Category Archives: Posts

Opposites Attract

One of the passages that struck me while reading was the scene at the waiting area at the gynecologist’s office. “We liked sitting next to each other, I fair, she dark, I calm, she anxious, I likable, she malicious, the two of us opposite and united” (157).

I still can’t process the fact that Elena calls Lila “malicious”, after everything she’s done to help her and her daughters. It seems to me that Lenu has created this image of herself that she basically thinks she’s liked by everybody and she is so perfectly perfect and Lila is just a parasite, a parasite that is ruining her life, but she still wants her in it. It also makes no sense that Lenu refers to Lila as “anxious”, since she is always the one questioning her life choices and what she is going to do next with her children, her job, her life with Nino. It seems to me that Lila has everything under control- she’s expecting Enzo’s kid, she has a business with him, the people in the neighborhood like her, and the Solaras fear her. Lila’s only “problem”, in this case, would be Gennaro, who I assume doesn’t approve of her pregnancy. Anyhow, Lila has proved that she is a much more capable person than Lenu and even Lenu’s mother believes that Lila is a better person than her own daughter. Lenu, on the other hand, envies Lila’s life and accomplishments that she can’t say one good thing about her “friend”.

Shake, rattle and roll.

It takes a literal earth shaking for Lila to come out of the protective shell she has created for her own personal protection. The earthquake “entered into our bones” explains Elena and goes on to tell how not only the real world but how in their internal world everything that is familiar and stabile no longer exist. There is nothing and no one to help during an earthquake. One can’t intellectualize, fantasize, desire, dream, fight, resist, outsmart a earthquake. There you are and there you will stay until mother nature decides to let it stop. It is an event that Lila has no control over, none, and it’s that lack of control that makes her break down to tell her truth. When an earthquake ends it leaves behind a euphoric feeling. Going from an extreme emotional fear of death and dying to survival will generate endorphins perhaps like a truth serum. It took this event for Lila to finally confess to Elena all the reasons of her behavior and they flood out of her uncensored even if she herself can’t understand them all. It’s not that Lila is a stranger to terror she says “the terror remains, it’s always between the normal thing and the other”. (pg 178) But there has always been ways for her to navigate, control and manipulate her terror, with an earthquake, it’s no use.

I tend to feel that without this event Lila would never have come clean to Elena. She would have remained as she is because she is too smart to do otherwise and that’s why Ferrante has to literally shake her up. On a personal note, I’ve experienced every major earthquake when living in San Francisco and L.A and I can attest that after such events there is a euphoric feeling, happy to be alive, to have friends and family. It does, if only temporarily, expose our true nature and what is important.

 

 

Reminders

Dear All

Please bring to class a copy of Lucamante’s essay.

I will be at Hunter tomorrow from 12.30-2.30 if you need to discuss any aspect of your final paper or of the class in general (room 1324HW).

See you soon!

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.

Lila’s Clone

We spoke in class about the complicated, yet unique relationship between Lenu and Lila, which is a form of give and take; Lenu is able to improve because of Lila and vice versa. It is possible that over the course of their friendship Lila’s influence managed to subvert Lenu’s identity. It is by this notion that I am beginning to notice that Lenu is becoming Lila, for she is exhibiting familiar acts that we have seen from Lila.

In the third volume, Lila leaves her son to Elena so she can pursue her career. We see this again in the fourth volume, but this time from Lenu, in which she leaves her children in the care of Adelle so she can pursue her needs (Ferrante 37),both of which expressed the same level of selfishness to put their needs above everyone else. In addition, Lenu puts Pietro and her children in an uncomfortable position when she leaves them (30). This is familiar, for Lila puts Lenu in the same uncomfortable position in the second volume when she leaves her to be the “lookout” while she is with Nino. Finally, Lenu thinks blindly about her needs, in which she foolishly claims her devotion towards Nino (35). Furthermore, Lenu is indifferent to the consequences, for she believes everything will work out in the end. Again, we have seen this before in the second volume when Lila begins her affair with Nino, despite Lenu ‘s many warnings. There Lila truly believes that no one will find out about her affair, for she believes that situations eventually works itself out.

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.

Love Sucks

Elena can’t or will not ignore all signs that the relationship with Nino is not a healthy one. It reminds me of the line in film The Leopoard spoken by Tancredi “For things to remain the same, things will have to change.” Which for an Italian prince in 1860 Sicily met a modified monachy was better than a republic. For Elena a life with Nino is better than a life with out him. She has dreamt about him since she was a child and now that she has him she will not let go. So who is doing the changing in this relationship? In each step of their relationship it is Elena. She changes her marriage, she changes her relations with her mother, her mother in law, with Lila, she changes locations where to live, she changes her role as a mother to her children by letting her mother in law take care of them, she even goes as far as to accept Nino as her lover even though he’s a notorious liar with a 8 month pregnant wife. But as an intelligent woman she is ready to ignore everything and she justifies it to herself when she says about their relationship “everything is changing, we are inventing new forms of living together’ (pg. 114) Just so that “things remain the same”. If I was a fortune teller I would bet that Elena is due for more emotional pain.

