Writing the ‘Woman Destroyed’ in Elena Ferrante and Simone de Beauvoir

In I giorni dell'abbandono (2002), Elena Ferrante's protagonist, Olga, remembers the women of Simone de Beauvoir's short stories, La femme rompue [The Woman Destroyed] (1967), as 'sentimentalmente sciocche'. Critics have generally interpreted Ferrante's use of Beauvoir as a refutation of her representation of an abandoned woman found in 'The Woman Destroyed', the titular story of the collection. Conversely, this essay argues that Ferrante embraces Beauvoir's 'woman destroyed' as a model. Through an analysis of the works' intertextuality, it demonstrates that Beauvoir's existentialist feminism, as expressed in both 'The Woman Destroyed' and The Second Sex, is a key source for Ferrante's novel. In particular, it offers a new interpretation of Ferrante's ending, highlighting the ambiguous quality of the story's closing lines.SOMMARIONel romanzo di Elena Ferrante I giorni dell'abbandono (2002), la protagonista, Olga, indica come 'sentimentalmente sciocche' le donne de La femme rompue [Una donna spezzata] (1967), una collezione di racconti di Simone de Beauvoir. Questo riferimento alla Beauvoir da parte di Ferrante è stato spesso interpretato come un rifiuto della rappresentazione della donna abbandonata de 'La femme rompue', il racconto che dà il nome alla raccolta. Al contrario, in questo saggio si vuole mostrare come la Ferrante si rifaccia a questa 'donna spezzata' di Beauvoir come ad un modello. Attraverso un'analisi intertestuale delle opere, si metterà in evidenza come il testo della Ferrante si ispiri profondamente al femminismo esistenzialista elaborato dalla Beauvoir in 'Una donna spezzata' e Il secondo sesso. 20. An English translation is available: The Days of Abandonment, trans. by Ann Goldstein (New York: Europa Editions, 2005). English quotations of La femme rompue are from Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed, trans. by Patrick O'Brian (New York: Collins and G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1969). Ferrante may have been familiar with Beauvoir's French text La femme rompue (Paris: Gallimard, 1967) or the Italian translation, Una donna spezzata (Turin: Einaudi, 1969). Subsequent references to these editions are given in parentheses after quotations in the text.2 Gérard Genette, Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree, trans. by Channa Newman and Claude Doubinsky (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), p. 5.3 Genette, pp. 5–10.4 Stefania Lucamante, 'Writing Is Always Playing with the Mother's Body', in A Multitude of Women (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), pp. 28–108, especially 80–106; Irene Zanini-Cordi, Donne sciolte: Abbandono ed identità femminile nella letteratura italiana (Ravenna: Longo, 2008), pp. 156–71; Dayna Tortorici, 'Those Like Us: On Elena Ferrante', in n+1, 22: 'Conviction' (Spring 2015) [accessed 21 April 2019]; Lisa Mullenneaux, 'Olga and La Poverella'' in Naples' Little Women: The Fiction of Elena Ferrante (New York: Pennington Press, 2016), eBook; Karen Bojar, In Search of Elena Ferrante: The Novels and the Question of Authorship (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2018), pp. 54–61; Tiziana de Rogatis, Elena Ferrante: Parole Chiave (Rome: Edizione e/o, 2018), pp. 100–109, 266–74. Ferrante herself has offered comments that distance her from Beauvoir; see Elena Ferrante, La Frantumaglia (Rome: Edizione e/o, 2003), pp. 86–8. Her discussion of difference feminism is another source of this distance: Interview with Elissa Schappell, 'The Mysterious, Anonymous Author Elena Ferrante on the Conclusion of Her Neapolitan Novels', in Vanity Fair [accessed 21 April 2019]. On the conflict between existentialist feminism and sexual difference, see Dorothy Kaufmann, 'Simone de Beauvoir: Questions of Difference and Generation', Yale French Studies, 72 (1986), 121–31, [accessed 19 March 2019]. On Ferrante's interest in a feminism of difference, see also Elisa Sotgiu, 'Elena Ferrante e il femminismo della differenza: Una lettura dell'Amica geniale'' Allegoria, 