Il marito della santa. Ruolo paterno, ruolo materno e politica italiana

The author sets out to illustrate the different perspectives affecting women's history in Catholic and Protestant countries. Believing that marriage and motherhood are the most worthy roles to which a women might aspire, or believing that the status of the chaste virgin is the highest which a woman might attain: these are two very different ways, hitherto neglected by historians, of understanding women's role in the family, in the relation between husband and wife and between parents and children. The essay highlights essential historiographical and political problems: an analysis of women's role within the Catholic family reveals the connections between the conception of the State and the (different) view of paternal authority, the connections between ecclesiastical and civil authority and the deep-seated reasons for a conflictuality which cannot express itself clearly as political opposition.