The Resistance of Women

The story of women in the Italian resistance movement is to this day one of the key but less explored aspects of the Second World War. Women are the ones who assist and fight in person, risking their lives. It is through a series of images, photographs collected in dozens of archives that almost recreate a sort of resistance photo album, that Benedetta Tobagi retraces this side of the story from every angle, as much from a historical perspective as civil, narrative and intellectual. Proud, determined, pugnacious: La Resistenza delle donne (The Resistance of Women) is first and foremost a book of stories, experiences and directions. It’s a collection of tales that goes through the image of the “good wife” who takes arms to assert herself beyond the labels of the girl who aspires to be a mother, looking either for self-affirmation or for revenge. More generally, it’s a book that discusses women looking for their place in the world – in a world overturned by Fascism. In an alternative history never truly rewritten after the end of the conflict, Benedetta Tobagi’s women reclaim their roles, their spaces, their bodies. Dwelling on deeds and expressions, the author constructs a moving and highly inspired narrative essay in which the partisan women move – each in their own way – to fight not only the oppressors and the regime, but also patriarchal ideologies. And they learn to use their bodies as weapons. But they’re not the only ones. The Fascist and Nazi spies trying to cross the lines of the Resistance too learn to do the same, sowing doubts among the partisans themselves. Benedetta Tobagi takes up the heritage of every woman in the Italian resistance movement, lends a voice and dignity once more to the fundamental role that they had in the partisan struggle, which for a long time was silenced. It’s a book that possesses the rigour of historical reconstruction, but also the narrative force of an extraordinary civil passion that sets the unfolding events related against the background of contemporary problems.  

La resistenza delle donne
Benedetta Tobagi
Einaudi, 2022