Women play a complex role in Robert Orsi’s The Madonna on 115th Street, at some points exercising power and at other points exercising less power than men. In Italian Harlem when describing a “domus,” the woman at the center is the one actually being described. A domus, according to Emmanuel LeRoy Ladurie, “constitute[s] a formidable reservoir of power and counter-power which could hold out with some degree of success against the external powers surrounding it.” Italian women in Harlem had no direct power in the outside world, but they were able to use their sphere of influence to leave their mark. The power that women in Italian Harlem have is given to them by the matriarchal society modeled by the church.
“Italian Harlem was a private matriarchy. Married woman with children were the source of power and authority in the domus and in the intimate private matters of peoples lives; they were the hidden center of the domus-centered society, the fountainhead of the blood which bound together members of the domus and connected it to the rest of the community.”
Mothers are the gatekeepers to an Italian home. They are in charge of everyone’s well being and the domus. Only in rare circumstances do Italian mothers have little power over family life. To exercise this power over the family, the mothers had to rely on the male family to carry out orders. Additionally, the women controlled the public images of their families dictating what their children wore and whom they spent their time with. Naturally problems are going to arise when one person asserts control over everyone’s family life. During “temporary breakdown[s] of family life in times of sickness and unemployment,” the woman had to take on a higher role as a protector. The ...
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...rchal society. Without the influence over her household, a culturally entrapped woman has no power in the outside world. “Her power faded as her community disappeared; as the Italians left Harlem and as later generations believed they were moving out into the mainstream of American economic and social life, the intimate connection between la Madonna and the place, a place made sacred by her presence, was snapped.” With disappearance of her power, the domus disappears.
Works Cited
Ladurie, Emmanuel LeRoy. Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), pp. 352-53
Orsi, Robert A. The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1880-1950. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2010. Print. pp. 131
Orsi, Robert A. pp. 206
Orsi, Robert A. pp. 209
Orsi, Robert A. pp. 215
Orsi, Robert A. pp. 132
Orsi, Robert A. pp. 72
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Warren, Nagucyalti. "Black Girls and Native Sons: Female Images in Selected Works by Richard Wright." Richard Wright - Myths and Realities. Ed. C. James Trotman. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1988.
Kellner, Bruce, ed. The Harlem Renaissance: A Historical Dictionary for the Era. Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1984
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