Breaking out of the cage of anthropocentrism : ecofeminism in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet and other essays

Abstract

This article examines the confluence of feminist and ecological concerns across Elena Ferrante’s literary corpus. After a discussion of Ferrante’s engagement with Giacomo Leopardi, this paper considers references to the climate emergency and the Campania waste crisis in her work. An analysis of ‘Tremore’ illuminates Ferrante’s ecofeminism — an ethics of radical openness to all living beings. Proposing an ecofeminist attitude of interspecies solidarity on a damaged planet, the tetralogy explores the concurrent oppressions of women and nonhuman animals. While the episode of Lila’s exploitation in the factory connects the butchering of animals to women’s physical and financial abuse at the hands of men, Lila’s characterization as a snake and a falcon challenges human exceptionalism. Smarginatura is understood as an experiment in ecological writing: rather than engaging in an aesthetic or anthropomorphizing contemplation of the world that entails remoteness, Ferrante reminds us of our enmeshment with every form of life.