Theme Of Friendship In Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend

Set against the backdrop of Naples, the characters in Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend are immersed in a world of violence, ignorance, and poverty. Under this shadow, Elena and Lila struggle to define the past of their parents from their own future. In fact, it is the weight of despair that allows small moments of joy to become vibrant within the story; as James Wood describes, “deprivation gives details a snatched richness” (Wood 10). The luminosity of moments like when Elena travels to Ischia, when the two girls purchase Little Women, and lighting fireworks on New Years Eve, are integral to the depiction of brilliant friendship between them. Therefore, it is not coincidental that when the girls experience fleeting moments of childhood bliss,

Without these moments, it would be impossible to tell the well rounded story of their lives and friendship, for it is truly the simple moments of joy that make life compelling. A central moment of joy for Elena is spending a summer in Ischia with Maestra Oliviero’s cousin Nella. She describes “for the first time I was leaving home […] the neighbourhood and Lila’s troubles grew distant, and vanished” (Ferrante 209), and within this joy she “blossomed” (209). Life in Ischia is diametric to the neighbourhood Elena leaves behind. Nella is described as kind, enthusiastic, and encouraging, while Elena’s mother is seen as bitter, and resentful. The kindness Nella shows Elena by sewing her a new bathing suit, is a simple gesture, however, to the girl who has only known a world of “parental threat” (Wood 10), this action of affection unlike

“We read it for months, so many times that the book became tattered and sweat stained, it lost its spine, came unearthed, sections fell apart […] but we loved it dearly” (68). Reading created joy between the girls, strengthening their friendship and their will to escape the encompassing darkness of the neighbourhood. Each moment spent reading in the courtyard was one where they could be children, creating an inseparable bond. There was no worry of the past becoming present, in fact, the book drove them to desire a better future. Little Women provided a luminosity from the injustices they suffered, like Lila’s inability to continue her education. Knowing education was the way out of the neighbourhood, and having the inability to receive it is crushing blow, but the book gave them a secondary option. What would have been just a book to most children became a lifeline for the girls, introducing the hope that even without direct education, the girls could learn through one another. While Elena is going to school, Lila is borrowing library books a learning in unison. Even when Lila resigns herself to staying in the neighbourhood, she remembers the luminosity learning created and wishes for Elena to continue studying, saying “No, don’t ever stop: I’ll give you the money” (312). If