Hester Thrale Piozzi: Open Minded View of Italy
Hester Thrale Piozzi was a well known member of London society during her first marriage to Henry Thrale. In 1784, two years after her first husband passed away, Piozzi married an Italian musician by the name Gabriel Piozzi, after her first husband. This second marriage was frowned upon by her daughters and her long time friend Samuel Johnson. Shortly after the marriage, Piozzi left English society and began her travels, which take her around the continent and especially to Italy. This adventure lasted two years and a half. Piozzi kept careful journal notes concerning the sites and sounds of her adventures in Italy. She presented a much more open-minded view of the country then many of the previous writers had. Piozzi focused much of her attention on the domestic sphere and lives of the women of Italy, lending a female perspective to a male dominated genre.
A fine example of Piozzi trying to temper the prejudices against the Italians is her statement, "so removed are they from all affectation of sensibility or of refinement, that when a conceited Englishman starts back in pretended rapture from a Raphael he has perhaps little taste for, it is difficult to persuade these sincerer people that his transports are possibly put on..." (Pfister 292). This is juxtaposed to a cartoon that appeared in a British publication, which depicted the fear of many British families, that their son would pick up affectation from the Italians.
Image Sources:
Piozzi <http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~worp/piozzi/bio/piozbio.html>.
Affectation (Hibbert 100).