<i>Una donna con tre anime</i> di Rosa Rosà. Futurismo, fantascienza, questione femminile

Abstract

Una donna con tre anime (A Woman with Three Souls) (1918) is the debut novel by Futurist writer, painter and illustrator Rosa Rosà. It tells the story of Giorgina Rossi, a ‘dusty’ and ‘insignificant’ housewife who finds herself experiencing three different transformations of personality. This happens after a storm dispersed some radioactive elements that Professor Ipsilon was working on: a thunderbolt threw them on Giorgina’s house, creating ‘materialized abstractions of time’, making her live fragments of future times. The three souls by which the insignificant housewife is possessed therefore represent as many views of ‘what a woman’s life will be in the future’.
After a brief presentation of the author and her work, this paper aims to inquire whether the short novel belongs to the literary genres of utopia and science fiction. Furthermore, it will try to put the work of Rosa Rosà into context within the lively debate on the (Futurist) woman question caused by the release of How to Seduce Women (1917) by F.T. Marinetti. Before publishing her novel, Rosà took part in the discussion through some articles on L’Italia futurista. After taking into account the most significant positions involved, this contribution will analyse the role played by A Woman with Three Souls within the dispute.

Keywords: Futurist woman, science fiction, futurism, Rosa Rosà, uchronia