Elena Lets Go

Lila has the capacity to code-switch as much as Elena, but they do so for vastly different reasons. In her daily life Lila has no need for Italian; her vernacular is dialect, and only in polite company does she use standard Italian to show she has a grasp of an elevated subject, using elevated language. But she doesn’t use it fluidly – her Italian can be somewhat fusty or too literary.

Elena, on the other hand, by the time she is thirty or so, resorts to dialect when she is under duress or attack. She’s lived among the intellectual class since Pisa, where she diligently applied herself to blending in. Yet there she first discovers the power of her dialect. When a female acquaintance at the Scuola Normale accuses her of stealing, she slaps and insults her in dialect, and the girl backs down.

Elena refers to other occasions in her marriage when she insults Pietro, but she uses reported speech and does not specify that she has mixed dialect words in with Italian (Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, chapter 121). Also, when Lila and Elena talk on the phone, Elena never says if they switch back and forth or not.

Elena telephones Nino and speaks to Eleonora (Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, chapter 118), who cries that she will smash her face if she calls again. In her mental diatribe against Eleonora, Elena finds herself using insults in dialect (chapter 119). She is beside herself, ready to do worse damage than what Eleonora threatened. She refers to “another” self “buried under a crust of meekness” who mixes dialect and Italian.

I can’t help but think of the screaming fights of the mothers in the street that she witnessed as a girl. Her carefully built, assiduous habits of study, her discipline, her pitiless self-assimilation, splinter under the force of the violence of desire and rebellion that simmered and were repressed for so long.

Back to the future

In the Elena Ferrante interview by Nicola Lagiola Ferrante speaks of the “those freeing themselves of gravitational pull of their birthplace”. This is consistent theme in her Neapolitan novels. It’s the constant pull and push that Elena feels from her birthplace. We see her trying to liberate herself from her native language, break though cultural and social barriers from her past. But can it ever be completely done? It would be like erasing a paper written in pencil, you may remove the lead but the impression on the paper will last forever. I believe the reason Elena constantly refer back to Naples is because regardless of it’s violence, crime, regardless of the terrible events that happened to her in her youth, it is still her safe space. When ever she feels out of sorts she quickly reverts to what is visceral. “And I realized that my voice was taking on the tones of the dialect, out of nervousness, that the words were coming to me in Neapolitan of the neighborhood, that the neighborhood-from the stradone and the tunnel-was imposing its language on me, it’s mode of acting and reacting, its figures, those which in Florence seemed faded images and here were flesh and blood(twlatws pg 326)”.  The past follows us through our lifetime, sometimes the good times maybe remembered as the bad times and sometimes the bad times can be interpreted as the good “The past, in its indeterminacy presents itself either through the filter of nostalgia or the filter of preliminary impressions (Ferrante). Here in America nostalgia is a big business. All around the country we have high school reunions. The four years in high school are for many the worst times in their lives, yet we celebrate and many go to them every 10 years or so, so they can see who got fat, old or ugly. Are we reliving a miserable past or has the past been filtered and become good with time? Like a high school reunion Elena will continue to return to Naples because she can’t help it.

The Weight Of The Other

According to Ferrante in a interview titled In Spite of Everything, the individual represents as a collection of ideas (people, ideas, and actions) that are born or transformed by others; good development (364).In the third volume, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Ferrante,  Lila challenges Ferrante’s idea about the subject of others in relation to one’s transformation. She is unable to recognize the weight of the “others”, putting a value or evoking change in her transformation. For example, Lila tries to defend her progress Professor Galiani (143). Admittedly, she states that she doesn’t have “the ability”, in addition she claims that the act of studying makes a person wicked. This excuse is suppose to satisfy Professor Galiani’s inquiry, but she immediately counterpoints Lila’s assumption by mentioning Elena’s academic studies, and her missing wickedness. This prompts Lila to be indifferent, and tries to occupy her thoughts about the significance of Professor Galiani’s response by tending to her child. In addition, Lila disregards Elena’s announcement about her pregnancy. Lila informs her to be caution for a change like that brings disaster to one’s life (233). Lila goes into detail about her previous pregnancies and the burden it caused her. Like a warning, she informs Elena to expect these troubles. Here, Lila once again fails to see the positive aspects of expecting a child. These examples illustrates the challenge in Ferrante’s idea about the individual.