Who Is Lidia Poët: The True Story Behind the Netflix Series and What We Know
The Law According to Lidia Poët is not an entirely invented work. In fact, it is based on the legal battle of an Italian pioneer who, between the 19th and 20th centuries, fought to see her regular registration with the bar association legally recognized. The series with Matilda De Angelis focuses on a historical character who really existed and who marked a page in the history of Italy: Lidia Poët. The plot of the series is highly fictionalized but is based on certain biographical elements of the real Lidia Poët, whose story held court in Italy and Europe for a long time.
As mentioned in the review of the first season of The Law According to Lidia Poët, the series does not only tell the legal cases that the protagonist (played by Matilda de Angelis) brilliantly tackles. At the heart of the horizontal story of the series is the legal battle that Lidia had to face to overcome stereotypes and become the first Italian to enter the bar. The first season still sees a very young Lidia, tempted by the idea of leaving Italy and heading to more progressive countries on women’s rights to exploit her professional potential (to find out more, read How The Law According to Lidia Poët ends). In her historical reality, her battle with the Italian laws lasted more than 60 years. Continue reading to discover the true story of Lidia Poët.
Who is Lidia Poët, The First Italian Lawyer
Lidia Poët was born in 1855 into a wealthy Waldensian family in Traverse di Perrero. In the family, the lawyer was at home. As happens in the series, Lidia’s brother, Giovanni Enrico, was also a lawyer in reality. Her brother played a crucial role in her sister’s life, as told by the series. Lidia grew up dedicating herself with zeal and profit to her studies. After studying in a boarding school for young ladies in Switzerland, she studied to obtain the license of teacher superior normal, which would have allowed her to teach in schools. She then also obtained the same title to teach languages.
Having lost her parents but with her brother by her side ready to support her, Lidia decided to enroll at the University of Turin. Initially, you chose the faculty of medicine, where at your time the famous Cesare Lombroso taught. The man went down in history for supporting the thesis, which turned out to be false, that the shape and size of a person’s skull and face could be measured to understand their criminal inclinations. After an initial period of attendance in medicine, Lidia moved to the law faculty.
Lidia Poët’s Struggle to Become a Lawyer
The date that changed Lidia Poët’s life was June 17, 1881. In front of an audience of onlookers and classmates, Lidia graduated in law. At the time, there were very few women who managed to achieve this goal. The prevailing mentality of the time believed that women should be the angels of the hearth, fulfilling a household role of care as wives and mothers. However, there was no lack of progressive thrusts. Among Lidia Poët’s own professors and classmates, many supported the active role of women in society, even in the world of work. Lidia Poët’s enrollment in the bar was initially accepted. On the other hand, the young woman had all the requisites in order, having also concluded her apprenticeship with excellent grades. Then the cold shower: Lidia is excluded from the order.
Some exponents, men, ignited a lively controversy against the entry of a woman into the bar association. They even went so far as to resign in protest of the order itself. As shown in the series, Lidia started a very long legal battle to be recognized for the right to become a lawyer. The historic ruling of the Cassation with which women were effectively excluded from practicing the profession of lawyer – the one with which the first season ends – sparked a lively debate throughout Europe. Lidia had many supporters, especially among the newspapers of the time (whose role is summed up by the character of the journalist Jacopo). The history of her interview with Corriere della Sera, to which she told her studies and her university life, legitimizes her request in the eyes of public opinion, divided between for and against.
As happens in the series, Lidia practiced the de facto profession for years, alongside her brother. Her presence at her side in many lawsuits faced by Giovanni Enrico Poët and her work at the family law firm is certified. Lidia was also a prominent figure in the civil struggles in Italy. She fought all her life not only to improve the condition of women and to obtain the right to vote but also for the rights of minors and people exploited in the world of work.
His incredible battle has a bitter ending: Lidia lived long enough to be legally recognized with the right to be a lawyer, duly registered in the order. On 17 July 1919, after the First World War, the Sacchi Law finally allowed women to enroll in orders, including the legal ones. Lidia was already 64 years old and had been practicing as a de facto lawyer for decades. The series suggests that Lidia didn’t like the idea of marriage too much. This fact is also probable: the real Lydia never married and died unmarried at the age of 94.
Premiere of the TV series: The Youth of Lidia Poët
Lidia Poët was born in 1855 in Traverse di Perrero, in the Germanasca valley. A few years earlier, the Albertine Statute had granted freedom of worship to the Waldensian Church, to which her family also belonged, as well as almost the entire valley. This is not a detail: the Waldensian tradition, which has always been oriented towards individual reading and study of the Bible, had for over a century promoted a strong campaign against illiteracy, which instead remained widespread in the rest of the Italian peninsula. It was also for this reason that Lidia had the opportunity to undertake her studies, and to discover a passion for the humanities which, otherwise, would have remained completely unknown: in her adolescence, she moved with her family to Pinerolo, where her older brother Enrico (played in the TV series by an excellent Pier Luigi Pasino) was the owner of a prestigious law firm.
