For this post I want to focus on Ferrante’s women, and in particular, Lenù and Lila. When they are young Lenù and Lila experience similar lives because they live in the same impoverished neighborhood in Naples. But as they grow older, Lenù and Lila pursue increasingly different lives. Lenù continues her studies while Lila adjusts to her new life as Mrs. Carracci. This difference is evident in this description of Lenù and Lila as they walk together in the neighborhood:
“Walking next to her I felt embarrassment and also a
sense of danger. It seemed to me that she was risking not only gossip but
ridicule, and that both reflected on me a sort of colorless but loyal puppy who
served as her escort. Everything about her—the hair, the earrings, the
close-fitting blouse, the tight skirt, the way she walked—was unsuitable for
the gray streets of the neighborhood” (Ferrante, 15, p.73).
In this section Lenù describes an important contrast. The contrast between herself and Lila in which she herself is “colorless” while Lila is “unsuitable for the gray streets of the neighborhood.” One could only conclude that Lenù seems to blend in with the gray neighborhood and Lila seems to stick out. Lenù continues to dress the part of the neighborhood in which she still resides while Lila, having become a Carracci, dresses in a wealthy manner. This is an important contrast to take note of because it really displays the dramatic split in the lives of these two friends. Lenù remains tied to the neighborhood and Lila has married her way out of it in a sense. It’s interesting to note how two girls growing up in the same neighborhood become so very different in the kind of lives they lead in the future. I think it’s pretty impressive how Ferrante is able to truly capture the nature of their two very different lives yet still make the interactions between the two realistic.
Lila Cerullo and Stefano Carracci from the T.V. Series My Brilliant Friend
Like Lila’s episodes of ‘dissolving margins’, these crucial moments merge into one another from the first novel to the next. Primarily, this occurs when Lila realizes her brother, Rino, is expressing his true colors or rather, the darker, more violent side of him during the fateful night of New Years Eve. She begins to feel nausea, terror and blurriness all at once, unable to comprehend what had possessed her brother and the newfound bestiality of his mannerisms.
Unfortunately for Lila, a similar sentiment returns to her heart after her marriage to Stefano. First of all, it is important to recall the reasons that lead her to marry Stefano in the first place. Similar to Rino, she had noticed generosity, kindness and ambition. She had fallen in love, believing the spectacle that Stefano had put on for the entire community, including her own family. Despite the neighborhood conflicts, Stefano treats everyone around him with courtesy and benevolence, determined to initiate the waves of change and rid of the tense relations of their home unlike the bitter past generations. She becomes filled with admiration and expresses appreciation for the initiative he takes in pushing her father’s shoe business to the top.
However, on her honeymoon night, as she dines with Stefano in an elegant restaurant, the reality of the situation she had placed herself in becomes clear as day, after a series of unfortunate events: “He was a being, now, with whom she felt she could share nothing and yet there he was…He had little or nothing to do with the seller of cured meats who had attracted her, with the ambitious, self-confident, but well-mannered youth…something in and around him had broken,” (Ferrante 37). Similar to the atrocious behavior of Rino on New Years Eve, Lila’s eyes are now able to vividly see the man she has married. He has finally secured his grasp on her and the inner horrifyingly fleshy and selfish man is now in the spotlight. All the positive traits that have previously made up his being have faded and disappeared into nothing. Whatever element has held him together in one piece during his courting period of Lila is now completely and utterly ‘broken’. The margins have given way and the greed and horror that had been hidden in his heart and soul and had been inherited from the feared Don Achille is slowly beginning to pour out.
In analogous terms, prior to the wedding, Lila had seen a figure that had been colored within the lines with gentleness, care and without any errors whatsoever. Now that she has bound herself to him both lawfully and morally, his ‘human’ form is beginning to morph and the carefully chosen theatrical colors are starting to melt away into reality.
This moment of a rude awakening is a sickening reflection of the importance of the physical elements of Lila’s and Elena’s poverty stricken neighborhood as well as the outward appearances of Naples’s women. The confusing maze like trait of their home is an abyss for women who are constantly under the watch and care of their fathers, brothers and husbands. Their beauty or lack thereof are constantly judged and ridiculed, being deemed as prizes for the most ‘manly’ of men. Under such standards, Stefano is now perceived as a real man because he has successfully obtained the most prized and envied female of all under his control. This creates both physical and mental constraints on Lila, further entrapping her into the violence and despair of her neighborhood, unable to find her way out of the maze of wedding vows and empty promises made in her own personal coloring book.
In the very first chapter of The Story of a New Name, Elena skips ahead a few years before returning to the chronological order. In the leap forward in time, Elena is describing a time when she is distanced from the neighbourhood and her relationship with Lila she sees as being “terrible”, but polite (page 15, The Story of a New Name). Lila has given Lenù journals that she has written about her life the past few years, and the neighbourhood. Another major time the chronology has been disrupted is in the first novel when Elena writes of Lila telling her about the dissolving borders the first time it happened on new years eve 1958, which she does not tell Lenù about until 1980.
