iFeminist
Giovanna Napoleone
Grazia Deledda was born in Nuoro, Sardinia—an island off the coast of Italy—on September 27, 1871. Her parents, Giovanni Antonio Deledda and Francesca Cambosu Pereleddu, were of respectable bourgeoisie status and were believed to have had seven children. Deledda had four sisters and two brothers —older brothers Giovanni and Andrea, older sister Vincenza, and younger sisters Giovanna, Giuseppa, and Nicolina. During Grazia’s childhood, Vincenza and Giovanna passed away due to a miscarriage and a high fever, respectively. Growing up in a small Italian town, life in Sardinia proved difficult for a woman who aspired to become a writer, since many women were not properly educated at the time.

As for her accolades, Grazia Deledda’s first novel, Stella d’Oriente, was published in 1890 under the pseudonym of Ilia di Sant’Ismael followed by Amore regale in 1891, Amori fatali in 1892, and Fior di Sardegna in 1892 . These novels were typically focused on small town women in forbidden loves, alluding to the restrictions on women present within her own life. After becoming relatively popular for her work Elias Portolu, now considered a European classic, Deledda continued to write many more poems, short stories, and novels for which she slowly gained fame. Finally, in the wake of Deledda’s novel La Madre written in 1920, Grazia won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1926. Her works were strongly known for their verismo, or Italian realism, which revealed to readers what life was like in the small town of Sardinia during the eighteenth century in terms of tradition, poverty, and tragedy, along with the moral struggles of right and wrong within an individual person.

Grazia Maria Cosima Damiana Deledda was a very important feminine figure in Italy throughout the nineteenth century as the first Italian woman to receive a Nobel Prize in Literature. Although she contributed great classics and volumes of work to the world, she remains underrepresented in history due to her origins in small town Nuoro, Italy and her harsh depictions of a typical woman's life during the time period. Yet, the ultimate beauty and harshness of her words has moved Italian society closer to the truth of gender equality, and paved the way for all female Italian writers today.

Why Did I Choose to Research Grazia Deledda?