Lettere alla regina madre: voci di italiane nella Grande Guerra

Margherita di Savoia was the rst Queen of Italy. Since the day of her coronation (1878), the myth of how generous and learned Margherita was, re ected at least in part the image of a new national femininity many Italian women wanted to identify with. On the eve of the Great War the lady assistant of Margherita was still receiving daily letters, gifts, and requests for support to many social and intellectual activities promoted by the rst Italian generation of “new women”. In a world dominated by men, this relationship with Margherita – Queen Mother since 1900 – represented a source of recognition of feminine authority. The letters addressed to Margherita are kept in the archive of the Home of Her Majesty the Queen Mother. This essay evaluates the letters sent to Margherita during the war. As a whole, these letters help showing the mood of the upper and middle class women throughout the European con ict. Moreover, the documents help understanding women state of mind regarding the progressive transformation occurring in their self- representation codes and also the context in which they were embedded.