Innocent Desire: Female Desire and Bodily Autonomy in L’arte Della Gioia

Qianyi Su

doi:10.54254/2753-7048/2025.LD29073

Lecture Notes in Education Psychology and Public MediaOpen access

Innocent Desire: Female Desire and Bodily Autonomy in L’arte Della Gioia

Research Article

Open Access

Innocent Desire: Female Desire and Bodily Autonomy in L’arte Della Gioia

Qianyi Su ^1*

¹ Jinan Xinhang Experimental Foreign Language School

^*Corresponding author: chloechloe5418@gmail.com

Published on 5 November 2025

LNEP Vol.115

ISSN (Print): 2753-7056

ISSN (Online): 2753-7048

ISBN (Print): 978-1-80590-513-4

ISBN (Online): 978-1-80590-514-1

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Abstract

This essay takes the 2025 miniseries L’arte della gioia (The Art of Joy) as its object of study, examining how it reconstructs the representation of female desire and bodily autonomy through narrative strategies, visual aesthetics, and symbolic imagery. The series, adapted from Goliarda Sapienza’s once—banned radical novel, follows the coming—of—age and resistance of its protagonist Modesta, while challenging the gendered power structures rooted in the “male gaze” of traditional cinema and television. Drawing on Laura Mulvey’s theory of the “male gaze,” Teresa de Lauretis’s concept of “gender as technology,” and Anneke Smelik’s discussions of feminist film aesthetics, this paper analyzes how the series employs cinematic language, spatial narration, and bodily imagery to liberate female desire from the frameworks of guilt and punishment, and to reconfigure it as an active, self—determined form of “innocent desire.” Through its reciprocal depictions of intimate relationships, its ethical handling of scenes of sexual violence, and its recurring use of symbolic elements such as the corset, the sea, and the image of Saint Agatha, the series constructs a trajectory of female development that moves from repression to liberation. This study argues that The Art of Joy is not only a historical drama but also a feminist visual practice, which, by rejecting the objectification and eroticization of the female body, endows desire with political significance and subjectivity, thereby opening new possibilities for female narratives on the contemporary screen.

Keywords:

Female desire, bodily autonomy, male gaze, feminist film theory

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References

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