This study analyzes the role women play in the tragedies of Vittorio Alfieri (1749-1803). In order to examine the often-contested relationship between genre and gender that Alfierian tragedy establishes in its complex representation of heroic womanhood, this dissertation connects Alfieri’s depiction of tragic heroines to eighteenth-century debates on the development of a distinctly Italian style of tragedy. The eighteenth century saw debates among Italian intellectuals on the nature of tragedy, its connection to both classical and French precedents, and the appropriate characteristics of an autonomous Italian tragic tradition. Among these debates, the role of women is a tantalizing but underexplored thread. In the dissertation’s four chapters, feminist and dramatic theories are utilized to analyze Alfierian heroines in relation to the stance the author takes on key aspects of contemporary Italian polemics concerning tragedy. Chapter 1 reads four Alfierian heroines (Antigone, Clitennestra, Sofonisba, Mirra) through the nexus of fate and silence. Italian intellectuals held the concept of divine fate to be an archaic holdover from classical tragedy, while in Greek tragedy silence was traditionally associated with fate. The chapter argues that Alfierian heroines utilize silence as a means through which to assert agency over the forces of fate, which Alfieri restores in his tragedies. Chapter 2 examines Alfieri’s representation of the tragic maternal body through the figures of Giocasta, Clitennestra, and Merope. It argues that Alfieri updates the model of maternity inherited from Scipione Maffei, whose Merope (1713) offered the most influential depiction of tragic maternity in both Italy and France. Chapter 3 offers an analysis of Alfieri’s depiction of amorous desire through his representation of Isabella, Ottavia, Clitennestra, and Rosmunda. The chapter demonstrates how Alfieri stakes a claim in the longstanding polemic concerning the role of love in Italian tragedy. Finally, Chapter 4 examines how the depictions of Louise Stolberg-Gedern, Alfieri’s companion, and Alceste, his final heroine, challenge his previously established models of female heroism. This study illuminates Alfieri’s place in the evolution of eighteenth-century Italian tragedy by demonstrating how his heroines reveal his constant toggling between the formalism of classicism and the psychological explorations typical of emerging bourgeois drama.