L’Agnese va a morire by Renata Viganò is one of the rare documents of women’s role in the Italian Resistance. The work (published in 1949) reflects the woman writer’s life events. She had taken part in Resistance, following her husband who was a partisan in the Valleys of Comacchio, in Romagna, place where the novel is set. The protagonist is Agnese, a simple laundress. One day she gives hospitality to a deserter; that’s why her husband Palita, denounced by their neighbours, will be arrested by the Germans and will never come home.

After Palita’s, Agnese starts collaborating with the partisans, her husband’s friends. Her choice isn’t an ideological one, but is an instinctive choice, dictated by a feeling of hatred towards those who deprived her of her husband, causing his death. In the partisan brigade Agnese continues playing the same caring role she has been playing at home. However, throughout the novel, Agnese starts developing her independence of action and at a certain point she stops being “the partisans’ mother” only and receives important tasks, such as, for instance, that of thinking of the supplies and setting up the relays.

Moreover, the partisan experience makes her think that political committment, that she prevously considered to be the exclusive domain of men, be vital for her. Her new awareness of social injustices results in the desire to change the world and in the dream of equality. Just before her death, that she faces with the natural ease of a last act of duty, Agnese gives a long speech and retraces the crucial events of her own life, assimilating it with the partisan struggle: she expresses the will to be useful to the cause and the confidence in the successful conclusion of it. The strong bond between the comrades in the partisan struggle, based on sharing common memories and experiences, will be the subject of the postwar tales and also the land on which to base a new political reality and a new political society in Italy.