Both times, Elena is recounting finding out some inner secrets and confidence of Lila’s. Except for these breaks in chronology, the novels are told exclusively from from Lenù perspective at the time, never revealing future events, so these breaks are very significant. Yet they are never fast forwards to Lenù’s life, they are always about Lila. They reveal very little about the situation or life Lenù is living in that time, sticking with the method throughout the books of only describing her feelings at that certain time, and never disclosing what she knows will happen in the future until it actually does happen.
While reading the second book “The Story of a New Name”, we can still find traces of time-travelling. Elena keeps going back and forth in time, trying to explain the events that happened in the past as if they were happening right now. However, I do not find this time-travel that interesting. What intrigues me, is Elena’s point of view on the male body and how she perceives male “superiority”.
Lenù refers to the penis as “gross man flesh” (27); but also as something that she desires a lot. She is going out with Antonio, Melina’s son, and they are having all these intimate moments together, where Antonio is always the one receiving pleasure; but not her. She says “I delayed pulling out his sex; I knew that as soon as I did, he would forget about me” (26) and we can tell that Antonio was really “proud” to have a penis and felt like Elena had no needs or whatsoever. On the other hand, we can see that Antonio also depends on her because at some point, while the two of them are fighting, Antonio stops fighting because he thought that Elena wouldn’t want to please him and she “would deny him those few minutes of pleasure” (29).
Simone de Beauvoir in her book “The Second Sex” sets focus on how a male, even as a little boy, is full of himself for being born with a penis because by “having an organ that can be seen and grasped, he can at least partially identify with it” (282).
De Beauvoir says that a man “learns from an early age to take blows, to scorn pain, to keep back the tears. He undertakes, he invents, he dares, he challenges his own manhood” (284), and these are some of the traits we see through Lila’s husband, Stefano Caracci. During their honeymoon, Lila expresses her disgust towards Stefano and admits that she does not want him. Stefano is furious and says to himself “Be a man Ste” (41) and ends up beating up Lila, with the excuse that “she has to learn right away that she is the female and he is the male and therefore she has to obey” (41).
Lila sees herself as one of “Caracci’s possessions” (39) and even though she would often have bruised arms, swollen eyes and purple cheeks, nobody in the stradone would say anything because they thought that “there was someone who knew how to be a man” (45).
Elena does not seem to approve of Stefano’s behavior; but does not seem to detest it, either. She explains that “we had grown up thinking that a stranger must not touch us, but that our father, our boyfriend, and our husband could hit us when they like, out of love, to educate us, to reeducate us” (52). So even if she hates to see her friend in that condition, there is nothing she can do, because this is perceived as “normal” behavior from someone with a penis towards his “lifeless possession”.
In the second novel of the series we have reached the point at which Lila has recently gotten married and is a housewife. There were 5 posts and a major common theme was the idea of Ferrante’s Women. The way in which we have seen just how complex Lila and Lenu’s relationship is displays this concept. As seen in what we have read so far, these two characters seemingly have codependent relationship which may come across as unhealthy at times. Some common points included Lila’s desire to live vicariously through Lenu while she is trapped in marriage and vice versa. The contrasts between the characters is clear throughout the texts. Lila sticks out while Lenu is more prone to blending into the background. However, despite being trapped in marriage, Lila still manages to keep the complexities that make her an individual. We see these characters craving each other’s lives and constantly displaying the layers to their relationship that evolve as they enter different stages of life and forge their own paths. Ferrante shows how seeing their parents in abusive relationships have set the standard for their relationships as well. These are all well thought out points that made me consider how the relationship between Lenu and Lila though not sexual, fulfills them in ways that they may never experience in other relationships.
“The Story of a New Name” depicts Lila and Lenu on distinct life paths. Lila is trapped in the role of a 1960s housewife, which “enclosed her in a sort of glass container” (Ferrante 57). She came to the realization that she is indeed her husband “Carracci’s possession” (Ferrante 39) and she must obey his sexual desires and submit to his will. This subordination is habitual for all of the housewives like Lila, for when she returns from her honeymoon with a black eye and bruises no one views the abuse as abnormal, especially her mother.
Despite her captivity in marriage, Lila is still a complex woman, different than the other women of the neighborhood. Lila is able to buy whatever she wants, whenever she wants, just by simply using her new last name. She is able to continue her friendship with Lenu, the one person who makes her happiest and truly completes her. Through Lenu, Lila is granted a look into life outside of the confines of her existence. Lenu is Lila’s ticket to the escape the two girls always longed for as children, therefore Lila continues to push Lenu to study and excel in her education.
Lila still knows how to manipulate others and despite not holding a physical strength, she holds a different rebellious power over men. Regardless of her role as a 1960s housewife, “Lila was Lila, not an ordinary girl of the neighborhood” (Ferrante, 52). Lila craves a life that only Lenu is able to acquire, while Lenu desperately wants to live her life through Lila, creating a balance and reciprocated need for dependency, which continues to be a staple of their friendship.
