Il viaggio delle donne nell’Africa coloniale italiana, tra conferma e trasformazione di sé
abstract
Different meanings of travelling are analysed in the writing of three women: Rosalia Bossiner, Alba Felter, Onorina Passerini. Bossiner spent three years in Eritrea, from 1893 to 1896, following her husband who had military roles in the colonial campaign. Felter travelled through different Italian colonies in Africa in the Thirties and her travelogue was informed by the fascist ideology, as well as the one written by Onorina Passerini who visited in 1932 the Fezzan, one the most unknown regions of Lybia. Despite the various historical periods of their travels, the several viewpoints and the different reasons that brought these women in the colonies, I argue that the travel becomes for all of them an occasion of empowerment, since it allows them to perform in ways that in the motherland were not permitted. The colony becomes, in the experience of these three women, an occasion for empowerment.
Keywords: Travel writing • Italian women travellers • African colonies
permalink: http://doi.org/10.14277/6969-053-2/DIA-4-3