this phenomenon lie, of course, in a
number of factors, including very concrete economic and social ones like
high levels of youth unemployment and housing shortages. Here, the
focus has shifted to an extent from the role of the mother to the adult
“children” themselves, seen as far too unadventurous and comfortable in
the “golden cage” of the parental home.3 The flames of this debate were
fanned when, in October 2007, the Italian Finance Minister Tommaso
Padoa-Schioppa famously referred to stay-at-home adult offspring as
“bamboccioni” (big babies). He thereby launched an unfortunate expres-
sion (the use of which has proved remarkably persistent) that led to a
furore in the Italian media.4 This is a good example of a persistent, unhelp-
ful tendency for politicians and the media to blame Italy’s economic prob-
lems on supposedly embedded “cultural” traits, sets of beliefs or values
which create behavioural patterns that hinder economic development.5
A quick internet search suffices to demonstrate that this term (or the
similar “mammone”), and the idea of Italian men as immature, perpetual
children who struggle to grow up and disentangle themselves from the
suffocating, protective web of their mothers’ apron-strings, is well known
not just within Italy but also crops up in foreign observations about mod-
ern Italian society. A typical example, randomly selected from many, is an
article in The Guardian newspaper in 2010 on “Why Italy’s mamma’s
boys can’t cut the ties.”6 References to mammismo and to overly moth-
ered, dependent sons abound in the Italian media and on websites. One
example was a quiz included in PourFemme magazine in 2015 to help
Italian women investigate the extent to which the man in their life was a
mammone at heart.7 This was obviously meant as a light-hearted diversion
but it epitomizes the fact that the idea of mammismo is an instantly recog-
nizable one to Italians today. Even quite serious news articles often find it
hard to resist references to the stereotype, the term bamboccione enjoying
especial popularity.8 Two stories that were particularly widely reported,
both in Italy and abroad, were the assertion by Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco
(Archbishop of Genoa) in 2014 that mammismo was one of the greatest
threats to marriage in Italy and the claim by Gian Ettore Gassani (lawyer
and president of Italy’s matrimonial lawyers’ association), that 30 per cent

of marital breakdowns were caused by interfering mothers-in-law and
their over-dependent sons.9
The stereotype, or versions of it, has also sometimes surfaced in films
and novels, particularly, but not exclusively, those with comic intent.
Hollywood and American sitcoms have been important vehicles for this
but home-grown products have also played a part. Unlike the perhaps
better-known stereotype of the overbearing Jewish mother, in mammismo-
inspired comedy it is generally—as Silvana Patriarca points out in her
chapter in this volume—the son, rather than the mother herself, who is
the main comedic figure.10 The comic actor Alberto Sordi’s classic screen
performances as a mamma’s boy in a series of 1950s films were important
in helping embed the figure of the weak and dependent male in the Italian
popular imagination. Such portrayals are not, however, simply a feature of
the past. For example, Gianni Di Gregorio’s film Gianni e le donne (2011)
in which a man, despite being 60 years old, a husband and father, contin-
ues to be dominated by his demanding elderly mother, suggests the endur-
ing appeal of the weak downtrodden male as a comedic trope.11
There are recent literary examples too, like the novel Confessioni di un
mammone italiano (2014) by David Leone, which focuses, as the title
suggests, on the protagonist Alfredo’s obsessive and dependent relation-
ship with his mother.12 Similarly, Alberto—the main character of Giuseppe
Culicchia’s novel Ameni inganni (2011)—seems a classic mammone. At
the age of 41 he still lives with his mother and is even financially supported
by her pension. Instead of working he hides at home, devoting his time to
reading soft porn and building model spaceships.13 Both novels focus on
what happens, albeit in different ways and with different outcomes, to
these overgrown adolescents when they attempt to face up to the outside
world and the complexity of adult relationships.
It would be ridiculous, of course, to suggest that Italian literary and
cinematographic production has only, or even particularly often, repre-
sented mothers in this way. Much more common, particularly before the
1980s and in works by male authors, were one-dimensional portrayals of
mothers, seen purely through the eyes of sons and reduced “to a single
emotion: unconditional devotion to their offspring.”14 Alongside such
depictions, however, there has also been a wide range of more nuanced
representations of mothers, as indeed Fanning’s chapter demonstrates,
and the last four decades in particular have seen a flourishing of explora-
tions of the maternal in literature by women.
Nor has the “mama’s boy” been the only representation of Italian mas-
culinity. For many, until fairly recently, the stereotype (and, often, the
lived reality) of men as authoritarian husbands and fathers—the “padre-
padrone”—has been a more familiar image than the weak son spoiled by
his mother. Representations and ideals of masculinity have not, of course,
been unchanging, with, for example, the militaristic hyper-virile fascist
model succeeded by the idea of the “uomo di successo” during the eco-
nomic miracle.15 Various scholars, moreover, have seen the second half of
the twentieth century as a period of “crisis for masculinity,” a crisis which
has been particularly evident in film, with “the fragile male […] central to
Italian cinema.”16 Indeed, Italian films of this period often dwell either
overtly or implicitly on this theme. Jacqueline Reich, for example, has
argued forcefully that Marcello Mastroianni—perhaps the best-known
male film star of this period—was, rather than a “Latin lover,” more often
seen in the role of the “inetto” (inept man), who, “underneath the façade
of a presumed hyper-masculinity,” is really “an anti-hero […] at odds with
and out of place in a rapidly changing political, social, and sexual
environment.”17
Stereotypes
Stereotypes are, of course, a far from easy, and often uncomfortable, sub-
ject for scholars to approach. Some, including the American writer and
journalist Walter Lippmann who first used the term in its modern sense in
the early twentieth century, have argued that stereotypes should not always
be considered negative as they can be useful as organizing mechanisms,
generalities that help us make sense of human society.18 Lippmann did
acknowledge that they were not unproblematic, warning that it is impor-
tant “to know that they are only stereotypes, to hold them lightly, to
modify them gladly,”19 but nonetheless felt that “the abandonment of all
stereotypes for a wholly innocent approach to experience would impover-
ish human life.”20 Likewise, some psychologists, particularly recently, have
found positive aspects of stereotypes, seeing them as contributors, for
example, to cognitive economy or as a means of helping people build
identities as group members.21 Beyond the world of scholarly psychology
journals, however, stereotypes have tended to be viewed in a more nega-
tive light.
Many stereotypes point to problematic and embarrassing aspects of a
group or society, exaggerating and distorting them. Their sheer negativity
quite understandably makes many want to distance themselves from them,

for the act of scholarly research itself (and some journalistic writing) is
often essentially an attempt to dispel stereotypes, to get beyond their
generalizations and simplifications to various kinds of deeper truth. This is
particularly true of those studying disadvantaged social groups, for, as
many have pointed out, stereotypes are often forged by those with power:
they usually reflect and perpetuate the views of dominant social groups.
One particularly problematic aspect of stereotypes is the fact that, although
they are rarely, if ever, a faithful representation of reality, they almost
invariably include some kind of relationship to it. The relationship may be
tenuous but it is often a troubling one.
It is, however, important not just to go beyond stereotypes but also to
examine the stereotypes themselves. Stereotypes may seem frivolous,
crude or simply inaccurate, but they are, nonetheless a means, whether
rightly or wrongly, that people use in their attempts to make sense of the
world and their own lives. They are important because they are stories
(whether embraced or rejected) that people live and interact with.
Doubtless the majority of Italians do not really believe in the stereotype of
mammismo fully (or, in many cases, at all) but it is, nonetheless, a widely
recognizable cultural element that Italians use to think about themselves,
their society and their “national character.” It is, moreover, a stereotype
that shapes how foreigners perceive, and have perceived, Italians and
Italian society and, in particular, Italian gender roles. This is relevant both
for Italians who live in Italy itself and for those belonging to its sizeable
diaspora. In the diasporic communities, such as in the United States
(explored in Maddalena Tirabassi’s contribution to this volume), or indeed
the Scottish context discussed below, mammismo is often seen as just one
element of a wider portrayal of the Italian family as a close, protective unit,
one that is both supportive and suffocating.
The stereotype of mammismo has been mentioned in the growing body
of scholarly work on national identity in Italy, with, for example, an impor-
tant study by cultural historian Silvana Patriarca suggesting that it is part
of a wider culture of national soul-searching and self-denunciation.22
Despite this interest, however, and despite the widely acknowledged
importance of the family in any understanding of Italian society and cul-
ture, mammismo has largely tended to be regarded ahistorically and taken
for granted rather than investigated. As yet there has been very little sys-
tematic academic analysis of the stereotype and its social and political
consequences.
Many scholars have, of course, been interested in motherhood, and

