Raging women and their green energies. The Southern Italian woman’s ecological fury

Abstract

This article combines artistic and intellectual research on the southern Italian woman, known as the terrona. It analyzes many forms of media to explore the stereotype of the southern Italian woman, examining her portrayal in novels, movies, TV shows, and popular culture as loud, choleric, sexualized, and maternal. Furthermore, it shows a creative experiment in which the traditional patriarchal stereotype of the terrona is changed into a new representation showing the terrona as a confident and gratified woman. In the article, the traditional image of the terrona is linked to the natural resources of the Mediterranean region, envisioning how this connection empowers her, shifting her from a marginalized and oppressed figure to one with power. An art-research approach is adopted in this work to perform a feminist examination of the social condition of the terrona, while simultaneously suggesting an imaginative reconfiguration of her stereotype.