The Opiate, Spring Vol. 17
On Never Really Knowing Your Parents (Until You Become Them): Elena Ferrante’s Troubling Love Genna Rivieccio
E
ven the most offensive mama’s boy, the most unabashed daddy’s girl can never really know the true nature of their parents. For to know somebody completely, one must be aware of their innermost secrets, the truths often hidden in the actions of youthful folly. And, even as candid and open as the most Mrs. George of mothers or the most Royal Tenenbaum of fathers are (though he, like most men, had his fair share of duplicity amid “candor”), there can be no true way of knowing one’s parents as they know their children. For, alas, there is the builtin advantage of having watched a person form—of having formed that character yourself. Elena Ferrante’s work, though generally consistently speaking to the pressure of the childparent bond in some way as a direct result of being
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Neapolitan, is at its most succinct and biting in this regard in Troubling Love (first published in Italy in 1992). Just as our introduction to Lila Cerullo (onehalf of the protagonist duo in Ferrante’s beloved Neapolitan novel series) is saturated with the image of an empty closet, so, too, does one of the newer covers of Troubling Love feature this symbol. For Ferrante is tormented by the woman of mystery, the clues to her life found so often in the metaphorical entity of The Closet. Except, in contrast to Lila, Delia’s recently deceased mother, Amalia, is the one whose closet (still filled with clothing—more specifically, and scandalously, lingerie—instead of being completely vuoto) is telling a very loud tale indeed. Adding to Delia’s torment, apart from Amalia dying at the premature age of sixty-three, is her
