Sulla soglia: la narrativa di Maria Messina

This article discusses all of Maria Messina's writings. It starts by positioning the author’s choices amidst the new potential subjects brought up by the rapid modernization process that took place in Italy at the beginning of the 20th century. Maria Messina seems to focus especially on the crisis of the patriarchal system and on the conflicting forms by which new emerging subjects, particularly women, express themselves. While she describes their painful movement towards an identity, and their scarcely successful paths that often end up in loneliness, Messina seems at the same time to endorse the idea that no step backward will be allowed, since the undisputed legitimization of the patriarchate was fissured and “the king is naked”. The definition of the subject’s identity are therefore the main object of this analysis, which reads Messina's works by focusing especially on recurring themes, such as family, emigration, representations of the patriarchate, father-daughter relationships, or the ways in which conscience and freedom relate to each other. One of the most important questions related to Messina's writing is if and to what degree this last idea – that is, that the acquisition of a conscience can possibly lead to an effective freedom – is articulated.