there is now a considerable bibliography about it in various disciplines
across the social sciences and humanities.23 Scholars of Italian literary
works, for example, have shown a particular interest in motherhood in
recent years, although the focus of much of this has tended to be the
mother–daughter relationship: far less attention has been paid to mothers
and their sons.24 Historians of women and gender in Italy, conversely, have
shown only a fairly limited interest in mothers.25 Of course, historians have
not totally ignored this theme, but motherhood has tended to be dis-
cussed as part of other topics like the emphasis placed on it in patriarchal
gender ideologies of various kinds, or its role in first-wave feminist ideol-
ogy. There has been less interest in the practice and experience of mother-
hood, apart from the related topic of pregnancy and childbirth.26 In this,
Italian historians have not differed greatly from historians of women in
other European countries: such (relative) neglect is not unusual in Western
historiography.27 Overall, where they have written about motherhood,
both Italian historians and literary scholars have largely ignored (or pos-
sibly studiously avoided) the stereotype of mammismo and neither have
they displayed much interest in the mother–son relationship, perhaps
unsurprisingly given that the study of masculinity in Italy remains at a
fairly early stage.28
The “Birth of Mammismo”

In 2005, Marina d’Amelia opened up debate on the stereotype of mam-
mismo with her book, La mamma,29 which raised the interesting hypothe-
sis that the idea of a particularly strong relationship between Italian mothers
and their sons is far from the universal, timeless feature of Italian society
that many assume it to be. Instead, she argued, mammismo is an excellent
example of an “invented tradition,”30 one that was forged just after the
Second World War as a means of explaining Italy’s ills, and the consequent
anxieties about Italian masculinity, in the aftermath of twenty years of dic-
tatorship and the recent military defeat and occupation. According to
d’Amelia, it was the writer and journalist Corrado Alvaro who was the first
to use the term mammismo: it appeared in the title of an essay he published
in 1952.31 In this essay, a kind of nostalgic lament over the recent changes
to Rome, he mourned things like the influx of people into the city from the
provinces and the replacement of the old-fashioned osterie (taverns) of days
gone by with modern, and, in his view, less appealing, bars. A prime focus
of the essay was what he saw as the deplorable behaviour of the young men
of Rome. The typical modern Roman youth was, for him, an idle good-for-
nothing who spent a great deal of time lounging around doing nothing in
particular. As he wrote: “There the older boys are, on the low walls in the
sun, watched with envy and dismay by foreigners who have the satisfaction
of seeing Italians doing sweet nothing.”32 A striking element of this par-
ticular sentence is the fact that it includes what has been a core preoccupa-
tion for much of Italy’s self-blaming literature—the theme of how Italians
are viewed (negatively) by foreigners. Alvaro is, quite simply, embarrassed.
Rather than blaming the lazy youths themselves, however, Alvaro
directs his disapproval at their mothers. Responsible for this state of affairs,
in his view, was the great exaltation of motherhood in Italian culture and
the consequent pernicious influence of the overbearing Italian mother. It
was important, he felt, to go beyond sentimentality about this issue and he
complained (invoking a frequent theme of Italy’s copious literature of self-
denunciation—that of comparison with other, “more civilized,” societies)
that:
In contrast to what happens in modern societies, where young people are

brought up with a sense of order, obedience and respect for the needs of
society [un senso collettivo], each of these young men is the centre of his
mother’s life, the sole person who has a right to everything…33
Alvaro did not, of course, simply conjure up this idea from nowhere.
He may have been the one to coin the actual term itself but he was essen-
tially just giving a name to a pre-existing concept. Ideas that we would
recognize as part of the stereotype can be found elsewhere prior to the
publication of Alvaro’s essay. Anna Bravo has noted, for example, that the
idea that Italian men were spoilt, vain “mama’s boys” was widespread
among Allied soldiers in the Second World War.34 Another example is the
publication, in 1945, by the historian Fabio Cusin of a wide-ranging cri-
tique of the ills of the “Italian character,” one of whose sources he saw as
the pernicious influence of mothers over their children’s development.
Cusin blamed mothers for what he saw as an Italian tendency to exhibit
“feminine” traits such as emotionalism and sentimentality.35
Long before this, moreover, gender had played a role in the laments of
many who wrote about the “failings of Italy”: many nineteenth- and early
twentieth-century writers had expressed their desire for a regeneration of
the national character in terms of the need for a re-virilization of an
effeminate Italy, albeit without specifically mentioning the role of moth-

ers. The Fascists, too, took this approach. They venerated motherhood for
its potential contribution to Italy’s national strength, but virility, in their
view, sorely needed to be shored up. Good Fascist women were meant to
produce many sons and then be prepared to let go of them as they marched
off to war and imperial conquest for the glory of the nation.
Where then did Alvaro and others get the idea of Italian mothers as
powerful figures? As the speakers at our workshop at the University of
Dundee indicated, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
there had, indeed, been a great deal of attention paid to motherhood.
Their papers covered such diverse topics as the depiction of mothers in
realist, modernist and feminist literary texts to Risorgimental, first-wave
feminist and Fascist ideas about maternal roles, to (grand)motherly figures
in fairy tales. As they demonstrated, maternal figures in this period might
be heroic; or long-suffering; or sacrificial. They might be theatrical and
performative, or simply unruly. They might be strong or weak. They might
be praised for carrying out a patriotic duty or castigated as in need of
advice to make them better mothers. Motherhood was invoked to legiti-
mize women’s political participation but equally mothers were blamed for
all sorts of things and were repeatedly exhorted to match up to the stan-
dards of various paradigms of good motherhood. Some of this was, of
course, not particularly dissimilar to other European countries in this
period, although the emphasis on the importance of motherhood was,
arguably, somewhat stronger in Italy than in northern European and in
mainly Protestant countries. Despite the great range of different, and
sometimes contrasting, ways in which Italian mothers were represented in
this period, however, none of the representations discussed in this work-
shop seemed to echo or foreshadow in any meaningful way the stereotype
of mammismo. The specific ill of this blaming stereotype, and the theme
of women ruining the nation by spoiling, indulging and smothering their
sons, was noteworthy for its absence.
One idea discussed in the Dundee workshop, however, did seem to shed
some light on where the idea of the strong Italian mother came from (albeit
not specifically the indulgent mother of mammismo). This was the patrilo-
cal family norm, still widespread in certain types of peasant families in the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, particularly, but not only, in
northern and central Italy.36 As Rita Cavigioli has argued: “The widespread
cultural norm of patrilocal postmarital residence has favoured the develop-
ment of family relational patterns that have been traditionally associated
with the ‘Italian matriarchate’ stereotype: a strong mother–son bond and

