Author Archives: Shoshana mintz

Coveting Mothers

Elena’s parenting has taken many turns throughout her time as a mother. At first she had much trouble connecting to the baby Dede and held resentment towards her for that. Then Elena started devoting all her time to being a mother to Dede and Elsa during their formative years, until Nino came into the picture. Elena started ignoring her children in favor of her love for Nino. She involves her daughters directly in the divorce with Pietro, which must have a lasting impact on them. I think about how much Pietro was affected by that one time he saw his mother with another man; it still had lasting effects until he was an adult. Dede and Elsa have been subjected to much worse, so I can only imagine how it will affect them as adults. Elena even leaves her children with her in-laws for almost a two year period. Dede and Elsa are constantly changing cities and schools and that must be hard on them. It seems extremely unmotherly to me to leave one’s children for that amount of time when they are growing up.

 What interests me is the phenomenon of children wanting others as their parents. I remember growing up that my best friend’s mom always made delicious dinner that would be on the table by 6p.m. every night, while my own mother was usually at work until 8p.m. most nights of the week. I used to tell my mother that I wished my best friend’s parents were my parents because they took better care of their children. I am sure that it must have been heartbreaking for my mother to hear that, just as it is heartbreaking for Elena.

When Elena goes to America with Nino she leaves the kids behind with Lila. After they return home they say to Elena, “Mamma, why don’t we go see Aunt Lina, why don’t you let us sleep at her house more, don’t you have to go away anymore?” (135). Elena refers to this as her daughter’s “idealization of Lila” and it “hurts” Elena (135). This encounter made me look both at Elena’s life and my own life and wonder what it is that makes children resentful of their own parents and attached to the parents of others. I tried to find a scholarly article on this subject but had trouble coming across anything of substance, so I will give my own interpretation. I think that one’s own parents are always the ones that have to make the rules and punish their children, while other parents will seemingly treat their own children like angels. It is easy to idealize the treatment of another child by their parents when you don’t live there and don’t see their own children being punished as well. I believe this is especially true for Dede and Elsa who must hold even more resentment towards their mother because she has left them before for long periods of time.

Meta-Post

The common themes in this week’s posts were about Elena’s deepening crisis. It seems safe to say that no one is on Elena’s side anymore. Elena is making one bad decision after another and can’t seem to take responsibility for her actions.

Ariana talks about Elena not taking responsibility for her actions and constantly blaming Lila for everything wrong in her life. Paul’s thoughts are similar to Ariana’s. Paul says that Elena is in a toxic relationship but she is unwilling to admit it to herself. She is hiding behind the idea of “exciting” change which she convinces herself is part of being an intellectual. Paul remarks that it is easy for Elena to be blinded by love because she has been in love with Nino ever since she was a child. Irini talks about Elena’s struggle between being a mother, feminist lecturer, and a lover. Kelsey also refers to Elena’s struggle between being a mother and being a writer. And how at different times in the book each one takes more importance. Jackie writes about the impact that men have had on Elena’s education. And although her role model used to he Lila, it is not men like Pietro, Franco, and Nino.

Julie brings up a new subject about code-switching in the novel between dialect and proper Italian. Julie mentions how Elena’s primary dialect is proper Italian while Lila chooses to use dialect. But each will code-switch in different scenarios. Elena when she is mad will speak in Dialect; Lila when she wants to prove her intelligence will speak in proper Italian. Julie ends by discussing times where the characters and code-switched mid conversation, like when Elena turns to Dialect on the phone with Elianora.

Some thoughts of my own. In regards to Jackie, I mentioned in class about how Elena is finally forming her own ideas about feminism, but in this portion of the novel she consistently refers to the book as something that she wrote for Nino. I question what that feminism can mean if it is expressed in writing for a man. 

I agree with Paul; it is obvious to everyone around Elena that she has always loved Nino. Antonio tells Elena that it was unfair of her to tell him that she did not like Nino. Elena made Antonio feel like he was crazy, but Elena was just lying to him. Also Elena’s mother-in-law told her that she should not have married Pietro if she loved someone else [Nino]. Elena tries to tell her it’s not true, but they both know it is.

