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.
