Giovanna’s Friendship with Angela and Ida

This thread traces the childhood intimacy of Giovanna, Angela, and Ida through sexual awakening, family rupture, jealousy, and a tentative return to friendship.

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A Shared Childhood World

A Shared Childhood World Common upbringing Giovanna, Angela, and Ida grow up under parents who share ideals about education, reading, and responsible conduct. Their friendship is supported by a common vocabulary and by a sense that the three girls can ask questions freely and make peace after disagreements. Giovanna feels especially close to Angela, while Ida is younger but imaginative and widely read. Their time together gives Giovanna a trusted audience at the moment she begins to worry about her changing body. Friendship as a mirror When Giovanna asks whether she is becoming ugly, the girls try to reassure her. Angela offers the idea that anxiety can make someone look ugly temporarily, and Ida insists that Giovanna is physically pretty. Their words briefly help Giovanna imagine that her distress is reversible. But the exchange also reveals how strongly she needs her friends’ judgment to counter the frightening comparison she has heard at home.

Secrets and Storytelling

Secrets and Storytelling A new confidante Giovanna starts telling Angela and Ida about Vittoria, her relatives, and Enzo’s enduring presence in the lives of Vittoria and Margherita. She makes the stories more vivid in the telling, sometimes mixing what she knows with what she imagines. The friends become fascinated by this world, which seems more dramatic than their own familiar family lives. Their attention rewards Giovanna’s storytelling and helps her feel that her private relationship with Vittoria has given her something distinctive. Intimacy edged with performance Giovanna also tells her first lies to Angela and Ida, inventing details about a precious bracelet and her own naked appearance. Lying gives her a pleasurable sense of control, but it begins to separate what she shares from what she actually experiences. The friendship remains affectionate, yet it now has an audience-and-performer quality. Giovanna wants the girls to admire her new world while fearing that a real meeting with Vittoria might make that world seem less extraordinary.

A Friendship Divided by Adults

A Friendship Divided by Adults Family rupture reaches the girls The adults’ crises separate the three friends as well as their parents. Giovanna withdraws, stops trusting ordinary confidences, and avoids Angela and Ida while she tries to live with her father’s departure and her own school failure. Angela later tells Giovanna about her relationship with Tonino and about the painful changes in her family. Ida says that she and Angela no longer consider themselves their mother’s daughters, a declaration that echoes Giovanna’s own wish to break from parental authority. Comparison and resentment When Giovanna visits Costanza’s birthday gathering, old closeness returns only unevenly. Angela’s claim that Tonino never liked Giovanna wounds her, and Giovanna retaliates with cruel words that make Ida tremble. The girls are no longer protected by childhood’s easy affection. They use knowledge of one another as a weapon, while still longing for the intimacy that existed before the adults’ betrayals became part of their lives.

The Kiss and the Break

The Kiss and the Break Childhood closeness returns briefly After a strained period, Giovanna and Angela spend the evening together in Angela’s home. In the dark, Angela asks about Tonino and pulls Giovanna close, and the girls exchange kisses and caresses as they once did in childhood games. The contact feels soothing to Giovanna, a peaceful pleasure that pushes away her anxiety. Their physical closeness offers a rare moment in which companionship seems less complicated than the adults’ relationships around them. Anger and separation That fragile intimacy does not prevent the later rupture. After Tonino slaps Angela during the cinema fight, Giovanna’s sympathy for Giuliana and Tonino conflicts with Angela’s need for unconditional support. Angela accuses Giovanna of failing her, and Giovanna eventually tells her to confide in Andrea and Costanza instead. The friendship is not erased, but Giovanna chooses other attachments and lets Angela’s attempts at reconciliation go unanswered.

A Tentative Return

A Tentative Return Reopening an old bond As Giovanna’s studies improve, she reconnects with Angela and Ida through visits to Posillipo. Ida shares poems, and Angela recalls childhood scenes with affection, treating Giovanna’s return as a restoration of a bond she has missed. Giovanna feels real nostalgia but recognizes that the past is being revived imperfectly. The girls have changed, and their former closeness can no longer be recovered simply by repeating old habits. New distances within friendship Angela and Giovanna still laugh together, but Angela’s resentment and jealousy surface when Giovanna grows close to Giuliana. Angela feels displaced, while Giovanna does not want to give up the friendship she is forming elsewhere. Ida’s later story about a younger girl listening to the older girls kiss gives their childhood intimacy a new emotional meaning. It reminds Giovanna that even within their closest bonds, someone could feel excluded and unloved.

Before Giovanna’s adolescence begins

The summer and autumn after Giovanna meets Vittoria

After Andrea and Nella’s separation begins

The night Tonino leaves Naples

After Giovanna passes her repeated school year