Teresa Ciabatti’s Poetics of the Inanimate: Talking Dolls, Living Dolls, and Puppets

ABSTRACT

The article examines the presence of dolls in the work of writer Teresa Ciabatti and isolates four narrative functions carried out by dolls. First, the protagonists' identification with broken dolls encourages the acceptance of one's imperfection and promotes the definition of identity as constitutively incomplete (Il mio paradiso è deserto, 2013). Second, Ciabatti entrusts dolls with the task of protecting the characters' most profound and fragile selves (La più amata, 2017). Third, by enabling the re-staging of motherhood and trauma in a safe space, dolls challenge a certain monolithic conception of maternity, youth, and beauty (Sembrava bellezza, 2021). Finally, dolls stand as markers for autofiction, for they both share a disturbing proximity to reality that confuses the boundaries between good and evil, real and fiction. In conclusion, the article argues that Ciabatti's use of dolls produces a theoretical move towards the formation of a multifaceted, open, and mobile definition of womanhood.

SOMMARIO

L'articolo esamina la presenza delle bambole nell'opera della scrittrice Teresa Ciabatti ed isola quattro funzioni narrative da esse svolte. Primo, l'identificazione tra bambine e bambole rotte incoraggia le protagoniste ad accettare le proprie imperfezioni e permette loro di definire l'identità come essenzialmente incompleta (Il mio paradiso è deserto, 2013). Secondo, Ciabatti affida alle bambole il compito di proteggere la parte più profonda e fragile dei suoi personaggi (La più amata, 2017). Terzo, assicurando la messa in scena della maternità e del trauma in uno spazio sicuro, le bambole mettono in discussione alcune concezioni monolitiche di maternità, giovinezza e bellezza (Sembrava bellezza, 2021). Infine, le bambole fungono da indicatori di autofiction, poiché l'inquietante prossimità alla realtà che accomuna autofiction e bambole confonde i confini tra bene e male, reale e finzione. In conclusione, l'uso delle bambole origina un passo teorico verso la formazione di una definizione sfaccettata, aperta e mobile di donna.

KEYWORDS:

• dolls
• autofiction
• motherhood
• trauma
• lies

PAROLE CHIAVE:

• bambole
• autofiction
• maternità
• trauma
• bugie

Notes

1 Marta Cerreti, ‘Interview with Teresa Ciabatti: The Least Beloved, the Most Free’, g/s/I 9 (2022), <https://www.gendersexualityitaly.com/8-interview-with-teresa-ciabatti/> [last accessed 8 February 2024]

2 Teresa Ciabatti, ‘Mia figlia è una bambola’, Corriere della Sera (17 December 2017), 2–5; Teresa Ciabatti, Il mio paradiso è deserto (Milan: Rizzoli, 2013); Teresa Ciabatti, La più amata (Milan: Mondadori, 2017); Teresa Ciabatti, Sembrava bellezza (Milan: Mondadori, 2021). The extracts reproduced in this article are courtesy of the Publishers and the Author.

3 Teresa Ciabatti, ‘Mia figlia è una bambola’, Corriere della Sera (17 December 2017), 2–5 (p. 3).

Further references to this article are given after quotations in the text. All the translations are mine, except when stated otherwise.

4 Teresa Ciabatti, Il mio paradiso è deserto (Milan: Rizzoli, 2013), 270. Further references to this book are given after quotations in the text.

5 Cristina Mazzoni, ‘Treasure to Trash, Trash to Treasure: Dolls and Waste in Italian Children’s Literature’, Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, 37.3 (2012), 250–65 (p. 262). Contessa Lara, Il romanzo della bambola/The Dolls's Novel (Milan: Hoepli, 1896). Elsa Morante, Le straordinarie avventure di Caterina/Caterina's Extraordinary Adventures (1959, Turin: Einaudi, 1992) exemplify this paradigm. In the first case, the doll Giulia is disregarded by her previous owner because she is dirty and broken, but is loved by Camilla, who does not care about the doll’s appearance. In the second case, soon after abandoning her ugly ragdoll Bellissima in the trash, Caterina regrets her decision and starts looking for it, facing many adventures that make her realize the value of her doll.

6 Aurora Milillo, ‘La bambola, lo specchio, la spoglia del serpente’, La ricerca folkloristica, 6 (1987), 63–66. For further references: Italo Calvino, ‘Il pappagallo’, in Fiabe italiane (Milan: Mondadori 2015), tale 15: 1959; Giuseppe Pitrè, ‘Il pappagallo che racconta tre conti’, in Fiabe novelle e racconti popolari siciliani (Rome: Donzelli, 2013), tale 2: 1875; Domenico Comparetti, ‘Il pappagallo (I)’ and ‘Il pappagallo (II)’, in Novelline popolari italiane (Florence: Nabu Press, 2010), tales 1 and 2: 1875.

7 Elena Ferrante, La figlia oscura (Rome: e/o, 2006), and L’amica geniale (Rome: e/o, 2011). See Stiliana Milkova, ‘Conflation and Inversions: Mothers, Daughters, Dolls’, in Elena Ferrante as World Literature (London: Bloomsbury, 2021), 74–86, and ‘Mothers, Daughters, Dolls: On Disgust in Elena Ferrante’s La figlia oscura’, Italian Culture, 31.2 (2013), 91–109.

