Natalia Ginzburg (1916-91), whose writing career spanned nearly a sixty-year period of Italian history, has been acclaimed for her clear, realistic prose and for her ability to portray, through the microcosm of the family, a macrocosm of Italian culture. Yet little criticism concerns itself with the specific perspectives and voices of her narrating daughters and mothers, and the presence of oedipal and pre-oedipal narrative within the ideological boundaries of "family" and "society." This volume focuses on the broad theme of the maternal by tracing the development of the voices of Ginzburg's narrating daughters, mothers, and sisters.