Elena Ferrante’s cycle of ‘Neapolitan Novels’ (2011–14) is the focus of analysis in this chapter, which reads the relationship between Elena and Lila as a heuristic for that between Italy and Naples. It follows the development of Elena’s understanding of Naples from a predominant association with the rione of her childhood in the first volume, through a negative contrast with the cities of central and northern Italy in the second and third volumes, to its final manifestation as the symbolic mirror of Italy and of Western civilization in the concluding volume. It relates Elena’s altered understanding of the city to her encounter with feminist and postcolonial thought and her consequent questioning of the ideological presuppositions of her cultural formation. Ultimately, I argue that Elena’s intellectual journey prompts a revised understanding of Lila-Naples and exemplifies the path that must be taken to reconceptualize the relationship between Naples and the nation beyond the binary terms of meridionalismo and its long legacy and in terms of differently accented understandings of Italian and Western culture.