Her Soul

Her Soul (Anima in Italian) is the first play by Jewish-Italian writer^[1] and feminist Amelia Pincherle Rosselli (1870-1954), the grandmother of Italian poet Amelia Rosselli (1930-1966).

After taking first place in the Concorso drammatico dell'Esposizione nazionale, a national prize from the Italian state, (Rosselli had entered the competition for first theatrical works in the National Exhibition in Turin with her play being chosen as the winner out of sixty entries),^[2] Anima premiered in Turin on October 29, 1898 at the Teatro Gerbino under the direction of Alfredo de Sanctis (1866-1954) and was performed by the company of actors, Teatro d'Arte, with Clara Della Guardia (1865-1937) as the protagonist.^[3] The play then toured Italy and abroad to critical acclaim and was published in 1901.

Anima was written in answer to Giuseppe Giacosa's drama, The Rights of the Soul (1894), a play in one act, influenced by Ibsen's, A Doll's House (1879). Rosselli had explored a similar theme, the dichotomy between the purity of the body and that of the soul, in a short story written during the early years of her marriage.^[4] She then expanded the story into a three-act drama directly in response to Giacosa's work.

In his play, Giacosa grants his heroine the right to nurture a Platonic love for a man who is not her husband. Rosselli, on the other hand, not only condemns this type of love but also ridicules it. Her play is an outright condemnation of how young men at the turn-of-the-century would go about choosing their wives. After taking sexual advantage of women who were not considered the marrying type, they would then choose a young inexperienced girl from a good family, with the hope of molding her or simply for her dowry. But some girls, kept too strictly at home and only superficially educated, made life difficult for their husbands with their constant flirtation, as does Graziana in Anima. Olga, Rosselli's protagonist, who had been raped at fifteen years of age, represents not only the more intelligent and mature woman forced to hide her suffering, but also the professional woman, a painter, and thus considered by her contemporaries as unsuitable for the role of a traditional wife.

For these reasons, Anima is an original and daring play for its time and has not lost its relevancy, as the problems it presents remain valid today: the trauma of rape and the concept that a successful marriage be based on mutual respect, common interests and a spiritual understanding of each other's "soul". (See "Introduction" by Natalia Costa-Zalessow to Her Soul. Translated into English by Natalia Costa-Zalessow with the collaboration of Joan E. Borrelli, in Modern Drama by Women 1880s-1930s: An International Anthology, edited by Katherine E. Kelly, pp. 44-79.)

In 1996, upon publication of the English translation, Acts I and II of Her Soul were read on stage on February 28 and March 1 of that year by students of the Drama Department of Texas A&M University.

Her Soul (Anima) was, and still is, promoted by the Hedgepig Ensemble Theatre-Expand the Canon who have offered the text of the play online and have facilitated its staging. More recently, they have declared the play a "classic" deserving a "spot in the canon," with plans to include Olga's monologue from Act I Scene 8 in a book of monologues destined for publication.

A shortened version of Her Soul, directed by Becca Westbrook, was performed on February 9 and 10, 2025, by students of the Shakespeare & Performance MLitt Program at Mary Baldwin University.

A reading of the entire play in English can be accessed on Youtube: Marialana Ardolino Anima (Her Soul).