Ferrante: I don’t know. I do think, though, that if a woman writer wants to achieve her utmost, she has to impose on herself a sort of systematic dissatisfaction. We compare ourselves with giants. The male literary tradition has an abundance of marvelous works, and offers a form for everything possible. The would-be writer must know the tradition thoroughly and learn to reuse it, bending it as needed. The battle with the raw material of our experience as women requires authority above all. Further, we have to fight against submissiveness, and boldly, in fact proudly, seek a literary genealogy of our own.