Guilty of Being Independent, Rebel, Too Sensual or Cheerful: Story Of Women Confined in Como (1882-1948)
© Gin Angri - "Le stagioni del San Martino. Documento fotografico sulla psichiatria"
Some years ago in Como, on a rainy Saturday afternoon, we were wandering around Piazza Duomo in Como. All of a sudden, a poster near Broletto caught our attention: that day there was a photo exhibition called “Canceled women. Photos from the archives of S. Martino psychiatric hospital”. Wow. We couldn’t help but buying a ticket and immediately stepping inside.
© Gin Angri - "Le stagioni del San Martino. Documento fotografico sulla psichiatria"
The exhibition, with impressive photos by Gin Angri and moving texts by poet Mauro Fogliaresi, turned out to be a deeply emotional (and tough) journey into the life of women who have been confined (between 1882 and 1948) in S. Martino hospital, on an apparently paradisiac hill overlooking Como city.
But why were they actually locked up there? Were all those women real mental infirm, or was there something more behind the choice of confine them?
The truth lies in the 42.000 clinical folders of S. Martino that the authors of the exhibition carefully reviewed in their awesome job, sharing them with the public. On top of these records, there’s plenty of letters (that have never been sent), personal notes, dramatic photos dating back to those years: an extraordinary heritage for Como city, that really deserves everyone’s memory. Because no one should ever forget how (unfortunately) too often, over the centuries, women have been considered - due to the grotesque, wrong dominant cultural paradigms - fragile and lesser creatures, with their identity always at risk.
“The patient is too sensual”
Once a woman entered S. Martino hospital, her whole life and femininity were traced in a folder, summarized in a scheme, and reduced to a rough, brutal adjective: fool, moron, idiot, senile dementia, perverted.
The thing is that many of the guests were interned on the basis of a simple certificate that declared them “dangerous": in short, it was enough that the mayor, the parish priest, the doctor or the commander of the Carabinieri decided that a specific person should no longer circulate freely, to safeguard the peace and public decorum. That’s how the hospital gradually became a tool of social control; an institution meant to hide the weakest side of the society; a symbol of the suffering, marginalization, deprivation of what we now consider the most basic rights of every human being.
The reasons why many women were shut at S. Martino are literally unbelievable for us today: “The patient is too sensual, with claims of intellectual superiority; she’s not a lover of domestic activities”, as we read in some records.
Pierina Castelli, a 24 y.o girl from Como, was hospitalized at San Martino in 1920 because she looked “too excited" and “she sings religious psalms".
A medical record of a Swiss woman states: "Costumes: bad”.
Odette, from France, was a dancer in Lyon with the diagnosis of “traces of demonology” for having betrayed her choreographer lover.
The hospital: a city in the city
It was 15th August 1870, when the location where building up the new provincial asylum of Como was chosen: a hill, at the time quite far from the city center, that would have been a kind of “city within the city” where the "sick" could live and even work to maintain themselves without disturbing the “healthy" ones.
© Gin Angri - "Le stagioni del San Martino. Documento fotografico sulla psichiatria"
Between 1906 and 1914, S. Martino mental hospital was converted into a kind of village, in compliance with the latest trends of the psychiatric science. In its large park there were agricultural and manufacturing companies that produced shoes, fabrics, milk, cheeses and vegetables to be sold in Como.
In 1947, to cope with the lack of space in the old asylum structures and the increase in hospitalizations, the provincial administration opened a women's neurological ward.
The maximum number of admissions to the asylum was between 1960 and 1970, coinciding with the great migratory flow from southern Italy to Como.
S. Martino closed in 1999 thanks to Franco Basaglia law, which closed forever the dark buildings in which inhumane treatments like 'malarotherapy' were regularly practiced.
© Gin Angri - "Le stagioni del San Martino. Documento fotografico sulla psichiatria"
Not far from the asylum church, inside the park, today you can see the "Wood of Forgotten Words”: a birch forest with wrecked boats from the Riva shipyard in Laglio, where the sentences written by former patients have found a new home.
