European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

He continued, “We’ll get married, then you’ll come to Varese and nobody will look for you”.

“So you think that if we get married, hand out the information they need, they’d let me go to Varese?

Would you be happier if I’m tortured? You’re really joking”.

I added, “I took this decision, why should I leave now?”

To which he replied: “If you stay here, you’re not worthy of raising my children”.

That was really it, I couldn’t take it anymore.

In the past we had already argued over the role of the woman in the family.

I couldn’t tolerate being considered as a nobody.

I couldn’t stand the fact that a man would marry me only to have a maid and someone who would give birth to his children.

That he would then be the one in charge.

It was often a matter of discussion, even with my father,

although he was a very democratic and open-minded person who understood certain issues. My boyfriend didn’t.

I told him: “Giving birth to a child for a man is just a matter of seconds.

I share my life with him for nine months. He lives in me,

I’m the one who feeds him, who looks after him and gives him a chance to live.

And you tell me that I have no decisional power, that I can’t say how he should grow up?”

His reply was simply that it’s up to the man to take decisions at home. So I told him he could go home and be the man of the house there,

while I’d go back to the mountains, because that was the choice I had made.

It wasn’t an easy decision, after so many years of engagement.

Staying with him was what I had envisioned for my future. Now I put an end to it.