Elena Ferrante: Why no Catholic Church in the Neapolitan Novels?

May 25, 2015 5:15 PM

Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels are set in post-war Naples, and the Catholic Church shows up only peripherally, if at all. There is a wedding in the first novel, and the religious aspects of even this event are hardly acknowledged. Why might this be?

My book club and I are steadily making our way through these books, having finished "My Brilliant Friend" and "Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay." We have been surprised at the lack of reference to Catholicism as part of the life and culture of the small working class neighborhood that Ferrante creates in this series. I guess we had presumed this would be central to any story set in this time and place, particularly any story recounted in such granular detail.

We're wondering whether this is a deliberate omission by the author, whether it's an accurate reflection of a lack of religiosity at that place and time, or whether we're just missing it altogether somehow.

Any thoughts or answers?

Thanks!

posted by kensington314 to Media & Arts (3 answers total)

Could it be because the Italian Catholic Church was so thoroughly in bed with Mussolini? It was Mussolini, for example, who established Vatican City. Maybe at that time, the less said the better?

Further, I have heard that among Europeans, all architectural visual evidence to the contrary, Italians are some of the least religious people on the Continent.
posted by telstar at 9:35 PM on May 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

The church is in there, Elena's civil marriage was an issue with her mother in Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay and there's also the conflict around her essay in the earlier book. Elena is not religious, and the books are from her POV, but it wouldn't surprise me if the Solaras went to church and donated money regularly.
posted by betweenthebars at 10:19 PM on May 25, 2015

I was told by a Sardinian friend that there, the population after the war was split up around 50/50 conservative churchgoers and socialist atheists. Maybe the situation was similar in Napoli?
posted by mumimor at 1:12 AM on May 26, 2015