alliance and complex female intergenerational ties…”37 In patrilocal fami-
lies, upon marriage brides went to live with their husband’s family where
they found themselves at the bottom of the household’s pecking order,
often tyrannized by their mothers-in-law. A daughter-in-law had influence
only over her own children and it was only through her sons that she
could exert authority in the family. Daughters did not bring the same
status as they would eventually leave to marry. Thus, for a large group of
Italian women, the only power they had was as mothers of sons (even
though their massive workloads usually left little time for actual mother-
ing). Patrilocal families, in practice, are generally associated with societies
where women have very low status, in which sons are valued more than
daughters. In such peasant families, there is no particular suggestion that
excessive maternal love led to weak, ineffectual sons, since all peasants, of
either sex, had to be tough and hardworking. In all families, moreover,
whether rural or urban, patrilocal or not, it was the power of the male
head of family, his authority bolstered by a combination of cultural norms
and the force of law, that prevailed. Even a woman with a strong relation-
ship to her own sons still had to submit to the authority of the male head
of family.
The idea of strong mothers was, nonetheless, present in parts of the
South too, a region where the patrilocal norm was less common. Gabriella
Gribaudi’s chapter for this volume (originally given at the Glasgow work-
shop) looks at one example of this, the works of the Neapolitan playwright
Eduardo De Filippo—many of them written and performed prior to the
publication of Alvaro’s essay. Although De Filippo’s work was, of course,
a portrayal of strong southern mothers (and weak southern men), as
Patriarca has pointed out, in many of the negative stereotypes about Italian
national character there is a degree of slippage between ideas about the
South and ideas about the nation as a whole: the South was often seen, not
as separate from Italy, but as “an exaggerated version of Italy, that is, pos-
sessing all its defects in accentuated fashion.”38
The cultural and social milieu of the postwar years must also be consid-
ered in discussing where the idea of mammismo comes from. As Silvana
Patriarca argues in her contribution to this volume (which focuses on the
history and diffusion of the stereotype from the 1940s to the present day),
Alvaro’s ideas about the nature of Italian motherhood, and its deleterious
effect on Italian men and society more broadly, should be understood in
the context of the broader intellectual environment at the time, both in
Italy and beyond. This included the equally critical idea of “momism”
which had gained currency in America and predated mammismo by around
a decade. Within Italy, the growing tendency in the postwar period to use
psychology as a means of analysing, and indeed criticizing, Italian identity
and society, was an approach that drew in particular on the maternal, on
ideas such as the “great (Italian/Mediterranean) mother” and “maternal
civilization.” As she goes on to show (and as we will explore further
below), however, it was not through intellectual debate but rather through
mass culture, and films in particular, that the stereotype took hold, and in
a simplified form in which the much-ridiculed mammone and misogyny
are the dominant tropes.
The postwar years were, moreover, a time when unprecedented num-
bers of Italian women became housewives, and this might help explain
how the idea of mammismo came to take hold in the popular imagination.
Although for many women the chance of becoming a housewife could
seem like a liberation from the backbreaking toil of life on the land, and
the opportunity, denied to many of their own mothers, to take proper care
of their children, there were also downsides to this new situation. As Anna
Bravo has written:
Now stuck at home, she can turn it into a claustrophobic nest. She can begin
to see her children as her own private, exclusive, property, scrutinising their
lives, projecting her own unsatisfied ambitions onto them, suspicious of
their every foray into the outside world, feeling guilty about their every
failure, and devastated when they leave home.39
This idea that the overzealous mother figure stems from the unhappiness
of the housewife of the postwar era was recently echoed by Italian psy-
chologist Giuliana Proietti. In an interview with Psychology Today, she
argued that the roots of the over-mothering Italian mother should be
sought in what she calls the “traditional” role of the Italian (and Latin)
woman, frustrated with her life in a period before divorce and career were
options available to them: “She thus poured her love into her children.
Over time the son became a sort of husband to his mother without the
sexual component.”40 While the notion of “traditional” is always open to
question, and indeed problematic in the sense that women’s employment
was widespread in Italy before the economic miracle, it is true that postwar
Italy had a considerably higher proportion of housewives than some other
European countries in those years.
As Penelope Morris notes in her chapter in this volume (based on a

paper given at the Glasgow workshop), echoes of this surface in advice
columns of the postwar period, a useful “window into the private sphere”
of those years of change.41 Morris compares the problems and advice
regarding motherhood in the magazines Grazia, Famiglia cristiana, Noi
donne and Epoca. As she demonstrates, the advice offered varies from nor-
mative prescriptions to genuine attempts to respond to readers’ anxieties
and predicaments. The notion of mammismo is undoubtedly present, if
never named, and examined particularly closely by the novelist Alba de
Céspedes in her column “Dalla parte di lei” in Epoca. In answers which are
highly attuned to gender inequalities and the challenges of modern moth-
erhood, it is striking that the stereotype is assumed to exist. For de
Céspedes, such domineering—and essentially unhappy—mothers are the
product of a society that denies women respect or influence other than as
wives and mothers and traps them, in the absence of divorce, in loveless,
and sometimes abusive, marriages. Admittedly, this is just one of many
forms of mothering that appear in de Céspedes’ column. It is also true that
while the solutions proposed in “Dalla parte di lei” are never facile, the
overall tenor is one of optimism, as in the magazine itself, designed in
many ways to sell a modern, happy lifestyle. It is in her best-selling novel
of the same period, Quaderno proibito, by contrast, that the intensely
tragic implications of mammismo are played out. Here, de Céspedes paints
a far bleaker picture of motherhood, “failed” masculinity and power rela-
tions within the family.
Of course, mammismo was far from the only, or even the dominant,
vision of motherhood in these postwar years. Many celebrated mother-
hood, rather than condemned it. In the immediate aftermath of a cata-
strophic war, many returning soldiers yearned for the comfort and safety
of their families, and particularly their mothers.42 Catholics, moreover,
who dominated Italy politically after the war through the Christian
Democrat party, continued to praise women for their motherly virtues.
Even many female ex-partisans, whether actual mothers or not, on the
defensive given the attempts to brand them as women of loose morals,
often claimed that it was maternal values that had led them to fight for
their nation.43
In the Glasgow workshop, some of the rich variety of ways in which
Italian mothers were represented in the postwar years and the following
decades were explored. In this period mothers were both criticized and
idealized; seen as both problematic and positive; strong, but overbearing
and self-sacrificial. The Glasgow papers also showed how the meanings
and experiences of motherhood changed over generations, and how those
generational differences themselves could be problematic, as emerged in
women’s diaries, or in anxious letters to magazines from women trying to
deal with cohabiting with mothers-in-law, or in the oral accounts of 1970s
feminists who spoke both of a revolt against their mothers (of the postwar,
housewifely, generation) but also of transgenerational connection and
solidarity.44 In this complex and varied picture of maternity, “traditional”
and patriarchal assumptions about motherhood—which now also included
the stereotype of mammismo—continued to play a fundamental part.
Indeed, many of the workshop papers did not discuss the stereotype
directly, as, in those years, it seems to have appeared mainly in popular
culture—particularly films—or in the exchanges with readers writing in to
advice columns.
Some of the papers in the workshop demonstrated how maternity could
be used to reassure or “normalize,” as in the case of the use of maternal
discourses to rehabilitate female terrorists,45 or to create consensus, as
Molly Tambor’s chapter in this volume shows. Tambor explores how, in
the same period as Alvaro launched the idea of mammismo, others were
deploying ideas about maternity to quite different, more positive and
empowering, ends. She examines how postwar female parliamentarians
(many of them ex-partisans) in the newly born Italian Republic skilfully
drew on ideas about the social value of maternity to push through a raft of
legislative reforms relevant to gender equality. Here, Tambor focuses on
one particularly significant moment—the passing of Teresa Noce’s law on
maternity leave for working women. Through the story of the campaign
for this legislation—passed in 1950—Tambor explores both a successful
use of maternalist politics for women’s rights, as well as the ambivalent
consequences of politicizing maternity. Alvaro himself (as Silvana Patriarca
notes in her chapter) was negative about women’s new influence in the
world of politics. Perhaps his slating of the mothers of postwar Rome was
at least in part a reaction to this deluge of empowering maternal
ideology.
Mammismo Abroad
No discussion of the stereotype of mammismo would be complete without
regard to the role that it has played beyond Italy itself. The importance of
the Italian diaspora was raised even in the first workshop in Dundee, when
Chiara Saraceno aired the idea that the stereotype of mammismo may be
primarily one whose origins lie mainly outside Italy, constructed by
migrant Italians as well as non-Italians. Although d’Amelia’s work does
seem to suggest that it would be wrong to describe mammismo as nothing
more than yet another anti-Italian stereotype stemming from the scornful,
orientalist gaze of foreigners and then taken on board by Italians them-
selves, the popularization and dissemination of this stereotype certainly
did occur to a great extent beyond Italy’s borders, particularly in the New
World. Corrado Alvaro may have been one of the first to speak of it in Italy
but cultural representations of gender roles in Italian diaspora communi-
ties, particularly American films and television programmes, have played a
role in disseminating such ideas and reinforcing them in the popular
imagination.
As the papers on North America given at the Edinburgh workshop
demonstrated, the specific idea of mammismo in this diaspora community
seems to have appeared at roughly the same time as it did in Italy.46 In the
USA, it was not evident in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth
century, emerging only (shortly after a not dissimilar American equiva-
lent—the “momism” mentioned above) in the second half of the twenti-
eth century. When it did appear, it was popularized mainly in films and
literary representations, although always alongside a range of representa-
tions of the Italian maternal figure, far from all being of the mammismo
variety.
The North American example is the focus of Maddalena Tirabassi’s
chapter for this volume, based on her paper given at this workshop. Here
she explores the emergence of the mammismo stereotype in America
where an image of a “traditional Italian family” developed that was quite
different from the realities of life in the Italian South that migrants had left
behind. She argues that, over time, a series of stereotypical images of
Italian Americans emerged. The early representations of Italians—primar-
ily as organ grinders, downtrodden workers and romantic lovers—were
increasingly replaced by images of strong mothers and “mama’s boys” (as
well as, of course, macho gangsters). Tirabassi’s chapter examines a num-
ber of films, and literary and televisual representations, which, to varying
degrees, have conveyed such ideas, as well as some recent independent
films that offer more nuanced and less stereotypical representations than
the dominant Hollywood narrative.
Overall, however, the contributors to the Edinburgh workshop demon-
strated, in the examples they studied at least, how the lived experiences of
many Italian diaspora mothers can be viewed through the lens of the ste-
reotype only with difficulty, since the relationship between migration and
motherhood is, and was, multi-layered and complex. The two papers on
the Antipodes, for example, showed strong family ties in diaspora com-
munities but a range of realities, often quite different from idealized or
stereotypical images.
This complexity was also evident in the views aired at the Edinburgh
public event focusing on the Scottish-Italian community, particularly in
the discussions following the talk by keynote speaker Mary Contini,47 and
the round-table event where a diverse group of Italian-Scots (whose ages
ranged over a number of generations—the youngest being a 14-year old
boy) shared their ideas through personal testimonies. A notable feature of
these discussions was the idea, expressed by some of the third- or fourth-
generation migrants that a mother’s tendency to spoil and depend on a
particular male child, usually the oldest son—identified light-heartedly by
some speakers as “the chosen one”—and her desire to provide food,
together formed a defining feature of their identity as Italians. Some even
presented these tendencies as some kind of innate (or even “genetic”)
feature of Italianness. The latter idea was contested, however, by a first-
generation Italian migrant in the audience, who felt that the more estab-
lished migrant community was essentially evoking a nostalgic idea of a
bygone Italy which was out of touch with more recent changes in Italian
society. One of the speakers in the round table mentioned this too and
spoke of her own mother’s approach to how her daughter should behave
as based on “a time warp” in her failure to grasp that the Italy she had left
had changed in her absence. The discussion, however, was far more
nuanced than this simple contrast seems to imply, with many speakers
pointing out differing or more ambivalent stories, based on their own
particular life experiences. Others, moreover, were dismissive of whether
or not this was how things were done in Italy since, as they pointed out,
their identity was not Italian but Scottish-Italian, an identity that they saw
as taking “the best from both cultures.” Some pointed out too that aspects
like expecting girls to do more housework than boys, and the favouring of
the men of the household (“serve the men first”), was far from an exclu-
sive feature of Italian households, but occurred in some Scottish families
too. The figure of the (male) “chosen one” was, moreover, presented as
different from the bamboccione of the mammismo stereotype, for this
figure was seen as more a potential strong protector of the family in
times of trouble, than a spoilt, coddled son. There was much agreement,
however, on the importance of family values and of food (and the social
nature of its consumption) as defining features of an Italian-Scottish
identity in both the past and present.
Beyond the Stereotype

