The Harem Exposed: Gabriella Parca’s Le italiane si confessano

Abstract

Le italiane si confessano , a collection of letters sent to the advice columns of two popular women’s magazines and edited by the jour-nalist Gabriella Parca, was first published in the late spring of 1959. Initially there was little reaction in the press, but a few months later, following a review by Paolo Milano in Espresso , 1 journalists suddenly seized upon the book. Parca recalled some years after: “I found myself battered by a hailstorm of articles. Some were amazed that a woman had had the courage to confront the taboo of sex, whilst others accused me of being a sex maniac, repeating the old adage that dirty linen shouldn’t be washed in public.” 2 There was a huge response from the reading public too. The book became a bestseller; it had three editions with the Florentine publisher Parenti and eleven more with Feltrinelli, spanning the 1960s and 1970s. Pasolini declared that it was “the most entertaining book he had read in recent years.” 3 It was widely translated and appeared across the world, in countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Argentina, and Japan. In 1961, Cesare Zavattini based his film Le italiane e l’amore on Parca’s book and it seems very likely that it was an influence on Pasolini’s Comizi d’amore in 1965. 4 These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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