La ragazza di nome Giulio
Biblioteca dell’eros
Milena Milani
La ragazza di nome Giulio (A Girl Named Jules) explores the psychological and sexual awakening of Jules, a young woman navigating identity, desire, and repression in fascist and postwar Italy. Raised by a cold, narcissistic mother and emotionally shaped by a series of female caretakers, Jules’s earliest and most formative attachments are with women. Chief among them is Lia, her governess in childhood, who offers both protection and manipulation. Lia urges Jules to distrust men and remain ‘pure,’ even as she initiates Jules into a secretive and coercive physical relationship. This early experience leaves Jules both fascinated and troubled by the blurred boundaries between affection, control, and desire.
As Jules grows, her attraction to women continues to surface?tentative, unspoken, and often guilt-laden. In Senigallia, she forms an intense emotional connection with her new governess, Serafina. Their bond, filled with subtle physical gestures and a shared sense of isolation, culminates in a spontaneous kiss that Jules initiates. Yet, this too is fraught with ambiguity and shame, as Jules simultaneously pursues Serafina?s fianc‚, Amerigo, in a confused attempt to understand her own needs.
Throughout the novel, Jules’s encounters with men?Lorenzo, the childhood friend; Amerigo, the adult seduction; Camillo, the tragic love; Franco, the intellectual partner?are sincere but ultimately fail to resolve her deep inner conflict. Her heterosexual relationships often mirror the emotional detachment and constraint instilled by her early experiences. While she seeks connection with men, her strongest attachments remain with women, even when those connections are painful, complex, or taboo.
Sexual difference, emotional duality, and alienation are central to Jules’s inner world. Her yearning for intimacy with women is in constant tension with societal expectations and the omnipresent voice of Catholic guilt. Her final, violent encounter with a man?an impulsive, self-destructive act?serves not as a rejection of heterosexuality, but as a crisis point that forces her to confront the fractured parts of herself.
By the novel?s end, Jules stands alone but aware, no longer suspended between competing desires or self-denial. Her journey charts a uniquely female and queer path through repression, trauma, longing, and fragile empowerment. La ragazza di nome Giulio offers a rare early depiction of a young woman?s conflicted sexual identity?especially her intimate, often fraught connections with other women?making it a significant, if long-overlooked, work in the canon of queer feminist literature.
Details
| ISBN: 9788887939156 |
| Genre: Pulp |
| Subject: |
| Publication Date: 2001 |
| Publisher: ES |
| Language: Italian |
| Format: Paperback |
| Rating: |
| Notes: In her article La ragazza di nome Giulio: A Forgotten Feminist Novel, Carmen Gomez explores how Milena Milani’s 1964 novel La ragazza di nome Giulio challenged societal norms and anticipated key ideas of Italian feminism. Upon its release, the book faced a public obscenity trial?unprecedented for an Italian author?resulting in the destruction of its printing plates and Milani being branded a pornographer. After winning on appeal, the novel was reissued in 1968, translated into several languages, and adapted into a film that represented Italy at the 1970 Berlin Film Festival.
Despite this recognition, Milani?s groundbreaking feminist perspective remains largely overlooked. The novel follows a young woman named Jules (Giulio in the title) as she matures under fascist rule in Italy. Told in first-person, the narrative reclaims the protagonist?s bodily experience as both a cry for liberation and a resistance to patriarchal norms. Gomez argues that the novel prefigures themes of sexual difference, female emancipation, and the idea that ‘the personal is political’?central to feminist thought in the 1970s. Milani?s work, both politically and stylistically, bridged earlier feminist literature and the resurgence of women’s voices in late 1960s Italy, offering a powerful critique of fascism’s lingering influence on gender roles. |
| Book_ID: 258344 |
