Girlhood on the Edge: A Comparative Study of Adolescent Female Experience in Elena Ferrante and Eileen Chang

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-611-6_143How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Girlhood; Female Adolescence; Elena Ferrante; Eileen Chang; Comparative Literature

Abstract

Although Elena Ferrante and Eileen Chang wrote within the contexts of postwar Italy and the Republic of China respectively, both authors display sustained attention to the experiences of adolescent girls. This article departs from existing scholarship by tracing each writer’s trajectory independently and, for the first time, establishing a systematic comparative study of their work from the perspective of girlhood. It concentrates on three interrelated axes, including private forms of communication within same-sex communities, the construction of teenage identity in relation to popular culture, and the ambivalent dynamics of rivalry and intimacy among female peers. The study demonstrates that Ferrante represents girlhood as a flowing and spiraling emergence rendered through an immersive interior perspective, whereas Eileen Chang frequently approaches girlhood from the stance of loss and elegy. This comparison not only addresses a lacuna in specialized scholarship on Chinese and Italian women’s writing but also offers concrete textual evidence in support of comparative literary practice grounded in cross-cultural dialogue.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Xiangyin Lyu
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/09/07
TI  - Girlhood on the Edge: A Comparative Study of Adolescent Female Experience in Elena Ferrante and Eileen Chang
BT  - Proceedings of the 2026 12th International Conference on Digital Humanities and Frontiers in Social Sciences (DHFSS 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 1338
EP  - 1346
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-611-6_143
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-611-6_143
ID  - Lyu2026
ER  -