Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in My Brilliant Friend, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Female Friendship
Masculine vs. Feminine Violence
Women’s Work
Poverty, Social Climbing, and Sacrifice
The Uses of Community
Love, Sex, and Strategy
Summary
Analysis
On March 12th, the day of Lila’s wedding, Lenù goes to the Cerullo house to help Lila get ready for the ceremony. When Lenù arrives, she finds Lila sitting on her bed in her underwear, her wedding dress beside her looking like “the body of a dead woman.” Lila asks Lenù if she is making a mistake. When Lenù asks why Lila would think such a thing, Lila says that she was perturbed by Maestra Oliviero’s failure to recognize her. Lenù insists that Oliviero is just “a mean old lady.”
Maestra Oliviero’s pointed refusal to recognize the version of Lila standing before her and offering her a wedding invitation has gotten deep under Lila’s skin. Lila wonders if, in marrying Stefano, she is making herself unrecognizable to everyone around her—and perhaps even to herself.
Themes
Lila urges Lenù to promise her that she’ll go on studying, and Lenù says she’ll keep going until she gets her diploma. Lila insists that Lenù must keep going in school—she’ll give her the money if need be. Lenù insists that school has to end at some point. However, Lila tells Lenù that she is her “brilliant friend” and must keep on with her studies.
Lila strips and gets into the bath. Lenù is embarrassed to see her friend’s naked body for the first time, but at the same time, she is stunned by how beautiful Lila is. Lenù becomes nervous as she thinks about how in just a few hours, Stefano will penetrate Lila and “disfigure her, perhaps, by making her pregnant.” Lenù is overcome by “violent emotion” as she helps Lila wash herself, and she longs to embrace or kiss her. Lenù is furious at the idea that she is making Lila clean and beautiful just so that Stefano can “sully” her later on. Lenù decides that if Lila is going to lose her virginity tonight, she herself must also “find a [dark] corner” where she can make Antonio defile her at the same time.
As Lenù helps Lila bathe, she is full of many conflicting emotions. She loves Lila and is sad—angry, even—at the idea of her being “disfigure[d]” by a man. At the same time, Lenù is afraid of being left behind as Lila embarks on a new phase of life. What Lenù feels isn’t precisely jealousy—though she is, without a doubt, intensely motivated to keep up with Lila in whatever small ways she can.
Themes
Lenù helps Lila put on her wedding dress and the shoes that she herself has designed. As Lila looks in the mirror, she declares that the shoes are ugly. Her mind’s dreams, she says, have ended up under her feet. She turns to Lenù, full of fear, and asks what is going to happen to her.
Lila is getting cold feet in the hours before her wedding ceremony. She laments that her dreams have amounted to so little and that she is entering into a terrifying unknown, risking her independence for a chance at safety from Marcello and the Solaras.
Themes
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