1. In a rare, personal testimony that appeared in the Italian literary journal “L’Italia che scrive,” Messina reflected on her first two collections, written in part while living in Mistretta: “Pettini-fini (Fine Combs) and Piccoli gorghi (Small Vortexes) were my inseparable companions as I took my first steps…. Concise pages, without adjectives; like the words of someone who lives an inner life intensely, like my own youth tempered by solitude” (Messina 1919, 158).

2. Sicilian novelist Emanuele Navarro della Miraglia elaborates on the details of stifling provincial life in Storielle siciliane (1885) and La nana (1879). Set in the fictional Sicilian town of Villamaura, La nana recounts the clandestine affair between a beautiful woman of the lower class and a young Sicilian gentleman. Once the affair is discovered, scandal ensues. “No one was really interested in confirming the facts. The important thing was that there was something to chatter about and make fun of in the long hours with nothing to do. How would life differ from the plant world in small, provincial towns if calumny, malicious gossip, and small talk, didn’t crop up every now and then to make it more interesting?” (Navarro della Miraglia 1963 [1879], 154–55).

3. In a letter to Paolina Greppi, written in 1890, Verga recounts the incident of a woman who had solicited his opinion on her manuscript: “I read it in good faith, although I must confess to you that I have never had much faith in women writers, or rather in their artistic worth, including Sand who is tiresome and excluding [Matilda] Serao, who succeeds only because she is a hermaphrodite” (Raya 1980, 157). Many in the male literary establishment shared Verga’s reservations about the abilities of women writers. Luigi Capuana’s disparaging commentary that appeared in Nuova Antologia in 1907 is particularly notable.

I remain convinced that in the future, in the far off future, women will be what men are now. But by then men will have completely changed too, and the distance between them will still be the same as it is today. Then men will leave women the business of writing novels, lyrics, tragedies, comedies, and if they feel like it, poems. However, I must add that they will never succeed in creating anything new because by then, there will be nothing new to create in artistic forms. It will be an eternal repetition until they tire of it, something that is rather improbable. Women are obstinate. (Capuana 1907, 21–22)

4. A nascent feminist movement in the decades following national unification in 1861 brought longstanding women’s issues to the forefront of Italian politics. Women’s growing presence in the factories of the industrialized North raised awareness about universal suffrage, the inequality of Italy’s Civil Code, and the need to regulate working conditions. Activists Anna Maria Mozzoni (1837–1920) and Russian-born Anna Kuliscioff (1857–1925) were two of the most instrumental figures in the early years of the battle regarding la questione femminile. The debate did not enter its most critical phase, however, until the turn of the century (Odorisio 1986).