The Lost Daughter

Nina is 23 years old. She is married to Tonino, who belongs to a large Neapolitan family, and her daughter is the two-year-old Elena. When Leda first sees the younger woman on the beach, she feels a kinship with her, first because Nina stands out as “an anomaly” in her large family (18). From afar, she is beautiful and delicate, whereas the others are coarse and ugly, reminding Leda of how she saw herself in her own Neapolitan family. However, unlike Leda, Nina appears to “have no desire for anything but her child” (19). She is a perfect vision of motherhood, making Leda jealous. Gradually, the illusion of her perfect motherhood unravels as she also admits to feelings of maternal “turmoil” after Elena’s doll goes missing.

Up close, Nina is not as glamorous. Leda notices she is “less beautiful, not as young” and that “the waxing at her groin had been badly done” (27). She is uneducated, she frequently speaks in dialect, and her husband associates with “bad people,” presumably criminals. Like Leda’s mother, Nina “play[s] at being the well-dressed, well-behaved lady” and the beautiful young mother (24), but she quickly reverts to violence and dialect when faced with conflict, “hissing insults” that Leda recognizes from her mother and grandmother before stabbing Leda with the hatpin at the end of the novel.

Leda sees both her past and present in Nina. She is the age of Leda’s own daughters, young women who have escaped the “black well” of Naples and “belong to another time” (90), free from limiting assumptions of motherhood and female identity. Nina, however, remains caught in the “shattering” consequences of motherhood that have affected generations of women in Leda’s family. Leda feels drawn to help Nina just as Brenda gave her the courage to escape as a young mother, but she worries that Nina doesn’t have the same resources. Her act of violence at the end of the novel suggests Nina cannot escape as Leda has.

Rosaria is Nina’s sister-in-law. At 42 years old, she is six months pregnant with her first child, a daughter. Her husband is an older man called Corrado. Leda describes Rosaria as ugly, and because of this, she initially ignores Rosaria on the beach, preferring to focus on the more beautiful Nina. Where Nina appears to be the exception in her family, Rosaria epitomizes a Neapolitan woman: overbearing, vulgar, and violent. Gino scoffs, “Lady, her?” when he and Leda share a meal and discuss Nina’s family. Rosaria is also the kind of woman who sees motherhood as the pinnacle of the female experience. She has long hoped for a child and now “carries her belly with confidence” (84). Because of her age, Rosaria feels she already knows how to be a mother, and she often steps in with Elena, showing off her mothering skills with an air of superiority that frustrates both Nina and Leda. Leda compares Rosaria to Lucilla, a woman from her past who played the role of the “good mother” to Leda’s daughters easily because she had no real responsibility.

Rosaria’s conversations with Leda almost always revolve around children; they talk about Elena, Leda’s daughters, and Rosaria’s unborn baby. When Leda reveals that she abandoned her girls for three years, Rosaria is horrified. She behaves “coldly” toward Leda for the rest of the novel, no longer wanting Nina to speak to the other woman and avoiding her on the beach. Despite her initial distaste for Rosaria, Leda realizes that they are not dissimilar. As hard as she has tried to distance herself from her family and ascend the social ladder, being around the Neapolitans, especially Rosaria, shows Leda she could easily “go back to being just like” the other woman (90).

Gino is the handsome young attendant at the bathhouse. At 22 years old, he is the same age as Leda’s youngest daughter and a student of law. During dinner with Leda, he confesses a crush on Nina, and Leda later sees them kissing in the forest. Gino serves primarily as a way for Leda to reflect on her daughters and their adolescence. She describes the boy as a “male child” and wonders if she would have found Gino attractive in her youth. However, she has lost too much of herself to know the answer; she sees him only “through the filter of Bianca’s experiences, of Marta’s” (17). They have dinner together and later share a dance. Although there is no attraction between them, Leda experiences a “vague irritation” when she learns about his crush on Nina, feeling as if the younger woman has “taken something away from [her]” (57). In this way, Leda’s possessiveness with Gino parallels her impulse to take the doll. She doesn’t really want him, but she doesn’t want anyone else to have him, either.

Giovanni is the elderly caretaker of the apartment that Leda rents. He is 69 years old, a father, and a grandfather. When Leda sees him out playing cards, he makes a show of talking to her, hoping his friends will believe there is some intimacy between them. Leda isn’t attracted to Giovanni, but she enjoys his attention. It reminds her of her femininity and sex appeal, and she imagines “rooting for him in the card game, like a blond bimbo in a gangster movie” (34). When he comes to her apartment to offer her a freshly caught fish, the two spend the afternoon together, sharing wine and talking about their families. Leda enjoys his company, and their conversation is perhaps the lengthiest in the novel. Giovanni spends much of the afternoon talking about his longing for bygone times. This would usually bother Leda, but she feels only compassion for the older man.

Leda feels like Giovanni enjoys her company and sees her as she wants to be seen: “a woman who came from Florence, had a nice car, beautiful clothes like the ones on TV, was on vacation alone” (108). She is still a mother, and she talks at length with Giovanni about her children, but she also feels seen as a woman.