Assignment:
There are several literary themes throughout Elena Ferrante's Southern Italy Book Series. Analyze the theme of FEMINISM throughout the book series. Create an outline. Ask yourself how it affected the progression of the books and characters.
Topic: Feminism
? Feminism displayed through Elena Ferrante's Novels
? Feminism: the advocacy of women's rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes.
? Lila, a prodigy who has taught herself to read at 3 and learns Latin from a textbook, isn't allowed to carry on past middle school because her father won't pay the fees. Which then leads her to work at a factory and experience sexual harrassment.
? Elena wins a scholarship to study classics at university, marries a member of a prominent socialist family and publishes a novel at 23.
? There was a mention of the novel Little Women.
¦ dilemma Alcott poses: can you be a woman and a writer? Can you be a writer and happy?
? Elena Ferrante writes under a pseudonym. Arguments over her real identity have suggested that only a man could write such great novels.
? The character Elena explicitly undermines herself all the time in the novels,
¦ Lila tells Elena: "You're my brilliant friend, you have to be best of all, boys and girls."
? Elena's has idealized affection since she was a little girl
¦ Her relationship with men throughout the series
? Elena continues to please people throughout the series and climbs the social ladder
¦ "as if I were competing for the prize of best disguise, the mask worn so well that it was almost a face."
¦ Lila's comment on Elenas unpublished book: "the disgusting face of things was not enough for writing a novel; without imagination it would seem not a true face but a mask."
? The differences between not only Lila and Elena's personalities but their choices, background, etc and how all of them factor into the lives they lead.