As should be clear from much of what has already been said, many of the
papers from the various workshops, and some of the contributions to this
volume, demonstrate that mammismo is, and has been, but one of a diverse
range of images of Italian motherhood. For example, as Ursula Fanning’s
chapter shows, although many Italian writers, particularly women writers,
have found a rich seam of inspiration in the topic of mothers, motherhood
and the maternal experience, in the main, they have (with good reason)
simply ignored such negative representations. Fanning discusses what is
perhaps the best-known example in Italian women’s writing of the rejec-
tion of motherhood—Sibilla Aleramo’s articulation of issues of identity
and conflict around the maternal in her thinly disguised autobiographical
novel Una donna. Yet, as Fanning demonstrates, that work can also be
read as a challenging reconfiguration of the maternal which would echo
through the novels of later writers; one which takes account of the intense
physical pleasures and the strong pull of motherhood while firmly reject-
ing the role of the mother as it was understood at the time and drawing
attention repeatedly to the threat to the self posed by maternity. If, in the
mid-twentieth century, Fanning notes, writers tended towards oblique
references to motherhood, if any, or negative representations of sacrifice
and limitation, from the 1970s onwards there was a marked effort to
reconceptualize the maternal and a particular interest in the mother–
daughter relationship. As in Aleramo’s novel, the corporeality of mother-
hood and its disruption to identity remained central concerns, but these
are aspects which also open the way to literary and philosophical dimen-
sions of motherhood, and a means of embracing otherness more widely.
Mary Jo Bona’s chapter suggests that this interest in diverse represen-
tations of the maternal (as well as a strong interest in the mother–daugh-
ter relationship) has crossed the Atlantic to Italian diaspora communities.
Her study focuses on experimental narratives by Italian-American
authors Carole Maso, Mary Cappello and Alison Bechdel, all of which
explore relationships between mothers and daughters, from the point of
view of daughters who identify as lesbian. As Bona points out, literary
Italian-American representations of mothers may have had some familiar
tropes, but they also had sufficient context and nuance to move beyond
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eloped, tore down the hill by special dâk, and were married at
Saharanpore. Where is she now?”
Wynyard made no reply. Captain Ramsay’s wandering memory had
evidently evoked a vision of his dark-eyed and remarkably pretty
mother. She had run away with the handsome Hussar officer, and
had, in consequence, been cast off by her relations.
“Dead?” inquired the other after a pause.
Wynyard nodded.
“Ah, well, we shall all be dead one day—some sooner—and some
later,” and he fell into one of his sudden silences.
“I think he is better!” whispered his wife to Wynyard, as they parted
at the hall door. “Didn’t he seem almost himself this evening? And he
took great notice of Topsy and Darkie, and made their dinner
himself.”
Two days later, as the chauffeur was leaving Mrs. Hogben’s cottage
after his midday meal, preparatory to getting ready the car, Mrs.
Ramsay suddenly appeared at her gate and beckoned to him
frantically. She looked white and frightened.
“Jim went off this morning,” she began, “and hasn’t been home
since. He never did this before. Oh, I ought to have taken your
advice,” and she wrung her hands. “I’ve been searching for him
since eight o’clock.”
“Did he speak to any one before he left the house?” inquired
Wynyard.
“No. Fanny saw him going out in a terrible hurry; he had on a pair of
white gloves, and said he would be late for parade.”
“Poor fellow!”
“And the stupid girl never said one word to me till she brought me my
hot water at eight o’clock.”
“I’m just off with the car, taking Miss Susan to a croquet tournament,
or I’d go and have a look round. What about the policeman?”
“The policeman! Why, he cannot walk! He weighs sixteen stone.”
“Well, anyway, if you don’t mind, I’ll send Tom Hogben and Jones;
they know the country, and will keep a shut mouth. I’ll just tell them
now,” and he hurried away.
Although Miss Susan had no money wherewith to buy diamonds,
sables, and motor cars, she contrived to extract a great deal of
pleasure out of her elderly spinster life. She enjoyed mild little tea-
parties, followed by bridge at sixpence a hundred—and received her
partner’s scoldings with disarming humility. Her one passion was
croquet. “Miss S. Parrett” was a notable player—her name appeared
in print in connection with local tournaments; her arm was steady,
her aim was deadly, and, not only this, she played the game with her
head as well as with her hands.
On the present occasion Miss Susan had lured her reluctant niece to
a meeting at Upstreet—a village about ten miles from Ottinge; in
fact, she made such a point of Aurea’s company, of Aurea’s support
—whether in success or failure—that the girl felt compelled to go—
and, at any rate, she took a sincere pride in Susan’s modest
triumphs. The tournament was prolonged till seven o’clock; Miss
Susan was detained, being in the Finals. Dusk was closing on the
world when the two ladies, with two prizes (salad bowl and a silver
cigarette-case), took their departure. The prize-winner, in exuberant
spirits, uttering effusive expressions of enjoyment and thanks, had
talked herself into the car, and there were so many after-thoughts
and messages that even the chauffeur became impatient with his
dear Miss Susan; he was desperately anxious to get home and hear
the result of the search for Captain Ramsay.
It was an unusually close evening—there was thunder in the air—
and the interior of the motor was stuffy even with the windows down
on both sides—and how they rattled! The old machine trundled along
at its best speed, as if inspired by the fear of Miss Parrett awaiting its
arrival, watch in hand. Its driver had another and more well-grounded
dread in his mind.
The ladies within discussed the recent party, the play, the prizes, and
the guests.
“The Wendovers were there; did you see them?” said Miss Susan
—“Mrs. Wendover and Gertrude. I thought they both looked very ill.”
“Yes, and I believe it was from hunger, Susan,” was her niece’s
surprising reply. “I never saw such a tea as they had—surreptitiously.
It’s shameful to watch, I know, but I was not playing, and happened
to be sitting near, and could not help myself. I felt so frightfully sorry
for them—I was inclined to cry!”
“My dear girl, surely you are not in earnest?”
“I only wish I wasn’t. Gertrude had a whole plate of sandwiches,
besides cakes; she took them quietly, when no one was looking, and
devoured them ravenously, and her mother pocketed several buns
and lumps of sugar.”
“But why? I don’t understand.”
“Because probably they have nothing to eat at home! Mrs. Lucas,
the parson’s wife, told me in confidence that they are almost
penniless; the little money they had has been lost in some bank that
tempted people with high interest and then went smash. The
Wendovers cling to the old cottage—it’s their own—but they have no
servant; they do their own washing and, very early in the morning,
their own doorstep! Everything is spick and span still. After dark they
steal out and collect firewood and apples, and even field turnips, and
yet they hold up their heads and ‘pretend.’ I heard Mrs. Wade
pressing them to have cake and tea—and they declined.”
“Have they no friends or relations?”
“I don’t know. Mrs. Lucas said she did not like to ask for their
confidence. She always has them to supper on Sundays, and sends
them eggs; but she is poor enough herself with eight children. She
thinks the Wendovers will break down now that the winter is coming,
and yet they won’t allow any one to guess that they are destitute.”
“Dear, dear, dear, how shocking! What is to be done, Aurea?”
“I’ve just had my allowance, and I’ll post them a five-pound note to-
morrow anonymously, and I’ll get something later on from dad.”
“Yes, yes, yes, and I must see what I can do too. Poverty is cruel—a
terrible thing—what a trial of one’s character!”
“It is indeed, and so are riches sometimes. They seem to change
people’s dispositions—if they come in for a fortune.”
“That’s true; but I do hope, dear child, you are not thinking of your
poor Aunt Bella?”
“Aunt Bella was much nicer when she lived in the Red Cottage,
dined at one o’clock, and put a penny in the plate.”
“Oh, now, Aurea, I can’t let you say that; she is very proud of you,
and a dear, kind sister to me. Why, only last week she gave me a
lovely lace parasol, and when she writes to me it is always ‘My own
darling Susan.’”
Aurea was silent. She was thinking of darling Susan’s many
deprivations, humiliations, and hardships.
“We all have our foibles, have we not, Aurea, my child?”
“Oh, I know that, Susan, and I——”
Whatever Aurea was going to add was cut short by her aunt’s
piercing scream. From some thick bushes on the left bank, a tall
figure had shot out; there was a lightning rush, a shout from the
chauffeur, who jammed on the brake, then a violent swerve, an
upheaval, and a sickening, crunching sensation.
A man had deliberately flung himself in front of the car, which had
gone over him, then stopped abruptly, shuddering throughout its
rickety frame.
The driver sprang off and dragged from beneath the wheels a limp
and motionless body. Yes, his vague fears had been justified.
“It’s Captain Ramsay!” he called to Aurea, who had already hurled
herself into the road. “I’m afraid he is done for. Stay where you are.”
As he spoke, he raised a limp and bleeding figure in his arms, which
he carried to the hedgerow; next, he took off his coat and laid him
upon it, and ran and lit a motor lamp. All his actions were surprisingly
prompt and vigorous.
“Now, will you come over here, miss?” he called to Susan
authoritatively, but she was almost beside him. In a crisis, simple,
talkative Susan was another person, and could rise to the occasion.
“And you, Miss Morven, try and find some water—we passed a
stream just now; bring it in anything—your hat or—yes, the salad
bowl! I’m afraid it’s a bad business,” he continued, “and his head is
all cut—and his wrist—it’s an artery. Miss Susan, fetch a stick
quickly, quickly, and I’ll make a tourniquet.”
The chauffeur seemed to have taken complete command of the
situation; he ordered the ladies hither and thither, he bandaged up
Captain Ramsay’s head with Aurea’s white scarf—which he tore into
strips—whilst Aurea stood by, eager to help, but trembling like an
aspen. She had never heard a man moan, or witnessed such a
scene.
“I think I’ve fixed him up just for the moment,” said Owen, rising, “and
now I’ll fetch the doctor. You two ladies won’t mind stopping, will
you?”
“Certainly not! What do you think we are made of?” rejoined Miss
Susan. “Here,”—now sinking down—“place his head in my lap, and
just go as hard as ever you can!”
“He is in a very bad way, I’m afraid, and I really don’t like leaving
you, but there’s no help for it.” Then, after sticking a flaring lamp on
the ground beside them, he climbed into his place and sped away.
In less than half an hour he had returned, accompanied by Dr. Boas;
they found the poor sufferer still alive and moaning, his head
supported by Miss Susan, and his lips bathed by her niece.
“I half expected this,” said the doctor, as he knelt beside Captain
Ramsay. “Internal injuries,” he announced, after a rapid examination,
“and fatal.”
“The stretcher and the parish nurse will be here presently,” said
Owen; and, hearing a familiar voice, Captain Ramsay slowly opened
his eyes and asked—
“Oh, it’s cold. Where am I? Where’s Katie?”
As he recognised Owen bending over him, he murmured—
“Wynyard, Wynyard—hold on—I’m coming!”
“You see he is off his head,” said Miss Susan, “poor fellow; he did
not know what he was doing.”
Then, as the chauffeur relieved her of the dying man’s weight, he
regained consciousness, and, again opening his eyes, he whispered
“Wynyard!” and passed away in the arms of Wynyard’s son.
CHAPTER XXI
BY THE SUNDIAL
A long time had elapsed since a tragedy or an inquest had taken

