I am feeling alone, tolerated and often mistreated… The long engagement of F. between fascism and war.

Abstract

I am feeling alone, tolerated and often mistreated… The long engagement of F. between fascism and war. Unpublished, precious documents, the 230 letters written by a young Neapolitan woman to her boyfriend, from 1937 to 1943, permit us to investigate the world of the young University student and to know her look on family conflicts and sentimental relations, her ideas about work and family and, last, her experience of war. In F.’s behaviour modernity coexists with more traditional cultural codes. Fascism stays in the background, but in fact, regims authoritarianism corresponds with the strong machismo in family relations. The letters approach us to the war’s tragedy, that seems to delete any perspective of the future.