Tiziana Ferrario dedicates her latest book Cenere to Milan, for very pertinent reasons. For the topic, sure.
In summary?
“I rediscover the city of the industrial revolution, at the beginning of the twentieth century, suffocated by the gray erupting from the smokestacks, and which begins its rise thanks to the sacrifice and dedication of its women. In a novel interwoven with true stories, unknown to the general public”. Published by Fuori Scena (RCS Media Group).
But the emotional motive of the dedication?
““In Milan, the city I love”. I was born there, it gave me a lot. The roots, the education, which is also worth like an identity card. Even if I then left early to Rome, to work in Rai “.
Do you study at the legendary Parini?
“No, it’s not compulsory to study classics. I attended the Vittorio Veneto scientific high school.”
Let us therefore recognize the importance of scientific culture which in its progress concretely solves humanity’s problems. And which distinguishes one in particular, between protagonists and supporting actors.
“Beautiful and very intelligent, Anna Kuliscioff, Russian exile, perhaps the first woman to graduate in medicine in Italy. Studies on puerperal fever. They don’t admit her to the Maggiore Hospital in Milan because she is a woman. She becomes the doctor of the poor in the Cucina dei Sick patients opened by Alessandrina Ravizza, the “countess of the broeud (broth)”, another Russian philanthropist, who entrusted her with the management of the connected clinic in via Anfiteatro, Garibaldi district”.
Then an unhealthy den of criminals, today among the coolest in the world.
“At the origins of the capital of fashion, theater of irresistible fashion weeks, we must reveal what was left out of the celebrations. The silk factories, for example, with their windows always closed, because sudden changes in temperature or gusts of wind would have risked ruining the materials”.
Consequences for female workers?
“Chronic catarrh, pneumonia, consumption, tuberculosis. An annoying dust stagnated in the air together with the harmful substances, oils and dyes used in processing”.
And “the kiss of death”?
“It was the gesture repeated all day by the workers who had to find and extract the end of the thread from the cocoon, to create a skein of silk.”
As an alternative to oral suction, mechanical systems already existed. How to explain the factory owners’ resistance to introducing them?
“They were slower, they lowered productivity. In a broader sense, the miserable working conditions derive from the breakdown of the alliance between bourgeoisie and proletariat, between rich and poor, which in 1848 had led to the glorious Five Days”.
The dates are engraved on the cross held in the hand of “La Meditazione” (originally “Italy in 1848”), painted by Hayez. Beautiful woman, indeed afflicted, shown on the cover. And the narrative opens with the tragic revolt of 1898.
“It exploded with the economic crisis. Suffocated by Bava Beccaris. Seven hundred dead and two thousand seriously injured among the demonstrators. Also in prison are Kuliscioff and her companion Filippo Turati, socialist leader, as well as two hundred boys and girls.”
However, the girls will write the happy conclusion.
“The little girls, poor apprentices between the ages of 8 and 14, effectively exploited by fashion houses in humiliating and risky jobs, successfully rebelled in 1902. Helped in the strike by the National Women’s Union, founded in 1899 in Milan, the cradle of socialism and feminism, by Ersilia Bronzini Majno”.
Mariuccia’s mother. In her name do we close the book?
“The Mariuccia Asylum Foundation, opened in the name of the little girl who died from the then incurable diphtheria, still continues to welcome young women who are victims of abuse and at risk of social exclusion. Today, 60% of them come from North Africa. Although increasingly expensive, Milan must continue to give, even to the most unfortunate, a dream.”
Tags: Tiziana Ferrario workers heroines
