Queering My Brilliant Friend

Queering My Brilliant Friend

In The Ferrante Letters: An Experiment in Collective Criticism, Jill Richards raised an interesting question: "Where is this second, more fantastic story? How might we consider it as something real, in that the 'I should have' continues to haunt the text as a queer counterfactual?"

The counterfactual is, namely, the opposite of facts. In the context of the Neapolitan Quartet, it is the lesbian love plots that we expected but never got to witness: all those absences that Lenù insistently or intentionally inhabited, all her wild fantasies. It is fictional, fantastic, fake, things that "is and isn't true", "happened and didn't happen". It is, were it to be written by someone other than the author Elena Ferrante herself, what modern fanfiction culture would call "an alternative universe".

But isn't counterfactual analysis and fanfiction writing similar in such regard that both of them accommodate a jarring incompatibility (or jarring because of the incompatibility): "I know it didn't happen, but still." How to reconcile this incompatibility, according to Jill Richards, is what Lauren Berlant dubbed "a complex, intimate practice of world-building".

One could argue that the counterfactual is about the infinite possibilities of a narrative fork, but it's not only about that. Just like the Neapolitan Quartet is – but not only is – about the different trajectories the two girls' lives took. Indeed, for Lila and Lenù, what happened after primary school seemed incidental at the time, but almost life-changing looking back. Lenù passed the entrance examination for middle school, went on to receive university education in Pisa Normale, and eventually became a writer, realizing her (and their) girlhood dream and dragging herself out of the mire of poor Naples that was once her home. Lila, on the other hand, failed in the rebellion against her family obligations despite her endless fierceness and drive, ended up in her father's shoe shop and married young. None of these choices could be pre-determined, nor were they subject to any logical reasoning or sheer human will: both girls' families were poor, both girls demonstrated a dazzling academic brilliance and a fierce determination to pursue further studies. Lila was actually the more brilliant and more determined one out of the two, according to our narrator Lenù, yet what destiny (or, in a less fatalistic sense, the author Elena Ferrante) assigned to them was totally arbitrary, just like the way things are in real life.

But if we only focus on the Domino effects of such little choices it would be a huge waste for such an epic ode to female friendship. The word "friendship" here only serves as a not-particularly-good placeholder for the lifelong intimacy between Lila and Lenù, because there isn't a word accurate enough to fit the exact shape of their overarching, complex relationship. Theirs was a story taking place against the backdrop of post-war Italy at the zenith of its political and social turbulence; the unrelenting wheel of history propelled them forwards, forcing them apart and bringing them back to each other. And always, always, back to each other.

***

How should we approach the Neapolitan Quartet, then? It is important to acknowledge the existence of this counterfactual, or the absent text, for our narrator Lenù is not particularly reliable. She is a compulsive liar, and a good one at that too (maybe that's why she is also a successful writer). Relentlessly she analyzed the people and things around her, in such excruciating detail that not even (or perhaps particularly) herself was spared.

Lenù told us a lot. She never begrudged words when it came to her best friend Lila. But every time her self-examination was on the verge of revealing something else – something base, something ugly, something real – her words came out jumbled, frenzy, hysterical even; flowing in every direction in cascading sentences, leaving the readers disoriented and lost in unformed metaphors. The two most illuminating examples are Lila's wedding and Lenù's disillusion of Nino:

I needed – in order not to rush to make up with Antonio, to tell him, in tears: yes, you’re right, I don’t know what I am and what I really want, I use you and then I throw you away, but it’s not my fault, I feel half and half, forgive me – Nino to draw me exclusively into the things he knew, into his powers, to recognize me as like him.

– My Brilliant Friend, Chapter 61, Elena Ferrante, trans. Ann Goldstein

[I distinguished the love for the neighborhood boy, the high-school student – a feeling of mine that had as its object a fantasy of mine, conceived before Ischia – from the passion that had overwhelmed me for the young man in the bookstore in Milan, the person who had appeared in my house in Florence. I had always maintained a connection between those two emotional blocks, and that morning instead it seemed to me that there was no connection, that the continuity was a trick of logic. In the middle, I thought, there had been a rupture – his love for Lila – that should have canceled Nino forever from my life, but which I had refused to reckon with. To whom, then, was I bound, and whom I still love today?

