Defying Rules inside Monasteries Queer Spaces in Manzoni’s: The Betrothed and in Guido da Verona’s Rewriting

Abstract

In Alessandro Manzoni’s The Betrothed, several queer nuances can be detected, particularly through the author’s reticence and silence in addressing love. These nuances especially permeate the relationship between Gertrude (the nun of Monza) and Lucia. Despite the power imbalance between the two characters, Manzoni frequently employs intensely erotic language to describe how Gertrude interacts with her guest. In Guido da Verona’s 1930 rewriting of The Betrothed, their relationship evolves into an explicit initiation into lesbian love. The setting of education within a monastery – whether for a limited time or in the perspective of monastic vows – thus creates a literary space where traditional gender norms are subverted, allowing for non-conforming sexual orientations and emotions, particularly among girls and women, to exist and to be expressed. This dynamic is present in other literary works from Da Verona’s era and milieu, such as Amalia Guglielminetti’s The Revenge of the Male (1923). In these lesbian relations, the word “tenderness” frequently appears, a word that would later resonate with Italian feminists in the second half of the twentieth century. Analyzing the queerness of The Betrothed, a novel that adheres to the most traditional literary genre and epitomizes the canon of Italian literature, also challenges the ideological foundations upon which these constructs have been built.