place in Ottinge; the last had occurred twenty years previously, when
Joe Watkins (a village name), being jealous, had thrown his wife
down a well, and, despite her prayers, entreaties, and screams, had
left her to drown, for which crime he had paid the extreme penalty of
the law in Brodfield Gaol.
A suicide was something entirely foreign to the character of the
community, and the topic was exhaustively debated in the Drum. Joe
Thunder gave it as his opinion that the remains of Captain Ramsay
—speaking from recollection—would be buried with a stake at a
cross-roads—probably at Crampton, being nearest. The village was
stirred out of its normal lethargy and, secretly, rather proud of being
the scene of a sensation, and newspaper paragraphs.
The Parson and Miss Morven spent the night succeeding Captain
Ramsay’s death at Ivy House, and were anxious to carry his widow
off to the Rectory; but she preferred to remain in her own home until
after the funeral, and then leave Ottinge. All Mrs. Ramsay’s little
world, gentle and simple, had shown her their kindness and
sympathy: the Rector looked after business matters, Miss Susan had
undertaken correspondence (she enjoyed letter-writing), Wynyard
took charge of the dogs, whilst Aurea gave personal attendance and
warm affection.
The inquest was conducted as quietly and as speedily as possible,
thanks to the good offices of Dr. Boas; the verdict returned was
“suicide whilst of unsound mind,” and the jury offered their sincere
condolences with the widow. At the funeral Ottinge was proud to note
a lord and two honourables appearing as mourners, and the remains
of Captain Ramsay received Christian interment in the churchyard;
there was no word of cross-roads—much less a stake!
Afterwards, Mrs. Ramsay’s brothers, who were guests at the
Rectory, took their departure, and it was generally known that their
sister would follow them to Ireland within a week. Her obstinate
persistence in for years clinging to a man who by rights should be in
an asylum had alienated her friends; but now that he was no more,
there reigned a great peace. The boarder dogs had been abruptly
dispersed, and Wynyard, who obtained special leave, personally
conducted several parties over the fields to Catsfield station, and
wound up matters out of doors. Aurea did the same within—but they
rarely met. She was surprised to discover the footing on which her
aunts’ chauffeur stood at Ivy House. Till now she knew little of their
acquaintance; it was a before-breakfast and after-dark affair.
It was also Wynyard’s task to collect and sort and pack the Captain’s
belongings, by his widow’s particular desire.
“I like to have you about,” she said. “Is it not wonderful how well we
have got to know one another, and how much we have in common,
since I opened the hall door to you, a stranger, that wet morning last
April? Jim was devoted to you, and you were so good to him—sitting
here, evening after evening, talking and listening and playing picquet
with that poor fellow. Oh, Owen, if you had known him as your father
and I knew him, you would understand why I, forsaking all my own
people, clung to him till the end!”
“Yes, you did that!” he answered, with emphasis.
“Only think of the tragedy of his life,” she resumed, in a broken voice,
“the last fifteen years, all through a branch knocking off his sun topee
and his determination to get first spear. Oh, what a little thing to
mean so much! The way of life.”
Wynyard, the handy man, packed up cases containing old Indian
relics, such as faded photographs, horns, bear skins, khaki uniforms,
Sam Brown belts, packets of tiger claws, and all sorts of rubbish
dear to Mrs. Ramsay. Among the collection was a photograph
album, aged at least thirty years, and considerably the worse for
Indian rains and Ottinge damp.
“I think this must be your father,” said Mrs. Ramsay, pointing to the
old-fashioned carte-de-visite of a handsome man in Hussar uniform,
“and this is your mother opposite,” indicating a pretty, dark-eyed girl
holding up a puppy. “You see, she was fond of dogs, like you and
me! Do you care to have them?” drawing them out as she spoke.
“Yes, thank you most awfully, I should. It’s funny that I should come
upon my people and hear so much of them in Ottinge of all the
world! I don’t remember either of them, for my mother died when I
was two years old, and my father was killed at polo—it killed her too
—and then my sister and I were sent home.”
“So you have a sister?”
“I have very much a sister,” and he laughed; “she has all the family
brains—and her own as well.”
“I will not allow that, Mr. Wynyard; it was marvellous how, with a few
hints from me, you threw yourself into a life before you were born.
Isn’t it strange that I am the only one in Ottinge who knows your real
name?”
“Except Miss Morven,” he corrected. “You know he recognised me,
and said ‘Wynyard.’”
“Yes, but no doubt she believes he was wandering. You don’t wish
your surname to be known here, do you?”
“No, my christian name does as well.”
“I must confess I wonder you remain! You are so young, and life here
is deadly dull for such as you, with all the years and energies before
you,” and she looked at him interrogatively. It was dusk; she was
sitting in the deep drawing-room window, her slim figure silhouetted
against the fading light. Wynyard had been nailing down some
cases, and came and stood, hammer in hand, in the middle of the
room. She knew perfectly well why he remained in the sleepy village;
it was because Aurea Morven had glorified Ottinge.
“I believe I know your secret,” she remarked suddenly. He made no
reply. Mrs. Ramsay was no doubt thinking of Aurea, whilst he was
dwelling on the bargain with his uncle. Should he tell her? They had
of late been drawn so much to one another—she already knew half
his story, and had just given him the photographs of his father and
mother—her husband and his father had been like brothers—yes—
he would!
And there in the semi-dusk, leaning his hands on the back of a chair,
in as few words as possible, he related his tale, and how he had
made a solemn compact for two years, which compact he was
bound to keep to the letter and the bitter end.
“And it’s a good deal more bitter than I expected,” he concluded.
Listening with tightly folded hands, the slim figure in black accorded
him her entire sympathy. Now she was in possession of all his
confidence, and such was his unhappy plight, he was desperately in
love with a girl, and could neither speak nor show a sign—nor make
his real position known. What an amazing state of affairs! Did Aurea
recognise in Wynyard a silent worshipper? And was it not true that
love and smoke cannot be concealed?
“You will keep this to yourself, I know,” he said. “I’m not sure that I’m
within my right in telling you, but somehow I had to.”
“You may be certain I shall never breathe it till you give me
permission,” she answered, drawing a long breath; “but what an
extraordinary man your uncle must be!”
“Yes, he is eccentric; but I believe he is right—this sort of
apprenticeship will do me a jolly lot of good. I know more of the
people now I’m one of them. Many a thing I’ve learnt here, that I’d
never have had a glimpse of, and I must tell you fair and square that
I gave Uncle Dick a lot of bother in the way of my debts.”
“Hereditary extravagance—your father—a younger son—drove a
four-in-hand, you know. Ah, here comes Aurea,” as the little gate
swung. “I half promised to go over there this evening.”
“Then good-bye, I’m off; I’ll finish the packing to-morrow,” and he
escaped through the back garden.
It was abundantly evident that of late Miss Morven avoided him, and
he had not spoken to her since the tragic occasion when they both
hung over a dying man on the high road to Upstreet.
More than six months had gone by since he had come to Ottinge;
sometimes it seemed an endless time, at others as but yesterday.
One thing was clear and stationary in his mind—his living among
working people had opened the eyes of a future landowner, given
him a better estimate of his responsibilities, and a sympathy and
understanding that nothing could obliterate.
At last Ivy House was closed; the blinds were drawn down, the key
hung in Mrs. Hogben’s bedroom, and the memory of the recent
catastrophe had become a little dim. It was three weeks since the
Captain had killed himself, and other events had begun to press
upon public attention. Since the tragedy Aurea had absolutely
refused to drive in the motor, to her Aunt Bella’s great annoyance;
she was painfully anxious to have it in daily use, for she feared that
being the cause of a man’s death might depreciate the car’s value!
And when the girl announced she would never get into it again, she
was furious, and her face assumed a dull red shade as she asked—
“Do you mean to tell me that, if there’s an accident to a carriage, or if
a cart runs over somebody, that cart is never to be used? How could
people get on?” she demanded. “I never heard of such affected
nonsense. And now I suppose you will go and give my nice car a bad
name? As if it could help the madman throwing himself under it!”
“I’ll say nothing about it, Aunt Bella, you know that perfectly well; but
if you had been in the motor yourself and felt the crunch, I don’t think
you would have cared ever to drive in it again.”
“Rubbish—you are hysterical! You should get Dr. Boas to give you a
tonic and go away somewhere for a change; only you are too much
away from your father as it is—every one says so. It was remarked
to me only the other day.”
“It is funny, Aunt Bella, how many people make nasty remarks about
me to you. Do you suppose that they think you like hearing them?”
and she laughed, and before Miss Parrett could find her breath or an
answer had left her.
It was a fact that Miss Parrett cultivated a cordon of idle, elderly
women, who came to tea or lunch or to spend the day, who were
aware that Miss Parrett had “a good deal in her power to bestow”
(not only in the form of fruit and vegetables), and who knew that,
even more than talking of herself and her wonderful successes in her
youth, her many broken-hearted lovers, she liked to discuss her
pretty, popular niece and to listen to their hostile criticisms. Miss
Parrett was openly jealous of this girl’s ascendancy in Ottinge, where
she was the great lady. After all, Aurea was only a sort of half-niece,
and she could leave her money where she liked. This notification
was promptly repeated, and received with unqualified and respectful
approval, by the two Miss Dabbs and Mrs. Forbes Cattermole and
her freckled daughters. On these occasions, when Aurea was the
topic, and her appearance, manners, and customs were figuratively
placed under the microscope, and then exhaustively debated, the
entrance of Miss Susan was invariably followed by an abrupt and
awkward silence.
It was a lovely afternoon—Saturday—the third day of September,