3rd series, 76 (2017), 58–76.5 On Beauvoir as a 'recurring intertext', see Ivan Krielkamp, 'A Rage That Had No End: The Novels of Elena Ferrante', LA Review of Books, 27 August 2013, [accessed 1 July 2019].6 One objection may be that Beauvoir's text is 'philosophy' while Ferrante's is 'literature'. Beauvoir herself was interested in the connections between the two and primarily saw herself as a writer. See Toril Moi, 'What Can Literature Do? Simone de Beauvoir as a Literary Theorist', PMLA, 124.1 (2009), 189–98, [accessed 16 July 2017].7 Tortorici.8 Enrica Maria Ferrara, 'Performative Realism and Post-Humanism in The Days of Abandonment', in The Works of Elena Ferrante: Reconfiguring the Margins, ed. by Grace Russo Bullaro and Stephanie V. Love (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), pp. 128–57, especially pp. 150–51.9 Toril Moi, '"To Make Them Other, and Face Them": Literature, Philosophy, and "La femme rompue"', in Women, Genre and Circumstance: Essays in Memory of Elizabeth Fallaize, ed. by Margaret Atack, Diana Holmes, and Judith Still (Oxford: Legenda, 2012), pp. 11–24, 13.10 Simone de Beauvoir, trans. by Patrick O'Brian, All Said and Done (London: Deutsch and Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1974), pp. 125–8.11 Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany Chevallier (New York: Vintage Books, 2011), 443–4. Subsequent references to this edition are given in parentheses.12 Stiliana Milkova, 'Mapping Urban Feminine Topographies', in Elena Ferrante as World Literature (New York: Bloomsbury, 2021), pp. 131–64, especially pp. 153–64.13 Gwendolyn Dolske, 'Existential Destruction: De Beauvoir's Fictional Portrayal of Woman's Situation', Women's Studies, 43.2 (2014), 155–69 (p. 167), [accessed 20 March 2019].14 Phil Powrie, 'Rereading between the Lines: A Postscript on La femme rompue', Modern Language Review, 87.2 (1992), 320–29.15 Mullenneaux, 'Introduction', in Naples' Little Women. Ferrante herself has asserted that in her works, 'It's always a woman writing, and this writer always struggles to organize, in a text, what she knows but doesn't have clear in her mind': 'Elena Ferrante, Art of Fiction No. 228', Paris Review (Spring 2015), [accessed 30 June 2019]. For more on authorship and subjectivity in Ferrante's works, see Isabella Pinto, Elena Ferrante: Poetiche e politiche della soggetività (Milan: Mimesis, 2020); Alessia Ricciardi, Finding Ferrante: Authorship and the Politics of World Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 2021).16 Stiliana Milkova, Elena Ferrante as World Literature (New York: Bloomsbury, 2021).17 'Olga réussit à remonter la pente par la mise en pratique de l'obscénité'. Translation mine. Martine Bovo-Romoeuf, 'Sensualité et obscénité dans L'amore molesto et I giorni dell'abbandono d'Elena Ferrante', Cahiers d'études italiennes, 5 (2006), 129–38, [accessed 20 March 2019].18 Allison Holland, 'La Femme rompue', in Excess and Transgression in Simone de Beauvoir's Fiction: The Discourse of Madness (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009), 160; Lucy Stone McNeece, 'La Langue Brisée: Identity and Difference in de Beauvoir's La Femme Rompue', French Forum, 15.1 (1990), 73–92, (p. 86).19 This is an interpretation also applied to Beauvoir's text; see McNeece, Powrie.20 Elizabeth Fallaize, 'Resisting Romance: Simone de Beauvoir, "The Woman Destroyed" and the Romance Script', in Contemporary French Fiction by Women: Feminist Perspectives, ed. by M. Atack and Phil Powrie (New York: Manchester University Press, 1990), pp. 15–23, at p. 171.21 Zanini-Cordi, especially p. 171.22 Elena Ferrante, La frantumaglia (Rome: Edizioni e/o, 2003), 88. On the uses of fiction, see also Elena Ferrante, 'Storie, Io', in I margini e il dettato (Rome: Edizioni e/o, 2021), pp. 83–117.23 Ray Davison, 'Simone de Beauvoir: La Femme rompue', in Short French Fiction: Essays on the Short Story in France in the Twentieth Century, ed. by J. E. Flower (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1998), pp. 71–88, at p. 87

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