Eroismo e femminile, un binomio difficile: il caso di Margaret Fuller

Abstract

Starting from some definitions of ‘female heroism’ that highlight it as a problematic concept, this essay focuses on Margaret Fuller’s interest in different meanings and interpretations of the heroic ideal. Her Italian experience enables Fuller to recognize Giuseppe Mazzini as a supreme embodiment of modern heroism, as well as to explore the potential (which had already been taken into consideration in her treatise Woman in the Nineteenth Century) and the limits of a female incarnation of heroism.