and the chauffeur was working in the Manor garden close by the
sundial, repairing some of the rose pergolas with nails and wire.
Suddenly, to his delight, he beheld Miss Morven coming through the
yew arch nearest to the house—a slim white figure in a dark green
frame—with her hat over her arm, and accompanied by Joss, who, in
exuberant joy, was leaping his own height from the ground.
As the young lady sauntered slowly up the broad walk, she stopped
every now and then to pick flowers from the luxuriant borders on
either hand. As these were white, she was evidently gathering them
for the church. He watched, surreptitiously, her wonderfully supple
figure, her lithe grace, as she stooped and stretched hither and
thither. Aurea had grown thin, her lovely colour had certainly faded,
no doubt she had not yet recovered from the shock of Captain
Ramsay’s horribly sudden death.
By and by his vicinity was discovered to her by Joss, who had been
dashing about among the cabbages in chase of an historic pheasant,
and now accorded him a rapturous acknowledgment. He had just
finished his task, and stepped out into the walk; as the young lady
approached he touched his cap, and she halted for a moment and
said, with obvious hesitation—
“A lovely day, isn’t it?”
“Yes, miss;” and then he ventured to add, “You never come out in the
car now?”
“No,” she answered, “never again; it’s a juggernaut!”
“I would not say that!” he protested. “What happened could not have
been helped; of course, it’s an old machine and out of date”—(he
was thinking of the 60 h.p. Napier at Westmere)—“and requires a lot
of humouring to get her to run at all, and if put to too high a pressure
might go to pieces—still——”
But here Miss Morven interrupted with a hasty gesture, and, laying
her flowers upon the sundial, turned to face him fully, and said—
“I’m rather surprised”—she paused for a moment, and then resumed
—“that when you saw what a dull sort of place this was, and what a
wretched old car you had to drive, you stayed on. You really have no
proper job; my aunt’s motoring is absurd. I cannot imagine why you
remain here.”
“Can you not, miss?” he answered, in a low voice, his gaze fixed on
the sundial and its motto, “Time Trieth All.” Suddenly raising his
eyes, he met hers steadily—for one unguarded moment the truth
was in his face!—and there was a thrill of passion in his voice as he
added, “Then, in that case, I am afraid it would be impossible for me
to tell you.”
For as long as one could count ten, there was an expressive silence,
only broken by the crashing of cabbage leaves, the notes of wood
pigeons, the boom of a passing bee.
Miss Morven remained motionless, but the trembling of her lip
indicated the tension of her self-control, and a wave of sudden colour
invaded her cheeks, and raced up into her wavy dark hair. This tell-
tale blush betrayed that she knew as well as the chauffeur, his sole
reason for remaining in Ottinge.
Then without a word she lifted the flowers, and, holding herself
unusually erect, the slim white figure proceeded down the walk that
led towards the old bowling-green.
Wynyard, as he stood watching her, asked himself, Was she also
passing out of his life? In another moment a yew hedge had hid her
from his eyes.
“I believe I’ve done it now!” he muttered. “I could not help it; she
knows, and is ready to kill me for my presumption! She will tell her
aunts, and I shall get the sack.”
He picked up a small blossom that Aurea had dropped on the
sundial, opened his watch, and carefully placed the little flower along
with the little photograph. When people are in love, what irrational
follies tempt them!
CHAPTER XXII
AUREA’S REFLECTIONS
But Aurea had no intention of “telling her aunts”; on the contrary,

