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Adolescence: Chapter 51
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in My Brilliant Friend, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Female Friendship
Masculine vs. Feminine Violence
Women’s Work
Poverty, Social Climbing, and Sacrifice
The Uses of Community
Love, Sex, and Strategy
Summary
Analysis
As the start of the school year approaches, Lenù stops seeing Antonio quite as much. She believes that after she returns to her studies, Lila will be fine handling the wedding preparations on her own—but as Lila navigates tense interactions with Pinuccia and Maria, who have come to see Lila as a pauper playing at being a fine mistress, it becomes clear that Lila needs an ally. Stefano urges his mother and sister to stop working in the grocery store and help Lila with the preparations full-time, at which point Lila, desperate for support, calls upon Lenù to assist her.
Lila struggles to develop a good relationship with her in-laws. Lila is indeed using marriage to Stefano as a method of escaping one kind of fate, and her future mother- and sister-in-law believe the ways in which she’s using Stefano for money and comfort are unacceptable.
Themes
One day, Lenù accompanies Lila, Pinuccia, and Maria to a wedding dress shop in town. Whichever dresses Lila likes, Pinuccia and Maria disparage; whichever dresses she hates, they love. Toward the end of the nearly four-hour-long fitting session, Lenù speaks up and gently compliments Maria and Pinuccia’s taste before choosing a random style. Lila stares at Lenù, her gaze impenetrable. Pinuccia and Maria are thrilled with Lenù’s choice. As the women make their way home, Lila sidles up to Lenù and congratulates her on “conning” Pinuccia and Maria into liking a style Lila herself adored. Lila declares that Lenù, who is “good at making [her]self liked,” must accompany her on all her wedding-planning excursions.
For so long, Lila has had to deal with being regarded as prickly, difficult, and unlikable. With Lenù on her side to mitigate things, Lila feels that she can navigate her relationships with her hostile new in-laws. This passage shows how even as their paths diverge in new ways, Lila and Lenù remain dependent on each other to make it through.
Themes
