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The Story of a New Name takes place immediately after Lila’s marriage to the neighborhood grocer, the young man in charge of one of only two of the neighborhood’s prosperous families. Getting bogged down in the details of the plot of each book is kind of missing the point, so I will try to avoid doing it, but I mention the marriage because this is the single moment that changes the two women’s lives. It is the first and most concrete piece of evidence that the lives they are “meant” to have, as women, are not for them. Lila begins chafing at her vows and new identity (her new name) before the ceremony is even over, and the rest of this installment is, for her, about how she struggles to carve out necessary freedoms for herself, both inside and outside of her marriage. Meanwhile, Elena has left the neighborhood to attend secondary school and university. Academically, there is no denying her talent, but she has what we would, now, instantly identify as impostor syndrome, in spades, and she is nearly undone on multiple occasions by a crippling sense of inauthenticity. When she speaks among her educated friends, she always feels like she is pretending at intelligence, only hiding her poor vulgarity; when she as at home in Naples she simultaneously desires to impress with her accomplishments and be accepted as one of them, unchanged. It’s the story of moving within of two communities, but not truly being a part of either. Rino Cerullo (Lila's older brother, five to seven years older than Lila, works at the family's shoe shop) Yet we—we, the writers of this piece—are uncomfortable with the way this formulation allows human knowledge, here literary criticism, to hopscotch yet again over the responsibility to understand the particularities of women’s experiences, in the way that science and medicine and economics and history often have done. (Here we are reminded of Virginia Woolf’s repeated quests in A Room of One’s Own to learn about the history of women: returning to the shelves of knowledge again and again, she finds hundreds of years of nothing there.)
In season three of the TV series that focus on the headiness of the times leads to multiple moments where Elena’s joy over the success of her first novel is undercut by all the critics and Naples neighbors who are preoccupied by the book’s frank sex scenes—confirming some of her old rivals’ impressions of her as “impure.” (One of the boorish boys she grew up with tries to hit on her, saying, “Let me get close to you; you’ll be able to write about it.”) And while Elena is coping with rude comments and not-so-subtle aspersions about her reputation, Lila is working at a literal sausage factory, where the men feel free to tell dirty jokes and to pressure her for sex when they get her alone. Krule, Miriam (2015-08-28). " "Dressing a Refined Story With a Touch of Vulgarity": An Interview With Elena Ferrante's Art Director". Slate. ISSN 1091-2339 . Retrieved 2023-02-27. A meeting with Pietro’s sister Mariarosa introduces Elena to the feminist cause, and there she finds her voice. As a model for her own life, Elena explores how women can only be defined in society by their men. In the midst of a creative frenzy that finally gives her life, Nino Sarratore shows up once more and plants small seeds of dissent in Elena’s heart. Next to Nino, Pietro looks even more drab and dull, while Nino is filled with vibrant ideas and political furor. Under Nino’s encouragement, Elena finishes her essay and it is brilliant. The two begin an affair that eventually ends with both of them leaving their families and traveling away together.
The Story of the Lost Child; won the 2016 ALTA Translation Prizes, in the category translations form Italian. [28] The story continues from the point where the previous book stopped, we are reminded that the story is recounted by sixty-six years old Lenu, with her distance and experience. Lenu is drawn into the new cultured world of her fiancé’s family, she’s dazed and fascinated by it and at the same time feels uncertain, constantly seeking approval, making sure she is fits in, meets the expectations. She prepares to get married and move to Florence, happy to leave the neighborhood behind; she promotes her book. It seems Lenu is finally able to exist on her own, until Lila summons her.
And more, we think of Lila, in the Neapolitan novels, speaking in public about the abuse and harassment experienced in the factory, and the sexual form it takes for women, and then facing, in private, Enzo’s well-meaning concern: does this happen to you? he asks. Admitting the forcefulness of woman as a sign, here, its universality, would be for Lila tantamount to taking on another womanly task: comforting men who, like Matthew McConaughey looking mournfully at pictures of rape victims in True Detective, are burdened with the difficulty of living as men in a world where men do, over and over, such terrible things to women. We love Lila for being too tired to give a shit. Exhausted, she lies to Enzo: oh no, nothing untoward ever happens to her at her workplace, just because she’s a woman, just because it happens to every woman. Nope: everything is fine.
More From the Same
What’s most interesting about all the novels is (again, of course) the Lila-Elena relationship. But a close second is all that Nino business. Nino is that rare thing: a childhood crush who remains alluring into adulthood. But more than that, he’s deeply entangled with Elena’s other loves: Lila (who was his lover, and who may have born his child), and professional ambition as a writer. The Lila aspect isn’t all that explored, at least in Book 3 – early on in the book, Nino tells Elena that Lila had been bad in bed, but that’s almost it. And maybe that’s what makes the Neapolitan novels so wonderful, apart from the obvious (that is, the combination of a sweeping portrait of society and intricate portrayals of the moment-by-moment emotional lives of the characters). Desires – for artistic achievement, material comfort, sex – exist in unpredictable, intertwined ways. Luzzi, Joseph (September 27, 2013). "It Started in Naples: Elena Ferrante's 'Story of a New Name' ". The New York Times . Retrieved July 20, 2015. Ferrante's writing seems to say something that hasn't been said before, in a way so compelling its readers forget where they are, abandon friends and disdain sleep."— London Review of Books
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