First published in Italy in 1906, A Woman follows a bright, book-loving girl from a sunlit seaside girlhood into a marriage she never chose, in a remote provincial town where a clever woman is an inconvenience. Year by year the house closes around her - a jealous husband, a household with no use for her mind, a mother already destroyed by the very same fate - until reading, writing, and a few free spirits in Rome teach her to see her life clearly and to ask a forbidden question: what does she owe herself?
Sibilla Aleramo drew the book almost unchanged from her own life, and its final act - a mother's decision to claim her dignity at the most terrible imaginable cost - made it a scandal and a landmark across Europe. Tender, furious, and unsparing, it remains one of the earliest novels anywhere to place a woman's inner awakening at its very center.
This Timeless Tome Publishers edition includes:
A fresh, complete, and unabridged English translationAn original introduction to the novel and its place in literary historyA biographical note on Sibilla AleramoA clean, carefully typeset text designed for comfortable reading