The “Morally Abandoned Child” and the “Inner Savage”

The day of February 13th, 1921, a barefoot little girl came out of one of Trastevere’s alleys and walked slowly along King’s Avenue. The little girl has a pale, sad face, she has unkempt hair, she’s dirty and laid bare feet on the last fallen leaves so she did not feel the cold off the soil.” This short text constitutes the open- ing words of a book, published in 1926 in Rome, which Maria Capozzi – director of a center for “morally abandoned children” – publishes with the support of the gov- ernor (the governor is the government-appointed institution (nominated directly by Mussolini) replacing the mayor and the city council elected democratically in the city of Rome) of the city to document the activities of the “Infantiae Salus insti- tutes.” The hypothesis underlying the interest for this text is that following the great upheaval of the First World War, with the advent of fascism begins a profound pro- cess of modeling Italian identity.