I am excited for the continued class discussion on all these wonderful topics and more.

Nino the Player

Unfortunately I was unable to attend the lecture by Professor Lombardi on Thursday night due to a medical procedure. Instead, I will write on another topic that has fascinated me, Nino Sarratore. Nino plays a significant role throughout the Neapolitan novels. Just when the reader thinks they have seen the last of him, Nino reappears. The second and third books both end on cliffhangers involving Nino. In The Story of a New Name the book ends with Elena seeing Nino at a reading of her book. Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay ends with Elena and Nino on a plane together after Elena leaves her husband. Why is Nino given such importance? It seems to me that Elena finally realizes that Nino was just a “player” when she learns of the child he fathered with Silvia. Elena notes, “Nino was not fleeing his father out of fear of becoming like him: Nino already was his father and didn’t want to admit it” (88). Nino’s father is the gross, forty year old man that Elena lost her virginity to when she was a teenager. Nino’s father cheats on his wife constantly and does not care about the women he sleeps with. It is not a compliment to say that Nino is like his father. I was happy when Elena finally made this realization because I had been building a steady hatred for Nino and wanted Elena to hate him as well. Elena’s feelings change at the end of the book when she starts an affair with Nino. In the end, though, after a lifetime of Elena loving him, Nino admits his love for Elena and they start sleeping together.

There are many reasons that Elena could have started this affair with Nino, but my biggest question is whether this affair is really about Elena, or if it is secretly about Lila. Before the affair starts, but after Nino had become present in Elena’s life again, Nino says to Elena, “What I had seen in you, I then stupidly seemed to find in her [Lila]” (371). In essence Lila has become this omnipresent figure lurking above their relationship. Is Elena with Nino because she really loves him? Is it because Pietro does not pay enough attention to Elena and Nino does? Maybe it’s because Elena is finally fulfilling her childhood dream of being with Nino. I think it is much deeper than that. I think being with Nino is just part of Elena’s competition with Lila. Lila may have won Nino in the past, but now Elena has him. Especially when you look at the above quote, it seems that Lila is playing a much bigger role in the relationship between Nino and Elena than Elena even realizes. I’d be interested to hear what others think on this topic.

Historical Background of The Neapolitan Novels

By the third book of The Neapolitan Novels, there is a more political tone than ever before. Although we have seen Elena engage briefly with politics in books one and two, it is never her own opinion, and she tends to engage with political discourse at the hands of the men she likes. In Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay our protagonists are older, and their involvement in politics, especially in the Communist party, has intensified. Elena spends a large part of the beginning of Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay recounting Lila’s story of post-divorce life. In that story comes all the new details of politics that Lila is involved in. While reading this section I had to do some background research because I did not know about the politics of Italy during the 1960s and 1970s when the story is taking place. Italy was under a Fascist regime between the years of 1922-1943. The story of Lila and Elena starts in 1944, right after the fall of Mussolini. I do not think it is a coincidence that the story starts there. Elena and Lila were born in a time of change. Gian Mario Cazzaniga says in an interview titled “The Fate of the Party,” that those years after World War II were characterized by “a rapid process of industrialization; the development of mass consumption; a violent urbanization process with massive internal migration” (Gasperin). These social changes are evident in Lila and Elena’s formative years: the push for more education that their parents never received, factories being started for the mass production of shoes and other items, and the start of mass consumption of items like televisions and cars. This is when the Italian Communist Party (PCI) started getting big. In 1947 the PCI had 2.3 million votes, and by 1970, when our new book is taking place, the PCI had nearly a third of the Italian vote (Gasperin). It is no wonder that the book takes such a political turn. It would be hard to write about life in Italy without mentioning the ever-present politics. Now Lila is heavily involved in politics herself, even if she doesn’t want to be. On page 121-122, Lila explains her working conditions at the sausage factory at a Communist meeting. Lila may not realize it at the time, although most of the people around her do, that she is the embodiment of what it means to work in terrible conditions, everything the Communist party is looking to fix. This shows that even people who don’t want to have anything to do with politics do not really have a choice. What is going on in the political world around them is sucking them in, whether they like it or not. I feel Ferrante uses the characters of Elena and Lila to explain the political situation happening in Italy post-war. And Ferrante bring in politics in a way that fits directly into the narrative and is engaging to the reader, not boring. But maybe I could have used a little more background information from Ferrante.

