“I didn’t know who Airota the father was, but certainly my classmates became respectful again: I was invited to parties or dinner. At a certain point I even had the suspicion that they talked to me because I brought Pietro out with me, since he generally kept to himself, absorbed in his work” (Ferrante 407).

Lenuccia at this point starts talking about her new “friend”, Pietro Airota, who is also a student at the Normale. Airota is a very intelligent young man that knows how to behave around others and is also fond of Elena. When Elena first goes to university her classmates make fun of the way she dresses up and joke about her accent. When she starts dating Franco Mari (a wealthy boy) her classmates’ behavior changes and they start liking her. As soon as Franco fails an exam and is kicked out of the Normale, everybody starts harassing her once again. When they see that she is now going out with Pietro, the son of a very well-known university professor, she becomes relevant and respected again. This is proof that names play a very important role, especially in such communities. Even though Elena might not be actually liked and wanted, people around her are not showing any signs of that, just because she is dating the child of somebody that’s of great importance. Elena is clearly suspicious of their behavior; but she seems to like the attention of being around other wealthy and educated individuals.

Throughout her Neapolitan Novels, one of the many themes that Ferrante focuses on is female friendship. More specifically, the relationship between Lenu and Lila. However, we as the audience can see that their respective families and upbringings have played a vital role in the way that Lenu and Lila are characterized. Motherhood takes much more of an emphasis as we reach the end of The Story of A New Name. It started with Lila’s transition following her marriage and Lenu attempting to find her own path by her individual experience(s). In her Essay Dixit Mater, Van Ness references the symbolic significance of Lila and Lenu’s dolls. As stated in the text, Lenu’s doll is described as beautiful while Lenu’s is ugly. Van Ness then goes on to state that the girls in their playing, have the dolls mimic their lives which consists of an unhappiness that exists not only within themselves but their mothers as well. To me, this is indicative of generational maternal relationships that exists not only in the confines of this text, but in other cultural apects as well. She then points out that Lila seems determined to break away from this generational “curse” so to speak.

In the second novel of this series we are introduced to Lila as a Mother. Following the difficult delivery of her son and seemingly having a C-Section as a last resort for a safe delivery, Lila and Stefano fight in the clinic about the baby’s name. While Stefano wants to name his son Achille after his Father, Lila is adamantly against this choice; the child is ultimately named Gennaro. Her not backing down in what she wants to name her child shows that she is determined to be headstrong in her motherhood. The text states, “I don’t know why, but at certain point she began to take care of Dino, her nephew. It’s possible that it began because she needed to compare Gennaro to another child. Or maybe not, maybe she felt a qualm that she was devoting all her attention to her son and it seemed right to take care of her nephew as well. (383)”. Lila is not only dedicated to her son’s well-being, but his intelligence as well. Her motherhood also extends to her nephew which exemplifies just how nurturing she is in her maternal role.

Reading Emma Van Ness I couldn’t help thinking of Lila and Elena on the Dr. Phil show confronting their mothers on how poorly they were raised. They complain that they were raised in a poor Neapolitan rione with only a roof over their heads, food on the table and cloths on their backs. Then imagine if you will that they are raised in a time of economic boom, education possibility, free to read any books or newspapers they want, view any films and to be aspired by women to become anything they want.

Then imagine if you will their mothers Mrs. Cerullo and Mrs.Greco and how they were raised in a fascist Italian State where both fascist and catholic ideology were taught in school. Where poverty was common place and working to help the family put food on the table trumped getting an education. Where books, newspapers, films and TV was controlled by the state. Where surviving and experiencing the tragedies of war would mark them forever. Who could these women look up to for inspiration? Their vision and aspirations took them no farther than their village or their neighbors.

Van Ness’s Dixit Mater is complex and deep citing psychoanalysis and semiotician from Freud and Nietzsche. We could dwell in the weeds for ever in the complexity of motherhood. I would like to simplify it to “where the rubber meets the road” it maybe a simplistic way of looking at motherhood but I think every generation does the best they can with the knowledge that has been passed down to them.

“As women, workers, writers, and mothers, Ferrante’s characters seek fulfillment outside the role of mother as well as in it” (293). Would we agree, though, that the novels “revolve around the maternal figure” (294) in order to create “a new maternal signifier” (294)? I have thought of the friendship between Elena and Lila as being the central relationship of the novels. And now, exploring the novels as metafiction is kind of making my head explode, because I think I am mapping out a framework for the novels, which exists beyond (meta!) any plot or psychological or character or archetype concerns.

According to Van Ness, Ferrante “creates…an image of motherhood that is nuanced, complex, and alive with contradiction” (294). Perhaps as infants we experienced the undifferentiated Mother and always want to go back there. But women, who must face the choice of becoming mothers or not, know that, though they may be their child’s mother, they are Subject, not Other (see de Beauvoir). An individual woman lives and breathes as a mother, and an individual mother lives and breathes as a woman: she is an actual individual, not the archetype that Van Ness describes. I think this struggle on Elena and Lila’s part to be subject, not object, is what Ferrante is taking on regarding “the maternal figure” (294). Van Ness writes that the novels go against the suffering, undifferentiated Mother (294): “Ferrante…’births’ her novels as maternal ‘word flesh,'” defying the stereotype of the mother who exists only for her child (295).

The pairing of the “maternal sublime” with the “artistic sublime” (295-6) makes me think of Elena’s writing of her short novel. Afterward, she must make corrections and edits and she even submits to her boyfriend’s judgment (Pietro is going to be a problem – he doesn’t wholly accept who Elena is) that she should tone down the sex scene, but the writing of the novel is one continuous experience, a kind of trance in which she is suspended for a number of days. How often is writing actually like this?

Finally, Van Ness claims Elena is a “maternal figure” (295) because she births a books and later she’ll have a child. She has to leave her dialect, the neighborhood, her family, Naples, and Lila to become a “speaking mother” (296). She has to leave the undifferentiated Mother behind (when she throws Lila’s doll into the cellar, right after Lila threw her doll [297-8]). Thus women “birth” works of art, but men do not. We can’t get away from our biology or the archetype.

Why is this kind of story – grappling with the Mother figure, having a friendship with another girl that towers over every other subsequent relationship – still so…unusual in western literature. So noteworthy. Women play numberless roles in the domestic sphere and in public life, doing vast – vast! – amounts of unpaid work, yet these roles and this labor is unremarked upon, unappreciated, invisible. Elena will finally be recognized, differentiated from her own mother, from the rione, from her “mother tongue” (299), i.e., her dialect.