Why bother with Gramsci's wife: Julia Schucht

In the waves of feminism, there is no separation between the personal and the political. The personal is political. I have long ascribed to this and it fits congruently with my values of human rights and social justice.

Many years ago I did a Social Work  research internship at the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. My area was sexual harassment and I published my research in a practice based proceedings. From there I went into working within the sexual assault sector. My Social Work career and personal commitment involves the empowerment of women and ensuring their voice is heard.

I naturally gravitate to books about women. Picking up Wifedom (2023) by Anna Funder was a no-brainer. Putting it down was impossible. The invisible and brilliant wife of George Orwell was outed. So she deserved to be too...and perhaps her husband should be relegated and derided for not citing his wife's literary influence, content and real-life contributions to events and characters in his book.

Because of this brilliant book by Funder, because of my values and my life's work, I cannot talk about Gramsci in my PhD without including the sacrifices made and the lived experience of his wife, Julia Schucht. I bother with Julia Schucht because she is a pivotal influence in Gramsci's life - she is in his dash.

Like Gramsci, Julia suffered from mental health challenges. The pair met in a sanatorium in Russia. Julia was intelligent and a violinist...and raised two sons as a single parent always under threat of exposure, exile or persecution because she was in love with Gramsci.

Gramsci died in prison as a political prisoner of a fascist regime without having ever seen his second son. However, we know about Julia, her sons, her mental health challenges and Gramsci's thinking around intimate relationships because of his prison letters to Julia and her sister, Tatiana.  Without these two women we would not be privy to the thinking and manoeuvring of Antonio Gramsci nor would we have background to his Prison Notebooks.

So Julia Schucht, here's to you. Thank you for your sacrifices and your lived experience. Your life mattered and gave us a context to the great mind that Mussolini attempted to stop for 20 years - the mind of your husband, Antonio Gramsci.

Pictured: Julia Schucht (wife of Antonio Gramsci) with sons Delio (born 1924) and Giuliano (born 1926) . C 1930s.

👵 Megan Bayliss

🎓 PhD candidate: social and cultural resistance to the status quo.