Source:

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/01/italian-communist-party-togliatti-berlinguer-hot-autumn-students

Continuing the Narrative of Time

The new section for this week’s reading starts, like the beginning of the book, with a reflection from the future about the past. Elena notes, “How much that evening had hurt her I learned later from her notebooks. She admitted that she had asked to go with me…” (160-161). And Elena continues on about all the things that Lila later admitted in her journals about the night of the dinner party. But in the present Elena describes Lila as “mean” and “treacherous” (161). Elena does not often talk from the future, so the choice to use future knowledge here must be important. Elena wants to show sympathy for Lila. At the time the way Lila acts towards Elena is horrendous and we might not understand why, so we cannot empathize with her. Once we know how Lila felt thanks to the future perspective, specifically, how upset she was at the dinner party, we are able to have more sympathy for her. Elena also chooses to add the future knowledge before even telling the readers what Lila did. These small details show how much love Elena has for Lila even when they are old. Elena works hard to be gracious to Lila and show a kind image of her in her story, but only once she has the perspective of time and age. Sometimes anger is a thing of the present, and kindness is only something that can come with time.

The Narrative Structure of Time


The Story of a New Name, the second of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels, starts its narrative in 1966 with Elena receiving a box of journals from Lila. Lila asks Elena to swear not to read the journals, but of course Elena reads them as soon as she gets a chance. The journals start in childhood so while Elena is reviewing them, she is also giving the reader a small recap as to what happened in the first book of the series, My Brilliant Friend. This narrative device works to the reader’s advantage because it jogs their memory if they have forgotten what happened in the first book. The journals are also a gateway into Lila’s mind. The reader now knows that when Elena is writing this story in future, she actually has a clear idea of what was going on in Lila’s mind as well. It helps fill in narrative gaps and shows the reader Lila’s feelings.

This start also pulls us back into the turbulent relationship between Elena and Lila. After Lila gives her the journals, Elena says, “At that time our relationship was terrible, but it seemed that only I considered it that way” (15). There is a contrast between the way Elena sees the relationship and the way Lila sees the relationship. This has been constant throughout the first book, even though the reader might not have known it, with Elena being the dominant point of view character. Now that we know what Lila is thinking through the introduction of her journals, I wonder if her view of the relationship will become more prevalent or if we still only know what Elena knows. The narrative device of the journal reflects the complex relationship between Elena and Lila. It shows that you can have a tight knit relationship and still not really know what’s going on in the other’s mind.

Benjamin’s Image of Naples

In “Naples,” Walter Benjamin focuses a lot on the poverty of Naples. He makes note that even though many households in Naples are very poor, they still work to make themselves seem more affluent. Benjamin says, “Even the poorest . . . [household] is as full of wax candles, biscuit saints, sheaves of photos on the wall, and iron bedsteads, as the street is of carts, people, and lights” (Benjamin 171). This quote shows that even the very poor work hard to decorate nicely and show off in any way they can.

This is very similar to the Naples shown in My Brilliant Friend. Lila and Elena have both grown up in a poor neighborhood, but now Lila finds herself engaged to a rich man, and she is no longer poor like her family. Lila is planning an extravagant wedding and inviting everyone in the neighborhood. It is said that that “In the houses of the neighborhood the mothers, the grandmothers had been working for months to make dresses, to get hats and purses, to shop for a wedding present, I don’t know, a set of glasses, of plates, of silverware” (Ferrante 303). The women of their neighborhood are spending all their time and the little money they have left in order to attend Lila’s wedding looking nice and bearing lavish gifts. Even Antonio spends money he does not have to buy a suit in order to look nice as Elena’s date to the wedding. The wedding is an opportunity for communal theater where, as Benjamin says, social life and stage performance mirror one another (168). This is especially relevant when Lila starts noticing things going awry at the wedding. The poorer guests do not get the same quality food or the same service as the richer guests (323-324). The poor who had spent all their money to attend this wedding were being treated as lesser. We can read Ferrante’s novels through the lens of Benjamin’s essay because it explains the view of the poor in Naples. The way the poor families of Naples take pride in what little they have and always try to seem put together.

