Even though everybody’s posts were very interesting and nicely written, I chose to focus on the posts of 4 people.

Katherine talks about how Lenu writes about women and feminism, but when it comes down to helping and empowering other women(in this case Lila), she’s not having it. She emphasized the fact that Lenu’s “feminist role model” was Adele, her mother-in-law, who is not the best example of a feminist, either.

Irini also focused on Lenu’s feminism. She specifically mentioned Lenu’s internal conflict regarding love life, motherhood, and her job as a writer. Her quotes explain perfectly Lenu’s struggle to keep up with everything that is going on in her life, but to also follow her own advice. Even though she [Lenu] considers herself a feminist, she depends on a man, and can’t imagine her life without him.

Ariana is still talking about the females of the book, but her central theme was a little different. She talks about how Lenu is always blaming the people around her about all the bad things that are happening to her, instead of claiming responsibility for her own actions. Lila is trying to protect her friend from Nino because she’s been with him in the past and she knows how he is, but Elena just refuses to take her advice, probably because she thinks that Lila is jealous of her relationship with Nino.

Julie focused on the aspect of code-switching in the novel. She talks about the code-switching between Italian and dialect. We notice that Elena is able to use both Italian and dialect fluently, whereas Lila only uses standard Italian when she is around who are not part of the neighborhood- and even then, it does not come out very naturally- it’s like her words come out of a book she’s read. Elena on the other hand uses dialect when she is mad, feels threatened, or wants to sound dangerous.

From what we have read so far in the 4th volume, we can tell that Elena is focusing a lot on talking about herself and her personal life, and I hope the book becomes more interesting later on.