This study takes as point of departure the current discourse on the intersection between positivist science and literature in the late nineteenth century, as well as contemporary studies on sexuality and sexual trauma. It analyses a selection of short stories from Luigi Capuana’s collection Le appassionate and considers the role that nineteenth-century emergent sciences were playing in the consolidation/definitions of notions of femininities and masculinities and the challenges they posed to prior normative conceptions of gendered sexuality. It argues that the recurrent depictions of sexual violence and subjection in Le appassionate produce a complex portrayal of tensions and signs of rupture within the normative conception of gender roles and that the representation of malady does much more than just symbolize a punishing return to a prescriptive order. Focusing on female acts of resistance and on the kind of agency given to the female voice, it shows how Capuana’s representations of female neuroses reveal social and psychological malaise and become expressions of dissonance to the prevailing nation-building political, social, and cultural project for liberal Italy. This article was published open access under a CC BY-NC-ND licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ .
Annamaria Pagliaro (Sun,) studied this question.