Negotiating feminine identity through the maternal bond in Elena Ferrante’s Troubling Love

ABSTRACT

Cultural representations have traditionally portrayed the mother as a one-dimensional figure of sacrifice and unconditional devotion, but contemporary writing by women has examined the complexities of what allegedly is the most ‘natural’ of female roles. In her first novel Troubling Love (1992), Elena Ferrante places the mother figure at the centre of feminine identity while seeking to liberate it from stereotypes, thus presenting motherhood in all its nuances – unpleasant, contradictory, even unspeakable. The narrative unfolds as a thriller in which the protagonist Delia returns to Naples to confront the mysterious death of her mother. Her geographical descent into the depths of the Naples of her childhood to find out the truth about her mother’s death will instead reveal the painful knots tying her mother’s life to her own. The plot uncovers a shared story of gender violence that ruined the relationship between mother and daughter: by using feminist reflections on motherhood, this paper argues that the violence suffered by both women, while marginalizing and silencing their voices, disintegrated the bond between mother and daughter and thereby arrested the development of Delia’s identity. It is only by recovering that bond that Delia will finally succeed in reconstructing a fragmented self.

KEYWORDS:

• Elena Ferrante
• identity
• fragmentation
• motherhood
• gender-based violence

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. ‘two women in perpetual flight from male violence’ (my translation).

2. L’Amore Molesto, 1995. Dir. Mario Martone. Lucky Red/Teatri Uniti.

3. emphasis in original.

4. ‘In order to protect her daughter, Amalia exposes her body to domestic abuse: in order to allow her [Delia] to continue living a peaceful existence, and thus give her a new life, Amalia undertakes a symbolic suicidal act similar to the real one that will later witness her plunging into the black waters of the Thyrrenian’. (my translation).

5. The womb of Naples (my translation).

6. ‘in life as in writing’ (my translation).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Emma Domínguez-Rué

Emma Domínguez-Rué graduated in English at the University of Lleida (Catalonia) and studied an MA in English Literature at Swansea University (UK). Her PhD dissertation was published in 2011 with the title Of Lovely Tyrants and Invisible Women: Invalidism as Metaphor in the Fiction of Ellen Glasgow (Berlin: Logos Verlag). Aside from American Studies, she has also worked on ageing studies, narratives of disease, and contemporary detective fiction under a feminist perspective. She is currently Associate Professor and Serra-Hunter Fellow in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures and Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Lleida.