Thanks to Angri’s work today we are able to dive into that suffering world and to dig into the irrational reasons why many of those women were prevented from being free as they deserved.
Independent women meant insane women
Manuela Serrentino, who has taken care of the exhibition catalogue, wrote that the classification of women at that time took place on the basis of their relationship with men.
© Gin Angri - "Le stagioni del San Martino. Documento fotografico sulla psichiatria"
The result was a suspicious attitudes towards those who showed a certain degree of independence; men weren’t scared by their aggressiveness in itself, rather they were frightened because those women’s autonomy somehow represented the symbol of sexual disorder. A disorder to fix, to heal, to control, to suppress.
Unhealthy women weren’t accepted by Fascism
During Fascism, "talkative, grimacing and disobedient" women ended up being interned in S. Martino: the hospital in Como became a tool for keeping the public order.
The same goes for those women who proved to be unable to play the role of mothers in an exemplary manner: we’re talking about mothers of ten children, wives and workers in the fields.
The thing is that Fascism ideology glorified motherhood. All women had to be perfect mothers and hard workers at the same time:
“The ideal Italian woman must be [...] three, five, ten times a mother. She must be […] not very elegant, not too beautiful; normal build, not accurate». (From M. Pompei on "Fascist criticism" 1930)
“The Fascist woman must be physically healthy in order to become the mother of healthy children. The drawings of artificially slimmed and masculinized female figures, which represent the type of sterile woman of the decadent Western civilization, must therefore be absolutely eliminated”. (From G. Polvarelli, head of the press office of the Presidency of the Council, in the directives to the newspapers, 1931)
As a result, Fascism condemned all women who didn’t reflect this model prototype. Women who weren’t able to handle (or just didn’t wanted to set up) a large family were considered mentally ill.
40% of the total inmates at S. Martino were indeed workers, housewives or retirees.
Letters that were never sent
The most touching section of that exhibition in our view was the one dedicated to the patients’ letters that have never been sent, due to a sly censorship: requests of love and attention that remained unfulfilled forever.
"You can fall in love with words of love even if they are addressed to another”, wrote Eloisia Sadun. Locked up at San Martino after the birth of her first child, she wondered why Carlì never showed up with her. “You can write to me with your name, with something else, as you wish. Wouldn't he be the one who fears talking about love for me?" While waiting, only the imagination remained, still not annihilated by months of electric shock and insulin.
Maria Giussani is locked up, for the first time, at the age of 32, in 1933. She will die four years later. She was guilty of being depressed and that’s why she stopped eating. Immersed in her illness, she wrote a letter to her husband Angelo: she thought he didn’t want to meet her anymore. “I don't know how to see you. If by chance I have offended you, tell me and I’ll ask your forgiveness”. She also added a direct, desperate appeal to the "lords of censorship": "To you, who read these miserable words of mine: please send me the answer".
Unfortunately, the letter - like many others - was never delivered.
Something to read
S. Martino is definitely part of Como collective memory. If you want to know more about the history of this sad institution, there’s something we recommend:
Gin Angri and Mauro Fogliaresi from Luoghi non Comuni association wrote "Le stagioni del San Martino. Documento fotografico sulla psichiatria", Marna, pages 280, € 30), with over 130 years of history of the hospital.
The catalogue from the exhibition Donne Cancellate can be bought at Feltrinelli, Ubik and Plinio Il Vecchio bookshops in Como.
Gin Angri is also the publisher of "Oltre il giardino”, a magazine and Onlus born in the center of mental illness of Como. Check it out here: www.oltreilgiardinoonlus.it
Article by Laura Zanotta
Sources:
https://www.silviomason.com/articoli/18-10-07-La_Provincia_di_Como.pdf
https://www.agi.it/cronaca/donne_cancellate_mostra_manicomio-4566492/news/2018-11-04/
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