Uncanny identities in Elena Ferrante and Oscar Wilde

This project studies the implications of the multiplicity and fragmentation of identity as portrayed in Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) and Elena Ferrante's L'amica geniale (My Brilliant Friend) (2011). These two texts have yet to be compared side by side, but, as this project intends to demonstrate, their comparison leads to fruitful analysis of literary identity as the catalyst for an uncanny reading experience. This brings us to Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, who is known to have expounded the concept of the uncanny as related to literature and vision. I use his theory to guide my exploration of the paradoxically attractive and repulsive faces of Dorian Gray as well as the complex, mystifying friendship in Ferrante's novel as manifestations of the uncanny. Uncanny feelings are ultimately experienced on two levels in this pair of novels: by the characters themselves as well as by readers. Both Wilde's and Ferrante's text use the uncanny to problematize the concept of a fixed, identifiable personal identity in restrictive societal circumstances. In turn, this literary setting compels readers to face their innate fears and anxieties regarding the concept of identity that derive from paradoxical thoughts and emotions the texts' protagonists may arouse in them.