Elena Ferrante's "My Brilliant Friend" Book Series 1-3

April 15th, 2022 Final Paper

Topic: Feminism

● Feminism displayed through Elena Ferrante’s Novels ○ Feminism: the advocacy of women's rights on the ground of the equality

of the sexes. ○ Lila, a prodigy who has taught herself to read at 3 and learns Latin from a

textbook, isn’t allowed to carry on past middle school because her father won’t pay the fees. Which then leads her to work at a factory and experience sexual harrassment.

○ Elena wins a scholarship to study classics at university, marries a member of a prominent socialist family and publishes a novel at 23.

○ There was a mention of the novel Little Women. ■ dilemma Alcott poses: can you be a woman and a writer? Can you

be a writer and happy? ○ Elena Ferrante writes under a pseudonym. Arguments over her real

identity have suggested that only a man could write such great novels. ○ The character Elena explicitly undermines herself all the time in the

novels, ■ Lila tells Elena: “You’re my brilliant friend, you have to be best of

all, boys and girls.” ○ Elena’s has idealized affection since she was a little girl

■ Her relationship with men throughout the series ○ Elena continues to please people throughout the series and climbs the

social ladder ■ “as if I were competing for the prize of best disguise, the mask

worn so well that it was almost a face.” ■ Lila’s comment on Elenas unpublished book: “the disgusting face

of things was not enough for writing a novel; without imagination it would seem not a true face but a mask.”

○ The differences between not only Lila and Elena’s personalities but their choices, background, etc and how all of them factor into the lives they lead.