Text 4 — Prose fiction extract
How does Ferrante portray the ways that family relationships shape identity?
Text 4 — Prose fiction extract
We traveled through Naples in the green Fiat 500, going first to Cavone,[1] where Aunt Anna lived, then to the Campi Flegrei, where Uncle Nicola lived, then to Pozzuoli, to Aunt Rosetta. I realized that I barely remembered these relatives, maybe I had never actually known their names. I tried to hide it, but Vittoria noticed and immediately started saying mean things about my father, who had deprived me of the affection of people certainly without education, not smooth talkers, but warmhearted. How important to her the heart was . . . which she struck with her broad hand and gnarled fingers. It was in those situations that she began to suggest to me: look at what we’re like and what your father and mother are like, then tell me. She insisted forcefully on that matter of looking. She said I had blinders[2] like a horse, I looked but didn’t see the things that could disturb me. Look, look, look, she hammered into me. In fact, I let nothing escape me. Those relatives, their children a little older than me or my age, were a pleasant novelty. Vittoria flung me into their houses without warning, and yet aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews welcomed me with great familiarity, as if they knew me well and had been simply waiting, over the years, for my visit. The apartments were small, drab, furnished with objects that I had been brought up to judge crude if not vulgar. No books, only at Aunt Anna’s house did I see some mysteries. They all spoke to me in a cordial[3] dialect mixed with Italian, and I made an effort to do the same, or at least I made room in my hypercorrect Italian for some Neapolitan cadences.[4] No one mentioned my father, no one asked how he was, no one charged me with saying hello to him . . . but they tried in every way to make me understand that they weren’t angry with me. They called me Giannina, as Vittoria did and as my parents never had. I loved them all, I had never felt so open to affection. And I was so relaxed and funny that I began to think that that name assigned to me by Vittoria – Giannina – had miraculously brought forth from my same body another person, more pleasant or anyway different from the Giovanna by which I was known to my parents.
ELENA FERRANTE The Lying Life of Adults © Europa Editions
[1] Cavone, Campi Flegrei, Italian place names Pozzuoli
[2] blinders covers that restrict side vision
[3] cordial friendly
[4] Neapolitan cadences rhythms of speech in Naples, Italy