Was Lidia Poët ever married? Did she have a husband? This article discusses the famous Italian lawyer and elements of her personal life.
Netflix has released a historical biography with dramatized elements, The Law According to Lidia Poët, focusing on the story of Italy’s first female lawyer, Lidia Poët. She was a stalwart figure who relentlessly pursued equal rights between men and women in court, despite several setbacks in her own life. She would eventually achieve her goal of improving the position of women in the country and died aged 94.
But while her professional life is well documented in the series, audiences are left wondering if Poët ever decided to get married or if she remained without a husband.
Who is Lidia Poët?
Lidia Poët was the first woman Italian lawyer and someone who zealously strove to improve women’s rights in the latter portion of the 1800s and the first half of the 1900s. Although she passed the bar for the Order of Advocates in 1883, she would be disbarred and struck off as a lawyer. Her passing “did not please” the Office of the Attorney General. The only reason for this was because she was a woman.
After a long battle involving a lot of public controversies – the national newspapers got involved and picked sides, with the majority siding with Poët – women would finally be allowed to hold public office in 1919, and in 1920 Poët would be reinstated as an advocate.
READ: Where was The Law According to Lidia Poët filmed?
Was Lidia Poët married?
Poët never got married in her long life of 93 years. She likely had romantic relationships during her life, but none of them turned into a full-blown marriages. Both in the Netflix show and in real life, Poët remained focused on her work of empowering women. She was part of the suffragette movement in Italy and achieved their goal of giving women the vote in 1945, a few years before her death.
Her family, however, was a big part of her life. After being disbarred, she would work with her brother Enrico Poët and would continue to practice law, even if she couldn’t do it in a court.
What does history say about Lidia Poët’s personal life?
It isn’t clear why Poët never married, with a possible reason being that strategically, it wouldn’t have been a good idea for her too. When Poët was alive, the widespread view was that a husband would be a dominant force in marriage and would keep his wife from performing legal acts in a court of law. This is because women wouldn’t be able to handle what happened in a criminal court.
A man would have total control over his wife’s decisions in other areas of life. A traditional husband would want his wife to keep to domestic duties such as housekeeping and raising children and not give those up for a career in any field. So it’s probable that Poët never married because she didn’t want another man to get in her way or for other men to use against her. She probably thought that having a husband and children would distract her from her work.
Even after Poët became a lawyer in Turin, she remained a fierce advocate for women’s rights, being an active member of the international women’s movement until she died in the seaside town of Diano Marina.
