Who is Sibilla Aleramo as noted in the book, After Sappho?

The Italian feminist Sibilla Aleramo is born in Italy in 1876, as Rina Faccio. As a young woman, Sibilla is raped by a man who works with her at her father’s factory. The Pisanelli Code allows Sibilla’s father to address this crime simply by “transfer[ring] her to [the rapist] in name and deed” (18). While married to her rapist, Sibilla has a child and subsequently attempts to kill herself. She sees a production of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, in which the female protagonist “ceases finally to be a wife” (25). Inspired by the play, Sibilla leaves her husband and assumes a new identity. She publishes the radical feminist novel Una donna, and soon begins a romantic relationship with Lina Poletti. In 1913 she moves to Paris and joins the city’s community of lesbians and feminists. Although she continues to love Lina, she senses that Lina’s love “had crested and rolled back from her” (68).