Wandering Women: Feminist Urban Experiences in Simone de Beauvoir and Elena Ferrante

Simone de Beauvoir’s Mémoires d’une jeune fille rangée (1958) and Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels (2011–2014) focus on the interaction between a female protagonist and the metropolitan environment around her. By relying upon the classic feminist criticism of Butler and Wolff, as well as Solnit’s and Iovino’s more recent theories about walking and the urban environment, this article analyzes the unconventional “bodily” flânerie of Beauvoir’s and Ferrante’s works. In particular, it focuses on how the sensory perception of the urban environment and the emotional encounter with its dwellers are the tools through which the woman writer acquires awareness of gender constraints and social status, and tries to subvert them.