The Historical Roots of Southern Italian Women the Cultural Heredity

1 The Historical Roots of Southern Italian Women The cultural heredity of the Italian American sto- ourselves, none that we could call our own.”1 Don rytellers in this book runs deep into the ancient soil Fabrizio’s broad sweep of southern Italy’s history began of Calabria, Campania, Basilicata, Puglia, Sicily, and with Greek colonists, followed by Roman administra- Sardinia. Southern Italian women of the lower class- tors, Lombard gastalds, Byzantine governors, Muslim es are treated as background figures in history, silent imams, Turkish crusaders, French barons, and Spanish partners who toiled and struggled through the ages viceroys who conquered and divided the South, leav- alongside men. While foreign armies conquered their ing their cultural influences on Southern customs, cui- territory, women stood on the sidelines of an occupied sine, architecture, and language. land whose pivotal position in the Mediterranean Southern Italy’s first occupiers were ambitious men divided East from West. The island of Sicily, less from Greece known as ekistes, who led expeditions than one hundred miles from Northern Africa and to subjugate native tribes, establishing colonies along two miles from the mainland, made southern Italy the perimeters of its eastern and western coastlines, a natural stepping stone for civilizations migrating and around the island of Sicily.2 Armed with superior north to Europe. military and city-building skills, the Greeks laid the Don Fabrizio, the Sicilian noble portrayed in foundation of a social hierarchy where a small land- Tomaso di Lampedusa’s nineteenth-century novel The owning class of aristocrats held the reins of political Leopard, somberly described the indelible marks the and economic power. Greek colonizers named their long history of foreign invasions left on the people land “Magna Grecia,” or Greater Greece, and some- of southern Italy: “For over twenty-five centuries, times incorporated native people into their newly we’ve been bearing the weight of superb and hetero- founded cities, or imposed harsher methods, taking geneous civilizations, all from outside, none made by women into their homes as slaves.3 In the seventh 1 © 2014 State University of New York Press, Albany 2 • Farms, Factories, and Families century BC, Greek settlers of Selinunte on Sicily’s resources. From time-honored recipes passed down south coast were granted permission to mix their from mother to daughter, women created the cuisine foreign blood with native Emylian women of nearby of the humble Southern peasant known in modern Segesta in formal marriage agreements known as epi- times as le cucine dei poveri, the kitchens of the poor. gamia.4 While we know that the lives of indigenous Though historically overlooked as guardians against tribes—the Sicels, Sicanians, and Elymians of Sicily, the constant threat of hunger, the Italian mothers’ the Lapigi of Puglia, the Oenotrians of Basilicata ability to feed families often meant the difference and Calabria, the Balari, Corsi, Sardi, and Iloai of between starvation and survival. Incorporating foods Sardinia, and the Samnites of Campania, were cen- introduced by Lombard, Arabic, and Byzantine invad- tered on shepherding and agriculture, no historical ers, Campanian women created simple yet nutritious accounts that may have shed more light on the lives dishes they transported to American tables, which in of women have survived. recent times have attained the status of haute cui- Archeological evidence reveals that native tribes sine in upscale Italian restaurants. In America, the in Sicily were quickly incorporated into Greek set- Italian woman’s domain became known as “domus,” tlements from their centers of habitation through the center of family activity where members not only war or assimilation, and institutions and customs found sustenance from mother’s home cooked meals, of Greek colonizers were adopted.5 Houses where but also learned moral principles grounded in the rooms were partitioned into male and female spaces Southern Italian code of righteous behavior.7 unearthed from the eighth and seventh centuries at Homes unearthed in southern Italy shed light on Erea (Campania), Megara Iblea (Sicily), Metaponto another important aspect of women’s lives in Magna (Basilicata), Syracuse (Sicily), and the island of Ischia Grecia. Special rooms designated for spinning and off the coast of Naples provide clues about the roles of weaving fabric acted as female workshops in which ancient Southern women as housekeepers.6 Daily life sewing skills were passed to the next generation. At for the women of Magna Grecia was consumed with Paestum in 1934, archeologists discovered the original the preparation and storage of food around a foco- temple dedicated to the female cult of the goddess lare, hearth in a central room. For untold generations, Hera in the sixth century BC that incorporated a ingenious women of the lower classes nurtured and separate space within the building reserved for vergini fed large families