8 Teresa Ciabatti, La più amata (Milan: Mondadori, 2017), p. 77. Further references to this book are given after quotations in the text.

9 Two other significant gifts are present in the book. First, Lorenzo Ciabatti’s engagement gift to Francesca Fabiani — a silver cutlery set that he won at a raffle in New York, while he was dating another woman. Francesca thinks that the gift is a desire for family: ‘E immagina male. Dovrebbe immaginare New York, un cinema di Chelsea, un’altra donna’ (p. 50) [And she imagines wrong. She should imagine New York, a cinema in Chelsea, another woman]. The second gift takes the form of career promotion. Francesca Fabiani’s boss, Fausto Sabatini, had refused to change Francesca’s shifts, thus making it hard for her to work at the same time as caring for her children. Eventually, she had to abandon her job. Ciabatti writes: ‘Sabatini è l’unico che abbia il coraggio di opporsi alla moglie del professore, ovvero al Professore. […] Ebbene, poco dopo Sabatini viene promosso. Premio, riconoscimento, scambio’ (pp. 78–79) [Sabatini is the only one who dares to oppose the Professor’s wife, that is, the Professor. […] Shortly after, Sabatini is promoted. Award, recognition, exchange’]. Ciabatti is suggesting that by refusing to change Francesca’s shifts, Sabatini did not oppose the professor; instead he did exactly what he was asked to do, and Lorenzo rewarded him for it.

10 Adalgisa Giorgio, Writing Mothers and Daughters, ed. by Adalgisa Giorgio (New York: Berghahn Books, 2002). The feminist debate on the mother–daughter relationship is outlined in chapter 1, ‘Writing the Mother–Daughter Relationship: Psychoanalysis, Culture, and Literary Criticism’ (pp. 11–46).

11 Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (New York: Vintage Books, 1989), trans. and ed. by H.M. Parshley. [Original title: Le Deuxième Sexe] (Paris: Gallimard, 1949); Nancy Friday, My Mother/My Self: The Daughter's Search for Identity (1977, New York: Delta Trade Paperbacks, 1997).

12 Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (1976, New York: Norton, 1995); Luce Irigaray, Speculum: Of the Other Woman (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985), trans. by Gillian C. Gill; Luisa Muraro, The Symbolic Order of the Mother (Albany: Suny Press,1991), trans. by Francesca Novello.

13 Adriana Cavarero, Inclinations: A Critique of Rectitude (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2016), trans. by Adam Sitze and Amanda Minervini. [Original title: Inclinazioni. Critica della rettitudine] (Milan: Raffaello Cortina, 2013). See chapter 1, ‘Barnett Newman: Adam’s Line’, 17–24 (p. 21) [‘Barnett Newman. La sbarra di Adamo’ (33)].

14 Giorgio, 17.

15 Teresa Ciabatti, Sembrava bellezza (Milan: Mondadori, 2021), 53 (italics mine). Page numbers are given after quotations in the text.

16 Walter Siti, ‘Troppi paradisi’, in Il dio impossibile: Scuola di nudo, Un dolore normale, Troppi paradisi (Milan: Rizzoli, 2014), makes constant use of the mechanism of intrusion. For example, in the prologue of Troppi paradisi he writes: ‘L’editore non vuole rischiare nemmeno un anticipo e ha ragione’ (p. 689) [The editor does not want to risk an advance payment, and he is right]. Lorenzo Marchese’s monograph traces the history of autofiction, with an analysis that draws from the French debate of the 1970s to analyse the contemporary Italian horizon: Lorenzo Marchese, L’io possible: L’autofiction come paradosso del romanzo contemporaneo (Massa: Transeuropa, 2014.)

17 Although in Sembrava bellezza the name of the narrator is never mentioned, the protagonist shares Ciabatti’s age and career and uses the same unpleasant voice employed in La più amata. When I interviewed Ciabatti, she confirmed that in the first draft she named the narrator after herself. In the final version there is no explicit mention of it because ‘the use of the name had been so overwhelming, so excessive there [in La più amata] that I found it unnecessary to clarify it in Sembrava bellezza’ (‘Interview’).

18 Walter Siti, Il realismo è l’impossibile (Milan: Nottetempo, 2013), p. 75.

19 To mention a few: Augustine’s Confessiones (398), Dante’s Vita nuova (1292), Petrarch’s Secretum (c. 1350), Cellini’s Vita (1728), Vico’s Autobiografia (1728). Jean-Jacques Rousseau is considered the father of modern autobiography for his Confessions (1782). See Marchese, p. 43, and Ursula Fanning, Italian Women’s Autobiographical Writing in the Twentieth Century (Madison, WI: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2017), especially the Introduction (pp. ix–xviii).

20 I am referring to Orlando furioso’s mysterious final motto, ‘Pro bono malum’, which also appears in the frontispiece of the book: Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando furioso (1516) (Milan: Rizzoli, 2012).

21 Ciabatti, ‘Mia figlia è una bambola’, 2.

22 Elena Ferrante, The Lost Daughter, trans. from Italian by Ann Goldstein (New York: Europa, 2015), p. 124. Original: ‘Una madre non è che una figlia che gioca’, in La figlia oscura (Rome: e/o, 2006), 124.