– The Story of the Lost Child, Chapter 74, Elena Ferrante, trans. Ann Goldstein

Let's look at Lila's wedding first. Broken words: panic, agitation, hysteria. Under all this chaos and confusion Lenù seemed to be hiding something – or someone. To me the most intriguing thing about the way Lenù behaved at Lila's wedding was her disappointment. After learning from Nino that her little article (collaborated with Lila) was not published in the student magazine after all, she was disappointed to the point of having an existential crisis then and there: "But nothing diminished the disappointment. I struggled to detach myself from a sort of fog in my mind, a painful drop of tension, and I couldn’t." To the readers the remainder of the wedding was a blur, because Lenù wasn't paying attention.

For someone who prided so much on their writing ability, this reaction wasn't too out of order for Lenù. You can, of course, interpret this disappointment as Lenù's despair at not being able to be recognised for her talent and, as a consequence, to impress Nino. The TV adaptation certainly did, but seeing through my queer lens, it was a clear manifestation of Lenù trying desperately to find an outlet for the overwhelming emotions that she hadn't yet had a name for, flailing wildly to find purchase. Everyone knew that she was Lila's best friend; she should be happy for Lila on her "big day". But she couldn't help but feel sad, helpless, and betrayed, realizing before everyone else that Lila's marriage was a total disaster. Lenù kept telling herself, "they exchanged rings, they kissed, I had to understand that Lila was really married." And then – as though she couldn't help her own petty thoughts – "seen like that, from behind, they were not a handsome couple." She distracted herself with Nino, talking with him about everything and nothing, demonstrating her talent in an overly eager way. However, one word is enough to let us know that Lenù was only seeking for an ersatz, a substitute, a sort of external approval: "to listen to him lighted up my mind [almost] the way Lila once had". But this ersatz is not that satisfying in the way she wanted: "he didn’t give instant answers, the way Lila did, he didn’t have her capacity to make everything fascinating."

And Lila? Lila was drinking and laughing with the guests; she didn't even notice where Lenù sat or with whom she was talking. Lenù seemed to want to tell Lila, hey, I was trying to reconstruct our intimacy with someone else, and I might slip away with him from your wedding under your nose! But in the end she found herself screaming to the void.

When Lenù examined whom she truly loved, it left the readers wondering too. Did she love the young man in the bookstore in Milan? Or the person who had appeared in her house in Florence? Both, or maybe neither. She hesitantly started with a "I thought": "In the middle, I thought, there had been a rupture – his love for Lila – that should have canceled Nino forever from my life, but which I had refused to reckon with." What rupture? Lenù gave it a name: his love for Lila.

But this realization didn't originate from jealousy; not exactly. Never had Lenù ever hated Lila for stealing Nino. Back on the island of Ischia, when adolescent Lenù imagined them being together, she didn't even know of whom she should be more jealous: Lila, who had Nino; or Nino, who had Lila. In the end, Lenù concluded that the Nino she loved was the Nino reshaped by his experience with Lila. It made readers wonder: had she always been trying to find traces of Lila in Nino? Like the way she did when she was younger and noticed traces of Lila in Carmela? Because, just as Lenù kept reminding us: Lila was the one who made and unmade.

Lenù was used to keeping traces of Lila, both in herself and in other people around Lila. She resisted in her own way any new life development that could drag Lila away from her: she didn't like the wedding, where she thought the wedding couple was "not that handsome after all"; she didn't like Lila's first pregnancy, which she thought didn't bring radiance to her face the way it did other women. And I like that about her. I like that Lenù refused to share conventional women's happiness defined by society with Lila; rather, love for Lenù means to share friendship, books, lectures, movies, theater, and music – all of which she did, with Lila.

The same frenzy and hysteria described by Lenù above can be found in this year's brilliant queer TV show Feel Good (2021). In Season 2, Episode 1, George was recycling her clothes like a whirlwind and shouted hysterically, "If we don't recycle, there'll be no habitat left for the bees. The bees, Phil!". Phil, the good roommate, however, knew too well. "Georgie, you're saying 'bees' and 'recycling', but all I'm hearing is M-A-E."

Could the same apply to Lenù?

***

Back to the queer counterfactuals, it would be useful to dive deeper into Lenù's wild fantasies too:

I should have carried her off, kidnapped her, made her travel with me, or at least reinforced her presence in my body, mixed her voice with mine.

– Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, Chapter 15, Elena Ferrante, trans. Ann Goldstein

This isn't the first time that Lenù had such an improbable fantasy. Throughout the Neapolitan cycle, every time Lenù felt lonely, helpless or hopeless, she began to dream about what kind of life she could have had with Lila. The most noticeable of which appears in Chapter 2 of the second book, The Story of A New Name:

Yes, yes, I felt that I wanted that, I wanted it to happen. An end of love and of that intolerable celebration, no embraces in a bed in Amalfi. Immediately shatter everything and every person in the neighborhood, tear them to pieces, Lila and I, go and live far away, lightheartedly descending together all the steps of humiliation, alone, in unknown cities.

– The Story of A New Name, Chapter 2, Elena Ferrante, trans. Ann Goldstein

The first time I read it, I was reminded of Homer's Iliad: Our father Zeus Athena and Apollo if only no Trojan could get away alive, not one and no Greek either and we two could survive the massacre to tear off Troy’s holy of towers single-handed.

The parallel is almost painfully obvious. Considering Elena Ferrante's classic background, it might even be intentional. And what did Greek scholars have to say about Homer's rendition of Achilles and Patroclus? "The exceeding greatness of their affection is manifest to such of his hearers as are educated men."

Translation: you don't need me to state it explicitly to know that they are gay.

In this vivid imagination of Lenù's, two key words stood out to me: violence, and humiliation. Growing up in a squalid neighborhood from Naples, Lila and Lenù are no strangers to violence. Both had demonstrated how much they detested it, and how hard they had fought to keep it at bay: Lila, who staunchly refused Marcello Solara's marriage proposal at the pain of incurring the wrath from her father and brother; and Lenù, who painstakingly devoted herself to school with a rigorous self-discipline in the hope of an escape. Why, then, did Lenù want that violence from Lila?

If we take a closer look, we would find that Lenù had always associated violence with Lila. A different brand from the male violence, sure, but violence all the same. From when they were children, Lenù attributed to Lila a quickness of mind that was "like a hiss, a dart, a lethal bite". And then, later, when she contemplated the violent deaths of the pharmacist's fascist son Gino and the sausage factory boss Bruno Soccavo, she thought: "Pasquale was a good boy, something of a braggart, capable of fierce fighting but of murder no; Nadia seemed to her a respectable girl who could wound at most with verbal treachery". But Lila? With her Lenù had never had any doubts: "she would be able to give murderous intentions an abstract purity, she knew how to remove human substance from bodies and blood, she would have no scruples and no remorse, she would kill and feel that she was in the right". To quote Jeanette Winterson, "There are people who can never kill. I am not one of them." Lenù's belief in Lila's violence says so much about her and their relationship. Lila's malice, her danger, and her power that comes from it, did and did not only exist in Lenù's mind.

The reason behind this association, I suspect, is so that Lenù could draw strength from Lila. At first glance, Lenù appeared to be a shy, educated, well-spoken middle-class woman, but just like her daughter Imma, she was "unhappily compliant, she wanted everything and pretended to want nothing". She hid her strengths behind a meek façade, but every time she had a breakdown the façade cracked and the violence poured out: the time she fantasized about running away with Lila at her wedding; the time she slapped a classmate to defend herself in Pisa; the time she confronted Nino after finding out his adultery. Each time she attributed her inner strengths and violence to Lila.

But violence has always been inside Lenù's body, and sometimes she even welcomed it. In one of the most controversial/scandalous scene both inside and outside the book:

I hope that everything will end soon, that the figures of the nightmares will consume my soul. I hope that from this darkness packs of mad dogs will emerge, vipers, scorpions, enormous sea serpents. I hope that while I’m sitting here, on the edge of the sea, assassins will arrive out of the night and torture my body. Yes, yes, let me be punished for my insufficiency, let the worst happen…

– The Story of A New Name, written by Elena Ferrante, translated by Ann Goldstein

In her mind, Lenù justified that night to herself as an expression of agency: she wanted to be punished for her insufficiency, she wanted the worst to happen. On the subject of sex and love, Lenù always appeared hesitant but acted resolute. She chose to keep her last name Greco as a published author, she chose the rights to love over the responsibility of family. Donato, Pietro, Nino; harassment, marriage, affair. Men could never intrude her agency; the only person able to do so was Lila. Even so, Lenù still insisted that "I welcome her intrusion" and that "I make space for her in me". She said, "I was I and for that very reason I could make space for her in me and give her an enduring form. She instead didn’t want to be her, so she couldn’t do the same." However, let's not forget that Lenù was an unreliable narrator; she said one thing and did the other. Consciously, she kept Lila at arm's length, because she knew with a gut instinct that if she wasn't careful, Lila would involve herself in Lenù's life again, making her Lila's appendage once more.