she crossed the old bowling-green in order to avoid the Manor, and
returned home across the meadows that led by Claringbold’s Farm.
In the dim hall of the Rectory she encountered Norris—who, of an
afternoon, often haunted that vicinity—and said, as she handed her
the flowers—
“Will you please fill the church vases? I’ve rather a headache from
the sun.”
The girl really did feel considerably dazed and bewildered, and
passed into the drawing-room, where she ruthlessly dislodged Mac
from her own particular pet chair. Mac vacated the seat with an air of
injured deliberation, found another, and sighed as heavily as if he
were a human being.
The time had come for thinking things out, and his mistress, having
seated herself, prepared to hold a court of inquiry on Aurea Morven.
One would suppose that she really had had a sunstroke like poor
Captain Ramsay! What mad impulse had urged her to question the
chauffeur? At the moment, she seemed to be listening to another
personality speaking by her lips. She felt a fluttering in her throat as
she told herself that this inscrutable young man was certainly in love
with her. Behold, she summoned her evidence! The photograph in
the watch, the village concert, when, after a rousing camp song, he
had given, as an encore, “I’ll sing thee songs of Araby”; she believed
that the words were addressed to herself, that the singer was
pouring out his soul to her. Possibly other girls shared her conviction,
and had taken it to their tender and palpitating hearts. When the last
note had died away in a ringing silence, Ottinge recognised a
gentleman’s song and a gentleman’s voice; after a pause of
astonishment, there came a storm of belated clapping and applause,
and one or two timid female voices were heard to cry out “Encore!”
Some of the rustic audience grinned, and declared that the words
were no good, and damned nonsense, but the tune was pretty
enough; it was whistled in the street within the week.
Aurea summed up the photograph, the song, and the recent
interview by the sundial; the recollection of Owen’s voice, the look in
his extremely expressive grey eyes, set her heart beating. At the
same time she blamed herself for her amazing indiscretion. She,
who had lately avoided this gentleman chauffeur at choir practice, at
the Manor, and in the village—she, who knew that he treasured her
photo, to actually accost him in the garden, and demand what he
meant by remaining in Ottinge!
She felt her face burning, and no wonder! Well, at any rate the scene
had given her a shock—it had roused her to the knowledge of her
own feelings. It was with difficulty her maidenly reticence could put
the thing into thought, but it simply came to this—she had arrived, at
last, at the clear realisation that the daughter of the Rector of Ottinge
was in love with her aunts’ chauffeur! She whispered it to herself and
Mackenzie! How did it sound? How would it sound when talked
abroad, all over the parish and the county? What would people say?
When she thought of her Aunt Bella, she actually laughed aloud, and
Mackenzie, whom she had disturbed, raised his head and gave a
low growl.
The chauffeur disturbed her—even now her pulses were racing; she
had never felt like this when in the company of Bertie Woolcock—no,
nor any of Aunt Morven’s young eligibles—but this man affected her
differently. Was it because she knew that he cared for her? Was it
because he was handsome, reserved, and self-reliant? Was it
because there was a mystery about him? No; it was simply because
he was himself; his voice was still speaking to her inward ear—“It
would be impossible for me to tell you!” Nevertheless, his eyes had
been eloquent, and, since the truth must be confessed, her heart
was in a wild whirl of happiness.
But why was he here in retreat? Surely not because he had done
anything disgraceful? Mrs. Ramsay liked him, and said he had been
such a comfort to her husband and herself; her father liked him, so
did Susan, so did the village; the dogs adored him—all but
Mackenzie, an exception who proved the rule!
Yes, she would give her heart to the chauffeur—as a matter of fact it
was not a case of giving; it was already bestowed—and keep the
knowledge to herself. No one should ever know—above all, he
should not know. “Time Tries All.” His affairs might improve; some
day he might be able to throw off his chauffeur’s disguise and be
himself; meanwhile, she determined to avoid him, and never again
enter the Manor garden when there was a chance of meeting him; as
to the green motor, she had, as she assured him, done with it for
ever.
CHAPTER XXIII
AN HOUR OF LIBERTY
The white flowers had been gathered on Saturday in the Manor

