#but man do i hate his characters
a few posts made me think…the amount of vicious rhetoric about Italy being such a sinisterly promiscuous place the air itself was sick thrived well into the xix century in part also because the land was, like France, less hysterically puritanical than Britain is insane.
the association with Italy as a sordid place almost by nature was such that malaria, which is endemic in the Mediterranean and in Italy was defeated only in the first half of the 20th century, was frequently used as a metaphor for this sort of ethnical & moral malaise in works by anglophone writers.
(you can find it shown exemplarily in James’ Daisy Miller; but mentions of Italians being sexually promiscuous, improper, possessing a dangerous, dark sort of sexuality can be found in a lot of works of the same time period, and similar jabs abound even in fun, pop culture-loved books by Christie and other ‘fun’ British authors)
I’ve noticed this before… but RECENTLY.
I’m Canadian, and have travelled a lot for work. I was in Italy for a few weeks, and immediately afterwards went to a more Northern European country. I had multiple people ask me about “lazy Italians” and if “I was hit on constantly because they (Italians) will always hit on foreigners”. This wasn’t a one time thing. It happened multiple times, and I heard this type of rhetoric by multiple people who were educated and good people otherwise. But they spouted this without a second thought, because they thought what they were saying was true.
And honestly… I had no issue travelling in Italy. None at all. When I was hit on is was usually by USAmerican tourists lol. The most cliched Italian thing I experienced was having a family I met feed me and be scandalized when I told them I don’t eat meat. That was it.
So yeah… xenophobia is REAL and a huge issue.
Not exactly related to promiscuousness, but
If anybody wants to understand 20th century British snobbish and condescending attitude towards italians should simply read A Room with a View. Bunch of spoiled upper class british cunts on a holiday in Florence, think they’re better than any italians they meet and apparently are the only ones capable of truly appreciate italian art.
Forster explicity wrote those characters to criticize british society and the assumption of English cultural superiority. At the same time, even if he had good intention, he depicted Italy in a primitivist way, often patronizing italians and our culture.
