“ 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)

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