Angela

Angela is Giovanna’s closest childhood friend and a familiar measure of the person Giovanna believes herself to be. Their friendship grows inside a shared family world of reading, frank conversation, and carefully taught independence, but it is tested as adult conflicts reshape the girls’ loyalties. Angela’s changing closeness to Tonino and her resentment of Giovanna’s relationship with Giuliana eventually turn their intimate bond into a source of accusation and distance.

Identity and Childhood

Angela is the same age as Giovanna and the older of two sisters; Ida is two years younger. The girls’ parents have been friends for decades and share similar views, so Angela and Giovanna grow up with a comparable education and a common set of expectations. None of the three girls has been baptized or taught prayers. They have been given early explanations of the body, encouraged to take pride in being born female, and taught to read widely and approach their parents with questions. Their parents also warn them about dangers in Naples and the wider world, while their teachers keep them informed about popular music, films, television, singers, and actors.

The three friends combine this cultivated seriousness with ordinary adolescent fantasy. They privately imagine becoming famous actresses with glamorous boyfriends, while maintaining a disdain for consumer goods and the tastes of their contemporaries. Giovanna’s bond with Angela is closer than her bond with the younger Ida, though Ida distinguishes herself by reading more and writing poems and stories. The girls can speak frankly and make peace after disagreements, which helps establish Angela as someone Giovanna initially trusts to assess her fairly.

That trust becomes especially important when Giovanna fears that she is changing for the worse. She asks Angela and Ida whether they have noticed a deterioration in her, hoping for the judgment of friends who have been raised much as she has. Their answer is qualified rather than condemning: Angela concedes that there is a little change, but not physically, while Ida says Giovanna is pretty and appears less attractive when anxiety shows in her expression. Angela’s response offers reassurance without denying Giovanna’s distress.

Intimacy and First Fractures

The girls’ closeness is expressed through physical affection as well as confidences. On one occasion, after Giovanna has been talking about Tonino, Angela holds her tightly, and the two remain wrapped around each other, kissing and caressing. Angela calls Giovanna Tonino’s name and asks her to swear that she will let her meet him; Giovanna promises. The scene shows how easily their friendship accommodates tenderness, teasing, and romantic jealousy before those feelings become a sustained conflict.

Angela later confides that she and Tonino are a couple. She says he calls her often, that they meet in Posillipo and have walked together in Mergellina, and that they declared their love less than a week earlier. Angela presents him as quiet but substantial: he speaks slowly, allows her to direct him because he loves her, yet can stand up to anyone who tries to dominate him. He is tall, curly-haired, and handsome, works after earning a surveyor’s diploma, and secretly studies architecture despite his larger ambitions. He is also a friend of Roberto, Giuliana’s fiancé, though Angela considers Roberto comparatively ordinary and cannot understand why Giuliana is so devoted to him.

Angela’s account of Tonino carries more than information about the relationship. Giovanna suspects that Angela is also using the story to show that she remains happy despite her parents’ separation. When Angela later describes how being near someone can make her feel a need to change, she connects that change to her mother’s hopes for her and to Tonino. She also reports that Vittoria resents the possibility that she might become less dependent on her, calling her foolish for not eating and for becoming thin. The competing influences around Angela—her mother, Vittoria, and Tonino—make her romantic life part of a wider struggle over who gets to guide her future.

Family Rupture and Conflicted Loyalties

The collapse of the adults’ friendship alters the girls’ daily world. After a violent dispute between Giovanna’s father, Andrea, and Angela’s father, Mariano, Mariano disappears from Via San Giacomo dei Capri, and Giovanna sees Angela and Ida less often. The quarrel had begun among familiar political and intellectual subjects, but escalated into shouting and insults; Costanza left the apartment, and Andrea ran after her. The girls discuss the scene by telephone, sensing that the conflict concerns their parents’ sexual relationships rather than the political arguments they had grown up hearing. Its adult intimacy feels to them disturbing and repellent rather than romantic.

Angela subsequently tells Giovanna that Andrea may become a father to her and Ida because he will marry Costanza after a divorce. She also reports Mariano’s anguished claim that the girls’ real father is Andrea, a statement that threatens to make friendship and family identity indistinguishable. Angela says she has a boyfriend but asks Giovanna to keep it secret: it is Tonino. Although Giovanna says that even if their parents marry the girls will remain Mariano’s daughters and she Andrea’s, she keeps her irritation about Angela’s relationship to herself. She also denies that Tonino ever liked her, though the denial does not remove the rivalry latent in their shared interest in him.

