Stefania Lucamante writes in Undoing Feminism: The Neapolitan Novels of Elena Ferrante that “A complex relationship between the emancipatory power of sisterly friendship and the desire for the individual assertion of a woman threads the sisterly relations” between Lenù and Lila. Lucamante argues however that the relationship works to improve and help Lenù but not Lila: “..the relationship is functional to her individual ascent, not a communal one”. Previously, I had seen Elena as being dependent on Lila, but after reading Lucamante’s paper, I’m beginning to think that it is less a situation of dependency, but of exploitation. As Lucamante writes, “Elena feigns submission to Lila, but she actually uses her”. It seems Lenù approaches many of her relationships this way. For example, her relationships with the other Airotas, in which she seems to benefit from all the connections and prestige that they have, but it doesn’t appear they receive anything from her in return. Most of the relationships she creates are because she can benefit them, whether it be her relationship with Donato Sarratore, once she discovers he is a writer, or with Franco, who helps her both socially, financially, and education-wise.
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Undoing Feminism
Stefania Lucamente compares Elena’s use of Lila to ameliorate her life and career to Ferrante using other female authors without crediting them in order to establish herself. Moreover, Lucamente labels Ferrante and her work as not feminist.
First, Lucamente critiques that Elena Ferrante, if she is Anita Raja, lived through the second-wave feminism and Italian Women’s Movement of the 1970s. But, Ferrante does not “overtly recognize the merit of Morante and Ramondino as her most direct sources,” just as it “pains Elena to acknowledge the merits of Lila for her individual success” (33).
Next, Lucamente argues that Elena’s narration portrays Lila as a “hysterical woman constantly on the brink of a nervous breakdown (or smarginatura)” and this doesn’t allow Lila to become neither a “full-fledged feminist nor a postfeminist character” (36).
Furthermore, Lucamente disagrees that Elena’s soul seems to ache for Lila. I don’t agree with this because it always seems as though Lila is a component of all of Elena’s thoughts and actions. Lucamente continues her critique by stating that for Ferrante narrating is only possible at the moment of the disappearance of the most important woman from another woman’s life. She then adds, “a woman’s autonomy becomes possible only at the expense of the sisterhood; it undoes feminism” (39). I think that Lucamente’s argument is problematic.
I don’t think that Ferrante is “undoing feminism” but instead simply expressing how life works sometimes. I find the fact that her writing shows the autonomy of one woman at the expense of so much does not undo feminism, but in fact, displays the honest difficulties that arise for women and between women. I found a compelling quote in a Vox article that pertains to My Brilliant Friend: “What Elena Ferrante has done is to create characters who are hateable — who sometimes hate each other and sometimes deserve to be hated — and to remind us that women are worthy of depiction in art not because they are better than men but because they, too, are human.” Ferrante highlights the complexities and various layers of women, which is not unfeminist, but realistic.