The parents planned to make Lidia a teacher: the young woman attended a master’s school in Switzerland, in Aubonne, and obtained a license to teach English, French, and German. These studies, however, are also briefly referred to in the first episodes of the TV series, in which the protagonist pretends to be a teacher. However, Lidia persisted in continuing her studies beyond that goal, breaking a first social convention of the time: in 1877 she obtained her classical high school diploma at the “Beccaria” high school in Mondovì, in the province of Cuneo, and subsequently, after trying and abandoned the faculty of medicine, he graduated in law with honors from the University of Turin.
The Battle to Become a Lawyer
Orphaned by her parents but determined to follow a much more unusual path than the one to which she had been destined by her family, Lidia Poët embarked on the path that led to the lawyers. The situation was thorny: in the whole newborn Kingdom of Italy there was no female lawyer, but the Albertine Statute did not contain any prohibition in this sense. Without losing heart, for two years she practiced law in Pinerolo in the prestigious office of Senator Cesare Bertea and was able to attend numerous sessions of the local court. The hardest test remained namely the state exam, which Lidia passed brilliantly with an evaluation of 45 out of 50.
For a man, it would be the end of his labor and the beginning of a thriving legal career. For Lidia, on the other hand, the battles had just begun after having officially applied for registration with the Order of Lawyers and Prosecutors of Turin, the former interior minister Desiderato Chiaves and another prestigious Piedmontese lawyer, Federico Spantigati, opposed his admission and resigned in protest. On 9 August 1883, however, the Order recognized that “women are citizens like men” and accepted her application for membership by a majority vote. We also saw the sequel on Netflix: the Turin prosecutor challenged the decision before the Court of Appeal, and this canceled the registration of Lidia Poët.
The young woman appealed to the Cassation of Turin, but this confirmed the positions of the court of second instance and definitively barred the doors to her career. Throughout her life, the stubborn Lidia Poët nevertheless continued to practice the legal profession using the signature of her brother Enrico. Her turning point came only at the age of 65, when, in 1919, a law promulgated by Parliament clarified once and for all how women had free access to the profession.
The Reasons for the Refusal
Without solid normative references, since in the juridical sphere the limitations to the subjective juridical sphere must always be expressly formulated, the Court of Appeal found itself arguing its theses with reasons of public order and biology. In the first place, observed the Turin judiciary, the presence of a woman in the courtroom could seduce the judges and mislead their objectivity with her “loveliness”: yesterday as today the concept – of Catholic origin – of the woman as a source of sin and temptation is really hard to die!
The worst, however, emerges on the “biological” front: while never mentioning them explicitly, the pronunciation, speaking of the conditions of women, implicitly refers to menstruation, which would hinder the suitability for hard and constant work such as that of a lawyer. The “sensitive concern” of the court, however, does not reconcile very badly with the widespread practice of employing women as workers in the factories of the time, with rhythms and workloads infinitely more onerous than those of today. In that field, there would have been no problems whatsoever: decidedly strange biology, the female one!
Lastly, the court also contradicts itself on a strictly logical level: the prohibition for women to exercise would have been implicit in the law itself, which subjected them to the authority of their spouse. Therefore, for acts performed with the toga, women would need the husband’s consent, and this would have been inadmissible. A decidedly absurd and patriarchal conception, of course, but in fact, this was the law. Except that… Lidia wasn’t married at all, and she wasn’t legally subject to anyone’s authority! Also, for this reason, indeed, she will never marry, for the entire course of her life.
Social Commitment in Defense Of The Least
Lidia Poët, however, was not only a courageous lawyer battling with a profoundly retrograde and macho universe. At the center of her activity, there was also an important social battle in defense of the latter, of which we hope to see traces in the coming seasons, albeit with the pleasant light-hearted cut chosen by the authors. In particular, Lidia had a prominent presence in various International Penitentiary Congresses, during which she fought vigorously for the rights of prisoners, and in particular for the establishment of courts and specific detention institutions for minors. To promote this cause, you participated in particular at conferences in Rome, St. Petersburg, and Paris, where you also received a prestigious honor from the French government.
At the same time, also because of the injustice of which she had been the victim herself, she openly took sides in the campaign for the vindication of women’s civil rights, and her voice was one of the most authoritative within the CNDI (National Council of Italian women). Lidia Poët, however, always wanted to distance herself from the English suffragette movement, of which she declared in several circumstances that she did not share the overly radical claims and methods. In short, her personality was decidedly multifaceted and original, and even today she escapes any attempt at labeling, even by the feminist world. The immortal charm of Lidia Poët also lies in this…