of agricultural workers with limited tessitrici, virgin weavers. © 2014 State University of New York Press, Albany The Historical Roots of Southern Italian Women • 3 Millennia later, in 1897, Salvatore Salomone- many girls left school at fourteen, sacrificing careers Marino, a noted Sicilian physician, observed the con- as nurses, bookkeepers, and schoolteachers to work tinuation of the ancient sewing tradition in a study of in sweatshops. Sicilian peasants. He found a space in many homes Women in southern Italy’s patriarchal society were reserved for the loom where “the housewife or daugh- subject to the will of their fathers and husbands, and ters sit alternately and produce the rigatino (striped grew up under strict parental supervision that guaran- cloth) for their own clothing, or the faustian for the teed an unmarried woman’s chastity in the name of men, or more frequently the tela, homespun linen for protecting family honor. The women of Magna Grecia ordinary sheets and skirts and underclothing for daily had their mates chosen by parents, and ceded their use, or that fine linen called alessandrina, which com- rights to their dowry at marriage, but were given the pares to the finest in Holland today.”8 In the twenti- responsibility to raise children and run the house- eth century, Italian women transported centuries-old hold.10 Senofante, a fourth-century BC Greek histo- sewing skills to Connecticut’s burgeoning textile rian whose writings were known in Magna Grecia, industry as expert dressmakers and seamstresses. In recorded in Economics the statement of a married man 1938, Phyllis H. Williams wrote Southern Folkways, a who described the division of responsibility between handbook for social workers that surveyed the cultural husbands and wives in the Greek world, “I’m never traits of the large population of New Haven’s South- at home at all because my wife is very capable of ern Italians. She observed that Italian women had running all the business of the household.”11 descended from a culture where “young girls learned Magna Grecia produced an important woman sewing and, in country places, weaving and spinning Pythagorean philosopher whose works survive. In even before their small hands could properly handle the fourth century BC, Aesara of Lucania (Basilicata) the necessary tools.”9 Williams’s book was written dur- wrote Book on Human Nature, a treatise that reflect- ing the Depression when many men had lost their ed the ideal role of women in southern Italy. Aesara jobs, creating a desperate need for alternative sources envisioned women’s work as focused not only on rais- of income for struggling immigrant families. Italian ing children based on the moral principle of “becom- women and their American-born children put their ing just, harmonious individuals,” but also on “how a sewing skills to use, finding jobs in Connecticut’s Pythagorean woman analyzed the ways in which the needle trades. Because of economic need at home, principle of armonia could be applied in the living of © 2014 State University of New York Press, Albany 4 • Farms, Factories, and Families everyday life.”12 Pythagorean philosophers in southern of male authority in marriage. Many found empower- Italy believed a man’s responsibility was to create har- ment in the union movement as industrial feminists. mony and justice in the city while women applied the Some with prior experience in Italy became entrepre- same principles to their children in the home. Men neurs and started their own businesses. Others lent received recognition in the outside world as work- money from their corner grocery stores, offering their ers, hunters, and warriors; women’s sphere of influ- customers loans at reasonable rates. Still others recog- ence was the home where they found self-expression nized the financial opportunities of owning property in household arts. Men built coliseums and temples; and invested in real estate, owning multiple apart- women’s daily work was invisible. Men created histori- ment buildings with rented street-level storefronts. cal events and wrote histories; women told stories and In 1928, as Italian immigrant women were helping kept family history alive. This dichotomy is reflected families climb out of poverty and into Connecticut’s in the burial customs of the ancient Samnites who working class, the anthropologist Charlotte Gower marked the graves of men with spears rather than traveled to Milocca in rural southwest Sicily. Living inscriptions, women with their well-worn spindles.13 among the townspeople, she observed women still liv- Women in Southern society were valued not only ing in a society where men enjoyed a wider range of for their homemaking skills, but also their adherence possibilities of self-expression as “natural protectors” to a strict code of morality based on familial loy- and “masters” of women.14 By the turn of the twen- alty, deference to male authority, and the ability to tieth century, social conditions for wives and daugh- work tirelessly from dawn to dusk.

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