Women’s Work Theme in My Brilliant Friend

As Lila and Lenù come of age in their Naples, Italy neighborhood, their paths diverge when Lenù remains in school while Lila goes to work in her father’s shop after her parents refuse to pay for her education. Elena Ferrante sets My Brilliant Friend in the 1950s, a time when women’s intellectual and professional aspirations were not taken seriously but were on the cusp of a new kind of recognition—thus contrasting Lila and Lenù’s wishes for their own futures with the realities of the lives of the older women all around them. Ferrante explores the different kinds of “work” both available to and foisted upon women of Lila and Lenù's generation, ultimately suggesting that women’s bravery and initiative are too often met with ridicule, cruelty, and even betrayal due to the entwined forces of capitalism and sexism.

Throughout the novel, Lila and Lenù persist in their struggles to make themselves known through their work in the face of unimaginable odds. While Lenù focuses on academics, Lila becomes preoccupied with dreams of revolutionizing her father’s shoe business—an idea to which her father, Fernando, is deeply resistant. Toward the end of the novel, two climactic incidents—the unhappy culmination, for both women, of their youth’s “work”—underscore how even when women devote themselves entirely to an idea or a project, the forces of capitalism and sexism conspire to blunt their initiative and render their efforts meaningless. Just as their mothers before them were reduced to roles as wives and caregivers, Lila and Lenù are confronted with the smallness of their efforts in the eyes of the men who surround them. Lenù, who has devoted her life to academics and who has recently, inspired by her crush Nino Sarratore, submitted a paper criticizing religion to a journal in which Nino frequently publishes work, learns that her piece has not been accepted for publication. Lenù is devastated as she reckons with the failure of what she sees as her life’s work. Since her youth, Lenù has felt academically inferior to the preternaturally smart Lila, whose proficiency for languages and whose effortless writing style have continued to flourish in spite of the fact that her parents, unable to pay for an education, pulled her out of school at a young age. Lenù’s academic and ideological work has been the focus of so much of her life, and as she faces down its failure, she thinks the following: “Nothing diminished the disappointment. […] I discovered that I had considered the publication of those few lines, my name in print, as a sign that I really had a destiny, that the hard work of school would surely lead upward, somewhere, that Maestra Oliviero had been right to push me forward and to abandon Lila.” Lenù’s work has always been meaningful in her relationship with Lila—she knows that her continued success in academia has made Lila jealous, and when she showed the piece she submitted to the journal to her friend, Lila admitted that Lenù’s writing made her jealous and sad. Lila has told Lenù that she is “brilliant” and must continue studying no matter what—but in the eyes of Nino and the (presumably male) editors of the journal, Lenù’s work is not worthy.

Meanwhile, the intrepid Lila, barred from attending school, tries to make something of herself in other ways, turning to a capitalistic approach to attempt to combat the forces of sexism that have kept her from an education. When she goes to work in her shoemaker father’s shop, she decides to design a line of fancy shoes of her own. Lila believes they will sell for high prices and allow her father’s business to flourish. Lila’s ideas are discounted by her father and her brother Rino—and her attempts to make herself heard are often met with physical or verbal abuse. Eventually, the wealthy Stefano Carracci, in wooing Lila, offers to support her financially in producing the shoes. However, in the book’s final lines, Lila realizes that Stefano has betrayed her not just by inviting her enemy and former suitor Marcello Solara to the party, but also by giving him—in an apparent show of fealty and goodwill—the very first shoes Lila herself made. “Marcello had on his feet the shoes bought earlier by Stefano, her husband. It was the pair she had made with [her brother] Rino,” making and unmaking them for months, ruining her hands.” Not only has Lila’s work been sullied by the hated Marcello, but also her husband has seen the work she “ruin[ed]” herself for as nothing more than a tool in a compromise meant to protect himself, his honor, and his business from the wealthy and vengeful Solara brothers. Lila also realizes that her attempt to take on work of her own in order to game the forces of capitalism (which conspire against women) has been for nothing. The men in her life do not respect her, and the one to whom she has promised herself for life sees her dreams as things to be bought, sold, and traded.

Ultimately, both Lila and Lenù are forced to reckon with the ways in which their attempts at making their accomplishments known have failed. As Ferrante highlights the disappointments both girls face, she argues that women’s work will always be overlooked. Even though Lenù is narrating from the present day, there is not much optimism in her voice as she recounts the ways in which she and Lila, as girls, “ruin” themselves time and time again in hopes of achieving the recognition they deserve.

Women’s Work ThemeTracker

The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Women’s Work appears in each chapter of My Brilliant Friend. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.

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