Pier Angeli with husband Vic Damone, St. Timothy’s Church, Los Angeles, 1954. Alamy stock photo.
The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” – William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun
“You must learn some of my philosophy. Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.” – Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
“I used to think this was the beginning of your story. Memory is a strange thing, it doesn’t work like I thought it did. We are so bound by time, by its order.” – Amy Adams, speaking to her daughter at her birth, in Arrival
Apparently it is not only Walter Benjamin who sees time as porous, though he speaks specifically of Naples, and he confines the porosity to days within a week, not to a mix of past and present: “…[T]he festival penetrates each and every working day….A grain of Sunday is hidden in each weekday, and how much weekday in this Sunday!” However, implied throughout “Naples” is the sense of the Neapolitans’ way of life as being from the past. Ferrante/Elena (F/E) feels the past so keenly that she says to herself, in My Brilliant Friend‘s prologue, “We’ll see who wins this time” (23), as she begins to write her and Lila’s history. On a personal note, as someone who has been around for a while, I can testify that Faulkner’s words ring true. And as for Austen…well, chin up, old girl, it ain’t happening here.
As she does in the first volume, F/E disrupts the chronology when she begins the second volume, Story of a New Name. After the prologue of My Brilliant Friend, F/E disrupts the chronology a few more times around key events. The chronology is so complex (to me) that I don’t want to attempt it in this blog. I’ll limit the discussion to a couple disruptions: immediately after the brief account of the doll-throwing incident the narration switches, to go back in time to give the reader context and come back to that day. Later, the author(s) fast forwards to the stone throwing incident and jumps back again.
The Story of a New Name, unlike My Brilliant Friend, is not divided into a prologue and several chronological books. Rather, the author(s) dives right in; the story simply resumes. The way the chapters are only signaled by modest little numbers that do not even begin on a new page adds to the feeling that we are simply and immediately being plunged into the action in New Name. And while volume I is divided into two chronological sections- “Childhood” and “Adolescence,” in New Name one chapter simply follows another.
Chapter 1 takes place in 1966 in the framework of Elena again looking back from the present, to when Lila gave her a box of notebooks. The notebooks record events from before 1966, so again the narration takes a step backward as Elena describes some of their contents. The last episode in the notebooks that Elena refers to, before she pushes the box into the river, is Marcello Solara’s showing up at the wedding wearing the shoes – which the first volume closed with.
Then chapter 2 begins, immediately jumping back to that same moment/sequence, Elena continuing the story with only the information she had that day, not adding what the notebooks tell her. We do not return to 1966; and she does not use information from the notebooks till much later in this volume — with the notable exception, in chapters 6-8, of Stefano’s brutal rape of Lila on their wedding night and their return to Naples. In chapter 9, Elena’s eyewitness account resumes.
Time is fluid, not just porous; F/E is omniscient, and that omniscience is slowly revealing itself; she knows the story so well that she can easily disrupt the chronology at key points. In Arrival, Amy Adams’ character actually begins to experience time as the visiting aliens do: not as linear, but as looping in on itself, taking you with it so that one moment is “now” and the next is “then,” and so “now” becomes the future.
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.
“ Stefano hears a voice from the past and maybe even before he was born. The order was be a man Stef, either you’ll subdue her now or you’ll never subdue her”.(Pg 41). We could assume the one of the voices he heard in the past was that of his father Achille. But Ferrante writes “even before he was born”. It’s perhaps since the beginning of time that boys are raised to have a sense of physical dominance “He is aware of his body as a means of dominating nature and as a weapon for fighting; he takes pride in his muscles as in his sex.” (Beauvoir, The Second Sex). It is with his sex that Stefano physically conquers what he believes is his right to take from Lila because of the traditional vows which were made in church and his upbringing with as man.The rione did not sympathize with Lila but with Stefano, “there was someone who knew how to be a man.” (pg 45)
Lenù though not in love with Antonio is brimming with sexual desire. She makes herself fully available to Antonio. Lenù does not care “about being pregnant without being married, about sin, about divine overseers in the cosmos above or the Holy Spirit” (pg 26). This confuses Antonio and he refuses to have intercourse with her because “I want to do it the way it’s done with a wife, not like this”. (Pg 27).
Both Antonio and Stefano are misogynistic in their behavior. One, a man who takes what he wants because he has the physical power to do so and the other who withdraws the giving of pleasure to another and only pleased with pleasure to himself.
For Lenù and Lila they too had grown up seeing their fathers beat their mothers and that was fine because their boyfriends, husbands or fathers could beat them out of love, to educate or re-educate them. (Pg 52)
This is just a reminder that you find the prompt for your Post 4 under schedule and the instructions for the meta-post under Assignments/Blogging. I would appreciate if you can leave comments to other students’ posts.
I updated the instruction for your presentations, and final papers.
Please start watching the TV series if you haven’t done it yet.
The writing tutor on Tuesday is Prof. Zamparini. It’s always a good idea to have a feedback on your writing.
See you next week. Enjoy the book!
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