garden, and it was now Monday. Miss Parrett had adventured a drive
to Westmere, returning home by four o’clock, and the car being
washed and put away betimes, the chauffeur found himself at liberty.
The glowing and golden September evening was enticing, and,
whistling for Joss, he set out for a good long stretch before supper.
On this occasion, man and dog deserted the low country and the
water-meadows, and climbed the hills which sheltered the village.
Their road lay by a grassy cart-track, which ran sometimes between
high hedges, sometimes along a headland, with here and there a
hoary old gate—it was chiefly used in harvest-time (indeed, wisps of
fresh hay and straw were still clinging to the bushes), and was the
short-cut to Shrapton-le-Steeple, a hamlet which lay eight miles
south of Ottinge. The track emerged upon a bare plateau, from
whence was a fine view of the surrounding country, and here was
also a sharp freshness in the air, which the man inhaled with
unmistakable enjoyment. Here, too, in the banks, were inviting
burrows, and these afforded the dog an absorbing interest, as he
drew their savour into his nostrils with long-drawn sniffs of ecstatic
satisfaction.
After a tramp of between three and four miles, Wynyard threw
himself down on a tempting patch of grass, drew out his case, and lit
one of Martin Kesters’ excellent cigars. His eyes roamed meditatively
over the broad landscape below, stretching away into the dim
distance—the spreading uplands splashed with orange gorse, dotted
with sheep and cattle, with here and there a rust-coloured
farmhouse, whose pale blue smoke lazily ascended into the cool
clear air. Wynyard enjoyed the scene and the sensation of absolute
freedom; at least he was out of livery—he glanced at his shabby
tweed coat—beyond the reach of orders, and master of himself! Not
much to boast of! To think that this job was the only one he could
take on when driven into a corner by circumstances and Uncle Dick!
He had no head, that was his trouble, although he could keep it at a
pinch—and wasn’t this what was called a paradox? If he were only
clever with his tongue and his pen, like Leila, and had her talent for
languages and for organisation, her genius for saying and doing the
right thing!
As he unconsciously picked bits of grass, his thoughts returned to
Aurea and their recent meeting in the Manor garden. Her confusion
and her vivid blush held for him a most stupendous significance.
Memory and imagination had magnified the occasion, until it seemed
to be the one important event in his whole life!
If, by any chance, Aurea cared for him, and saw in him something
more than her aunts’ civil man-servant, why should he not present
himself in his true character? The gruff replies in imitation of Tom
Hogben were surely an unnecessary handicap? Anyway, he had let
himself go on the night of the accident, hustling and ordering on the
spur of the moment, sending Miss Morven for water, Miss Susan for
wood—though no doubt they were both too much upset to have
noticed anything besides the tragedy.
Possibly a change of manner would make a difference, and Aurea
was so bright, and so wonderfully clear-sighted, she might divine
something of his situation, and wait. “Wait!” repeated incredulous
common sense, “wait eighteen months till he had cast off his
shackles!” On the other hand, Bertie Woolcock loomed large.
Undoubtedly he would not wait, nor would Aurea’s own relations.
The Rector himself was a good, unworldly old scribbler, but the
people that mattered, such as Miss Parrett and General and Mrs.
Morven, they would never allow their niece to refuse many
thousands a year and Woolcock, in order to keep faith with a
mysterious and penniless chauffeur. And Bertie undoubtedly meant
business; he was continually appearing at the Rectory or the Manor,
charged with paltry messages and unnecessary notes—any excuse
or none served him! He even attended evening church, where he
openly and shamelessly worshipped the Rector’s daughter, and not
the Rector’s God.
As Wynyard contemplated Woolcock’s position and the desperate
obstacles that lay in his own path, he picked many blades of grass.
Naturally he disliked his rival; he remembered him when he was in
the upper fourth at Eton, a big, loutish fellow—not of course in Pop—
and an awful duffer at games; who never did anything for himself,
that others could be bullied into doing for him. “Woolly” was now a
stout, sleek, well-groomed man of thirty, with a heavy red face, a
lethargic manner, and—in the company of respectable women—a
great talent for silence.
Supposing that Aurea was talked over? Westmere was a temptation.
No; he could not face such a hideous possibility—yet he was
penniless and gagged. Woolly, a rich man and free; he, a prisoner to
a promise and in a false position—a position which compelled him to
touch his cap, not only to his lady-love, but to his rival! and the latter
salutation made him feel murderous.
Woolly had tons of money; he was so rich that possibly he had never
seen a penny! His attentions to Aurea, his rides, his churchgoing, his
marked civilities to Miss Parrett, paraded themselves before
Wynyard’s mental sight—and the old Polly bird was all for the match!
Why, that very afternoon, as she was leaving Westmere, she had
held a long, mysterious “last word” conversation with Mrs. Waring
before she bundled into the car, and squeaked out “Home—and go
slowly!” Meanwhile, Woolcock’s fluffy-haired sister stood on the
steps with her hands on her hips, a newly lit cigarette in her mouth,
the very embodiment of triumphant satisfaction!
Undoubtedly a solemn treaty had been signed and sealed. He had
no powerful allies, how could he interfere? His mind groped round
the puzzle in confusion and despair. If his own forefathers had not
been such crazy, spendthrift fools, he would not have found himself
in this maddening situation. To think that his great-grandfather had
lost thousands of pounds and hundreds of acres, racing snails on the
dining-room mahogany, against another lunatic! However, the
original place still remained in the family, also the most important

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La Mamma: Interrogating a National

Stereotype Penelope Morris

Interrogating the Real Butler

Interrogating Modernity: Debates with Hans Blumenberg

Credence! 1st Edition Penelope D Douglas

Interrogating the Neoliberal Lifecycle: The Limits of

The Hole Hard Science Fiction 1st Edition Brandon Q.

La Petite Belle A dark Taboo Romance Lily Black

Sully The Brotherhood 3 1st Edition Penelope Black

Interrogating the Use of LGBTQ Slurs 1st Edition

More information about this series at

Italian and Italian American Studies

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018937885

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

Cover illustration: ©Fototeca Gilardi/Associazione Maraja Designer: Fatima Jamadar

Printed on acid-free paper

This book stems from an interdisciplinary project, entitled “La Mamma:

literary scholars (Ursula Fanning, Benedetta Gennaro, Katherine Mitchell,

Glasgow, UK Penelope Morris

1 La Mamma: Italian Mothers Past and Present 1

2 Mammismo/Momism: On the History and Uses

3 Mothers, Workers, Citizens: Teresa Noce

4 Problems and Prescriptions: Motherhood and Mammismo

5 Conceptualizing the Maternal: Representations, Reflections

6 Neapolitan Mothers: Three Generations of Women,

7 Mammas in Italian Migrant Families: The Anglophone

8 Queer Daughters and Their Mothers: Carole Maso, Mary

9 Beyond the Stereotype: The Obstacle Course

Mary Jo Bona is Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies, Italian

Gabriella Gribaudi is Professore Ordinario in Contemporary History at

Naldini), Sociologia della famiglia (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2013), 3rd edn;

La Mamma: Italian Mothers Past and Present

Penelope Morris and Perry Willson

Motherhood, as an idea, has been and remains fundamental to how Italian

Translations from Italian source material are the authors’ own.

© The Author(s) 2018 1

This primitively possessive, domineering and, at the same time, indul-

and president of Italy’s matrimonial lawyers’ association), that 30 per cent

quite understandably makes many want to distance themselves from them,

Many scholars have, of course, been interested in motherhood, and

The “Birth of Mammismo”

In contrast to what happens in modern societies, where young people are

effeminate Italy, albeit without specifically mentioning the role of moth-

with the ‘Italian matriarchate’ stereotype: a strong mother–son bond and

As Penelope Morris notes in her chapter in this volume (based on a

Beyond the Stereotype

A long time had elapsed since a tragedy or an inquest had taken

It was a lovely afternoon—Saturday—the third day of September,

But Aurea had no intention of “telling her aunts”; on the contrary,

The white flowers had been gathered on Saturday in the Manor

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Glasgow, UK Penelope Morris

1 La Mamma: Italian Mothers Past and Present 1

2 Mammismo/Momism: On the History and Uses

3 Mothers, Workers, Citizens: Teresa Noce

4 Problems and Prescriptions: Motherhood and Mammismo

5 Conceptualizing the Maternal: Representations, Reflections

6 Neapolitan Mothers: Three Generations of Women,

7 Mammas in Italian Migrant Families: The Anglophone

8 Queer Daughters and Their Mothers: Carole Maso, Mary

9 Beyond the Stereotype: The Obstacle Course