Caterina Franceschi Ferrucci: «Let me study or nothing will happen!»

Let’s rediscover Caterina Franceschi Ferrucci from Narni: writer, patriot, educator and the first woman to be appointed member of the Accademia della Crusca.

Caterina Franceschi was born in Narni on January 26, 1803. Her youth was partly conditioned, also from a character point of view, by a gambling accident that caused her to lose the use of an eye. She had a humanistic education, she was a writer, poet and patriot. She dedicated a large part of her writings to the education of women.

In 1827, in Macerata, she married the Latinist Michele Ferrucci, a high school teacher and later a professor at the University of Bologna. In 1836, the Franceschi Ferrucci family moved to Geneva, Switzerland, where Michele had obtained the chair of Latin literature and Caterina taught free courses on Italian literature.
In 1857, her daughter Rosa died, just over twenty years old, and from that moment there followed a long silence that lasted until 1871, when she wrote the speech, following her appointment as a corresponding member of the Accademia della Crusca, On the need to preserve the frankly Italian nature of our language and literature.
In 1875, she had a stroke and in 1881, with the death of her husband Michele, she decided to isolate herself completely, going to live in a villa owned by her nephew in Florence. Caterina Franceschi Ferrucci died on February 28, 1887, in complete solitude.

“Let me study or nothing will happen”

Caterina, during the period in which she lived in Macerata (around 1823/1824), met the Marquis Giacomo Ricci with whom she began a romantic relationship. The relationship soon turned into a burning passion, but his family did not approve. Although Caterina has often been described as a rigid woman, closed to dialogue and all of a piece, it is said that with the Marquis she had unexpected qualities of passion. When the Marquis moved to Rome to attend the Ecclesiastical Academy, their relationship, already opposed for some time, became increasingly sparse until it finally died out. Some time later Caterina met and became engaged to the Latinist Michele Ferrucci. When the wedding was organized, Caterina, putting aside the passion that had pervaded her in her previous relationship, brought out her intransigent character traits again, thus placing a peremptory order, a strict imposition, practically a diktat on her future husband: “Let me study or nothing will happen”. They married in September 1827.

Not an equal vision, but not a submissive one either

Caterina was not a feminist, she did not develop theories of equality between men and women. Her vision was therefore not equal, on the contrary she believed that the role of women should remain that of wife and mother, not submissive, but free to move in her cultural spaces. She detested those who used to say that the soul of women was of lesser value than that of men. Her thought was fundamentally focused on female education as a process of a better future for the community. Women had to be adequately educated and certainly not only take care of tidying the house or trying their hand at crochet. The future of Italian society therefore depended, according to her perspective, on the education of women who should not be entrusted exclusively to maternal instinct. The context was indeed the domestic and marital one, but it should no longer be a space where women found themselves oppressed and subjugated, but substantially emancipated. In 1850, when Caterina was given the task of directing the new Institute of Female Education in Genoa, she promoted a program based on the teaching of religion, Catholic morality, housework and some artistic disciplines such as music, drawing, and dance. The experiment was not successful, too innovative for the clergy and too undemocratic for the laity.

On the moral education of the Italian woman

In 1847 he published: Della educazione morale della donna italiana, written in 1844. I report below some easy-to-read passages that clearly and decisively expose his thoughts on women and their education.

“No one will want to accuse me of pride, nor of arrogance, nor of spiteful malignity. I do not presume to be a teacher to others; I only intend to express what I think; nor do I propose to do anything else, except to portray, as best I can, on these papers the image of the Italian woman, as I dream of her in the secret of my mind”. “I seemed to see, reading into the future, that heaven destined for us women the glorious office of putting the erring back on the right path and of inspiring in the growing generations the love of virtues, which make families harmonious and happy. Whoever considers this hope to be audacious or false, let him look at the power that woman has received from nature, and then, if he can, convince me of exaggeration or error.”

This last sentence is very reminiscent of Shakespeare’s about love when he writes: “Love changes not in a few hours or weeks, But fearless endures the last day of judgment; If this be a mistake and shall be proved to me, I never wrote, and no man ever loved.” Catherine continues in her educational writing: “To her the child opens his first smile and with ill-articulated words explains to her his first affections. In her the mind of the young lover is fixed. Soul and life of the family, woman makes peace reign, maintains order and abundance.” “After having been the protector of man’s childhood, the desire of his youth, the companion and counsel of his mature manhood, she is still his comfort and help in the time of old age.” “Therefore we women, to maintain our dignity in the appropriate degree of honor, would take every care to educate our children well.” In this passage he basically wanted to make it clear that it is not certain that good mothers will make good children and that families will be good if governed by good women, but taking every care in this area will produce good results.

He then goes on to criticize some principles of the time followed in education. “Some establish authority as the foundation of education. There are many who, without paying too much attention to the quality of manners, look only at the achievement of their goal: hence those who think that a woman is nothing other than a good housewife and a wise head of the family; they want education to teach them only this, and they do not care about anything else. […] The principle of authority becomes guilty when it exceeds. Because then it weakens the will, makes reason torpid and does not allow knowledge to strengthen its forces”. “As some abuse authority, so others fall into the opposite excess. They teach little, only rarely make use of prohibitions and have as a firm duty education to be negative, that is, to be content to prevent evil that the child cannot foresee or escape by himself. They do not bother with loving admonitions. The principle of negative education is always harmful, as are all principles that tend to combat evil without promoting good.”

For Catherine, women should not be educated in such a way that passion dominates reason, making them slaves to man, and so she writes: “Woe to that woman whose affection does not agree with reason, and who mocks the teachings and advice of experience! Her soul will always be in a storm and will never have rest or good”.

She then clearly criticizes those who in educating women seek nothing other than to make them useful to the family. “The utility that is being discussed here is almost entirely mechanical and material, and therefore unworthy of being proposed. According to common opinion, a woman provides for the utility and good of the family when she is a good housewife […], but in homes where the utility of a woman is measured only by this, almost nothing is taught to young girls, except how to handle the needle and the spindle: it rarely happens that they know anything about letters and have little understanding of the gentle arts. […] the mind left in ignorance becomes sad and is filled with vain thoughts and false ideas”.

So what to do? Caterina Franceschi Ferrucci writes it like this: “The cultivation of the intellect not only ennobles the woman but also brings her great comfort and great profit in whatever condition she finds herself and at any time of her life. Music, singing, dancing, drawing and some foreign languages must be taught to young girls and considered as educated they will know how to dress elegantly, move and walk with grace, speak with vivacity and vivacity. By cultivating the mind, conversation is more enjoyable”.
Caterina concludes this part of The moral education of the Italian woman by encouraging the education of the mind and heart because in the end she supports a woman who: “Enjoys the agitation of horses and chariots, the swaying of the crowd, the tumult and the din of the streets. The woman runs where she hears the sound of musical instruments echoing and assiduously in the theaters she meets people in the large halls”.

Caterina Franceschi Ferrucci rests in the private chapel of a villa in San Martino alla Palma, near Florence.