Keywords

• The education of women is a crucial theme in Italy in the years immediately preceding the Unification. The contribution of women to the national cause requires the formation of a new subject
• inspired by love for the country and able to educate a generation of patriots. The emphasis placed on the figure of the "national mother" fosters the debate about women's education: lay schools are created that quickly replace religious schools and convents
• which in the 18th Century were the only institutions dedicated to the education of young women. The numerous handbooks of pedagogy (written by women) take into account anti-female prejudice
• and they propose precepts and teachings specifically conceived for women
• while particularly limiting women's creativity. Besides domestic economy and other practical subjects
• schools offer classes in literature
• music
• singing
• and occasionally dance
• geometry
• and mathematics. A second modern language is considered fundamental
• and its result is the formation of a numerous group of women translators
• strategically positioned as popularizers of European culture (as in the myth of Nicostrata
• patroness divinity of women in childbirth and popularizer of writing among the Romans). A fundamental stage in the circulation of the new pedagogical model is the diffusion of biographies of educated women
• whose portrayals
• however
• insist on their domestic talents and devotion to house and family
• and the birth of handbooks (for singing
• painting etc.) specifically for women