So did Lenù really have agency? The answer was debatable, especially considering how much she depended on Lila. Which brings us to the second key word: humiliation, or shame. Lenù's relationship with her own sexuality has always been a bit strained. Unlike Lila, she never shouted vulgar words like "fuck is so overrated" or "I never derived pleasure from sex with men" in front of her best friend. Unlike Lila, she still harbored some kind of hope and expectation for heterosexual sex. But she hides her own desire, like a beast hides its fangs and claws.

Why did she hide it? The answer is open to various interpretations. It could be the internalized shame resulting from years of systematic oppression of female desire in a patriarchal society, or it could be, if you want, a fear of expressing queer desire in a backward period of time.

***

Surprisingly, it is actually not that difficult to queer Lila & Lenù's relationship, perhaps because our beguiling narrator Lenù is unusually forthcoming on this subject:

…and to act as if it’s nothing, when instead everything is there, present, in the poor dim room, amid the worn furniture, on the uneven, water-stained floor, and your heart is agitated, your veins inflamed.

I had a confusion of feelings and thoughts: embrace her, weep with her, kiss her, pull her hair, laugh, pretend to sexual experience and instruct her in a learned voice, distancing her with words just at the moment of greatest closeness. But in the end there was only the hostile thought that I was washing her, from her hair to the soles of her feet, early in the morning, just so that Stefano could sully her in the course of the night.

– My Brilliant Friend, Chapter 57, Elena Ferrante, trans. Ann Goldstein

With difficulty I reached the point of asking myself: had she and I ever touched each other? Had I ever wished to, as a child, as a girl, as an adult? And her? I hovered on the edge of those questions for a long time. I answered slowly: I don’t know, I don’t want to know. And then I admitted that there had been a kind of admiration for her body, maybe that, yes, but I ruled out anything ever happening between us. Too much fear, if we had been seen we would have been beaten to death.

– Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, Chapter 85, Elena Ferrante, trans. Ann Goldstein

The overwhelming emotions she felt when she was bathing Lila, the urge to talk about Alfonso (the only homosexual they knew in their entire life - coincidence?) with Lila, the soul-searching self-exploration after witnessing the budding love between her daughter Dede and Lila's son Rino... Slowly but surely, she admitted all of these to herself and to her readers with difficulty but without equivocation. Queering Lila & Lenù is not the difficult part; no, the difficult part is, as a reader, how do we confront the consequences once we accept that there's something more?

The theme of the women from the bottom of the society has always been escape – from poverty, from violence, from the oppressing other sex (father, brother, husband) – only when they are with each other that theme morphs into a passionate, reckless reunion. As Abigail said in The World To Come (2020): "We hold our friendship between us and study it, as if it were the incomplete map of our escape." But love cannot put bread on the table, nor can it bring material salvation. Which is why Lenù, with her brilliant academic record, had to rely on marriage to realize social mobility; and Lila, with her endless intelligence and fierceness, had resolved to one marriage in order to escape from another.

For a long time, women have existed as a sort of accessory to men: they are mothers, daughters and wives; they are caregivers, bargaining chips, sexual objects. They are everything but themselves. Women's creativity, free-will, and raucous desire were all oppressed, ignored, condemned. You can only give but not take, submit but not dominate, you can only be the object but never the subject. Queering the Neapolitan cycle restores this kind of power to women: to give and to take, to submit and to dominate, to desire and to be desired all at the same time. But it also makes the whole story all the more heartbreaking. Perhaps that's why the author chose to hide this in the fabric of a queer counterfactual, where only people who "speak Latin" can decode it as it was.

Susan Sontag once said, “I think friendship is very erotic, but it isn’t necessarily sexual.” But a queer relationship isn't necessarily sexual, either. The original meaning of "queer" is closer to odd and unconventional; it represents a kind of dissatisfaction towards the long-established binary sex/sexuality/desire, a push at the boundary of the traditional definition of friendship, connection, and romantic love.

Lila & Lenù's relationship is very difficult to define. To quote Elena Ferrante herself, "Everyone's afraid of Lila, and most of them are in love with her too, but none other than Lena, and Lila loves Lena back, though 'love' is too narrow a word for it". One thing is certain about the Neapolitan Quartet, though: it's only and always the two of them who are involved, just like what Lenù said at the end of the story.