That rivalry sharpens when Angela learns that Giovanna has seen Giuliana and plans to see Roberto. Angela reverses her earlier judgments, now praising Tonino and describing Giuliana as a torment to her brother. Her objection is not simply that Giovanna dislikes Tonino: she is jealous that Giuliana has spoken with Giovanna without going through her. While out walking, Angela urges Giovanna not to see Giuliana anymore, arguing that Giuliana has grown up and treats them like little girls. Giovanna rejects that account. Angela’s attempt to define which relationships Giovanna may pursue marks a turn from their earlier frank companionship toward possessiveness and competition.

Diverging Relationships

Giovanna becomes increasingly absorbed in Roberto, and Angela’s comments expose the gap between her friend’s apparent composure and her private longing. Angela contrasts the way Roberto treated her with the way he spoke to Giovanna, likening the exchange between them to a conversation between professors. Giovanna jokes and makes faces, but privately she is pleased that Roberto paid attention to her and wants to speak with him again and again. The gratification soon gives way to bitterness because she cannot make that meeting continue. Angela sees the encounter from outside, while Giovanna experiences it as the beginning of an enduring preoccupation.

As Giovanna’s relationships with Roberto and Giuliana solidify, the friends’ accounts of sexuality also diverge. Angela describes having occasional relationships with classmates and with a teacher more than fifty years old, despite being involved with Tonino. Giovanna, meanwhile, has begun to fend off Silvestro and to reject Corrado’s continuing advances; Rosario repeatedly suggests that she visit his attic apartment on Via Manzoni. She comes to regard these suitors as belonging to a degrading world in which she had previously participated, and she resists Angela’s assumption that her lack of enthusiasm is simply an expression of devotion to Roberto. The friendship no longer guarantees that the girls will understand or describe one another’s feelings in the same way.

Tonino’s departure from Angela’s life deepens the split. After an episode involving a film and Tonino’s disappearance, Angela becomes sad and mean, and accuses Giovanna of failing to support her. She says she had told the story to Costanza and to Andrea; Costanza took her side, while Andrea became angry with Giovanna after learning who Tonino was and where he came from. Angela reports Andrea’s view that Giovanna knew what kind of people Tonino’s family were and should have protected her. She insists that Giovanna did not protect her. Giovanna answers by asking Angela to leave her alone and to confide in Andrea and Costanza instead, whom she says understand her better, then hangs up.

After that exchange, Giovanna deliberately strengthens her relationship with Giuliana. She acknowledges that part of her reason is to remain close to Roberto, but believes Giuliana also needs her because Tonino has left without explanation and Vittoria is bullying her. When Angela tries to reconcile and proposes going out together, Giovanna repeatedly claims to have a date with Giuliana and makes clear that Angela cannot come because Giuliana cannot stand her. The friendship’s estrangement is therefore maintained not by silence alone but by Giovanna’s active use of Giuliana as a boundary between herself and Angela.

Change and Narrative Significance

Angela’s story continues to run alongside the larger family conflict even after the girls have become divided. Giuliana tells Giovanna that Tonino’s absence has left her to face Vittoria’s pressure and that Vittoria and Margherita want her to demand that Roberto marry her immediately and move back to Naples. Giuliana does not want to make that demand: Roberto is busy with work important to his career, and she wants to leave Naples. The episode reveals the pressures Angela’s former boyfriend’s departure has helped create, while also placing Giovanna in the position of listening to and advising someone Angela resents.

Through Angela, the novel makes childhood friendship vulnerable to the same confusions that govern adult relationships: family secrets, romantic desire, loyalty, and competing claims to protection. The early image of three girls raised with similar freedoms gives way to sharply different experiences. Angela seeks reassurance and support as her parents separate and Tonino disappears; Giovanna pursues her own attachments and refuses the role Angela assigns her. Their closeness remains legible in the intensity of their past affection and in the pain of their accusations, but it no longer guarantees solidarity. Angela’s changing judgments also serve as a counterpoint to Giovanna’s: she is not merely a trusted witness to Giovanna’s development, but a friend with desires and resentments that Giovanna cannot control.