Negotiating Pride and Vulnerability in Maud Howe’s Roma Beata – Letters from the Eternal City

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.13136/2281-4582/2024.i24.1537

Keywords:

American studies, Travel studies, Maud Howe Elliott, Women’s travel writing, American imperialism

Abstract

Women’s travel narratives have long occupied an ambivalent position within dominant cultural frameworks, simultaneously supporting imperialist discourses and offering critical insights into ethnocentrism and cultural biases. This essay examines the intersections of domesticity, gender, and imperialism in Maud Howe Elliott’s Roma Beata: Letters from the Eternal City (1904), focusing on her portrayals of post-unitarian Italy (1884–1900). By positioning Howe’s perspectives within the broader transnational currents of 19th-century travel writing and its marketplace, this essay draws on postcolonial and gender theories to analyze her negotiation of the traditional American / Anglo-Saxon gaze on Southern Europe. At the same time, this essay pays attention to Howe Elliott’s complex relationship with emergent US imperialism and her own roots in New England’s culture, by adopting the emotional framing of pride and vulnerability. Finally, by emphasizing the critical interplay between domesticity and the imperialist thought, this essay explores Howe’s evolving engagement with the Italian scene (symbolized by the terrace of her Roman home).

Author Biography

  • Agnese Marino, University of Roma Tre

    Agnese Marino is a post-doctoral research fellow of North American Literature at the University of Rome, “Roma Tre,” where she works under the PRIN project titled “Literary California 1884-2022: Spaces of Exception, Spaces of Disaster.” She was a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of L’Aquila, in 2021-2022. She completed her Ph.D. in American Studies at the HCA – Heidelberg Center for American Studies, University of Heidelberg, Germany, and conducted a research year at Georgia State University, GA, US. A BAASF Scholarship (2016) and Lombardo-Gullì Prize (2012) winner, she has published a book, Writing from the Rift: Cosmopolitanism and the Multiracial Condition (La Scuola di Pitagora, 2022), and other articles in American Studies journals. Her main fields of research are American Literature and Cultural Studies, other research interests include California history and literature, young-adult literature, American exceptionalism, Americans and the Grand Tour, literary representations of utopia/heterotopia.

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Published

2024-12-20

Issue

No. 24 (2024): Digital/Electronic Literature from the USA: Theories, Forms and Practices

Section

Articles (general section) - American language, literature, and culture

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Copyright (c) 2024 Agnese Marino

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