Che Bella Figura!: The Power of Performance in an Italian Ladies' Club in Chicago (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Che Bella Figura!: The Power of Performance in an Italian Ladies' Club in Chicago Giovanna P. Del Negro Che Bella Figura!: The Power of Performance in an Italian Ladies' Club in Chicago. By Gloria Nardini. (New York: State University of New York Press, 1999. Pp. x + 132, preface, diagrams, transcript, appendix, notes, bibliography, subject index.) In Che Bella Figura!: The Power of Performance in an Italian Ladies' Club in Chicago, Gloria Nardini explores how the women of the Collandia Club, an Italian American ethnic organization in Chicago, deftly use the notion of bella figura to command respect and achieve a level of power in a male-dominated social world. A rich and complex metaphor that shares historical affinities with the Renaissance notions of sprezzatura (grace or poise) and civilità (civility), the concept of bella figura (literally, "beautiful face") pervades almost all aspects of Italian culture and provides a crucial context for understanding the everyday interactions that take place at the club. To put on a good show or make a good impression (fare bella figura) involves a complex set of beliefs for knowing how to act and behave appropriately. For example, to remember the birthday of a club member during the Collandia's monthly cenettas (small suppers) is to make a bella figura—to display the tenets of good taste and proper manners; to forget to formally acknowledge the loss of a club member's spouse is to make a brutta figura (literally, "ugly face"), or commit a social gaffe. As Nardini's book reveals, the women of the Collandia Club view bella figura as more than a social nicety; it is a cultural resource useful in accomplishing social business and negotiating concessions in a patriarchal society. One of the major strengths of Nardini's study is that it reveals how bella figura is not only a standard of behavior, but a concept that is performed; that is, enacted for others in a display of expressive competence. Here, bella figura acts as an "interpretative frame within which the messages that are communicated can be understood" (Bauman in Nardini p. 30), and ignorance of how this frame operates can result in serious misunderstandings. Drawing on the work of Erving Goffman, Richard Bauman, and Dell Hymes, Nardini shows how performance serves rhetorical and political functions, as well as aesthetic ones. The women Nardini worked with are technically members of an auxiliary to the Collandia Club and, according to the group's by-laws, this "Ladies' Club" is wholly answerable to the larger organization. Historically, the superordinate group has been male dominated, and the club's by-laws explicitly state that the Ladies' Club exists to assist the men of the association. With these rules firmly in place, the Ladies' Club donates almost all the money that they collect from their lavish and profitable fundraisers to pay for the upkeep of the Collandia headquarters. However, the women's lack of financial autonomy does not prevent them from exerting influence over the larger group. Throughout her book, Nardini offers numerous first-hand accounts of Collandia "Ladies" who successfully used their power of bella figura to outwit a club president or [End Page 500] indirectly redefine group regulations for their own ends. The first part of Che Bella Figura! addresses issues of methodological concern and provides a stimulating look at how the ideas of bella and brutta figura have played themselves out in different periods of Italian history. The second part of Nardini's study firmly situates her work within the broader theoretical literatures of the ethnography of communication and women's language studies, and explores the issues of gender and power as well as the relationship between language and culture. In the final chapter, Nardini offers an excellent linguistic analysis of a conversation between the treasurer of the Collandia Ladies' Club and the president of the Men's Club. This detailed transcript lays bare the elaborate ways in which the female members of this speech community manipulate formal dimensions of language (intonation, repetition, and prosody) in order to achieve social power. Attending to the often unrecognized work of women, Nardini's study is a corrective to scholarship that has centered itself exclusively...