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.