Lila becomes a “woman”

In my previous post I examined the complicated relationship between Elena and Lila through the lens of Elena’s first menstruation. Elena used her menstruation as a reason to put Lila down in her own mind. In this week’s reading Lila is the one to get her period. On page 133 Elena is bragging about how she will go to high school, and presumably Lila feels left out, so she tells Elena that she got her period. Elena is completely obsessing over the fact that Lila got her period and what that would mean to the balance of power in their friendship. Elena thinks, “The fact that I was going to high school quickly lost it’s aura” (133). The way Elena puts herself down when it comes to Lila is almost scary, as if Elena’s personality is connected to Lila’s. Elena starts to notice Lila’s physical appearance, describing her the same way she did earlier when she had her period and Lila did not (134). But this time Elena notices that Lila has grown. It is hard to tell if Lila has actually grown because Elena uses words such as “she [Lila] seemed taller.” The physical shape of Lila seems to change based on Elena’s view of her. By using the word “seem” it makes the comment a subjective one. The “seemed” puts the reader in Elena’s head. We only see Lila through Elena. It is not an objective view of Lila, but rather a subjective view. Whether Lila has actually grown is another issue entirely. 

Again I am fascinated by how the story is framed because we are hearing it from Elena. And the reader is in her head as an adolescent, not an adult. Because of that Ferrante is able to place the reader inside the thoughts of an obsessive teenager. As I discussed the book with another student in class, she mentioned that she thought this book examined young female friendship in a way that she had not read before. I agree with this statement. During years of adolescence young girls, from my own experience, are confronted with all these new emotions that they cannot navigate. Ferrante is able to take us into that complicated mind wonderfully. Ferrante is less focused on the reality of situations and more focused on how young girls interpret these situations. This is why the reader is given is conflicting views between what is reality in the novel and what is just in Elena’s head.

Womanhood

“Lila listened without saying anything, or almost anything. We asked if she had blood like us and saw her hesitate, then reluctantly answer no. Suddenly she seemed small, smaller than I had ever seen her. She was three or four inches shorter, all skin and bones, very pale in spite of the days spent outside. And she had failed. And she didn’t know what the blood was. And no boy had ever made a declaration to her.” (94)

In the above passage Elena is starting to view Lila in a different light. The girls have drifted apart in the past year and neither has done well in school – Lila failed and Elena barely passed. Elena has also been jealous of the friendship between Lila and Carmela. Now that Elena has gotten her period, she has something to bond with Carmela over that Lila is not a part of. Elena notices that Lila is very small physically, and this gives Elena the idea that she is also better.

    Bringing up her small physical stature, her lack of maturity when it came to boys, menstruation, and her failure from school invoke a sense of pity for Lila. I believe that there is a pettiness underlying Elena’s description. When she says that Lila, “Suddenly . . . seemed small, smaller than I had ever seen her,” Elena reveals not Lila’s actual size (Lila is a growing girl, she has to be taller or bigger than she was before) but how she sees Lila in comparison to herself. The sense image of small size summon feelings of pity. What Elena says next is mean. Bringing up that Lila failed school when Elena barely passed is cruel. To judge her based on her development in puberty, which Lila cannot control is cruel. To say that Lila was never asked out is just to show Elena’s dominance. Although Elena is thinking these mean thoughts, she is not saying them outloud. The reader, who is inside Elena’s head, witnesses the pettiness and jealousy going on that makes this an emotionally charged paragraph. But Lila is not witnessing that same pettiness. There is a contrast here between the feelings of the reader and Lila’s feelings. She may not be having the same emotionally charged thoughts of Elena. We do not know what Lila is thinking. It is interesting to note that because we are feeling what Elena is feeling, we are not necessarily having the same reaction as Lila, which is evident is this paragraph.