California Italian Studies

This article provides the first in-depth and contextual study of the experimental futurist novel Un ventre di donna, written during the First World War by the Italian author and stage actress Enif Robert in collaboration with F.T. Marinetti, who allowed some of his wartime letters from the front to be included in the novel. Un ventre di donna also incorporates letters by the famous actress Eleonora Duse, who was a close friend of Robert’s. The article explores in particular the theme of bisexuality and female homosexuality in the novel in the context of the ideology of gender in Italy and in Europe in the early 20^th century, and in particular with reference to the influential work of Otto Weininger and concurrent theories of hysteria and bisexuality, as well as the so-called “gender inversion” generated by the war.