1993 Book FrenchWomenSWriting PDF

....
N IN SOCIETY
nist List edited by
Jo Campling
editorial advisory group
Phillida Bunckle, Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand;

Miriam David, South Bank University; Leonore Davidoff, University of
Essex; Janet Finch, University of Lancaster, Jalna Hanmer, University
of Bradford; Beverly Kingston, University of New South Wales,
Australia; Hilary Land, Royal Holloway and Bedford New College,
University of London; Diana Leonard, University of London Institute of
Education; Susan Lonsdale, South Bank University; Jean O'Barr, Duke
University, North Carolina, USA; Arlene Tigar McLaren, Simon
Fraser University, British Columbia, Canada; Hilary Rose, University
of Bradford; Susan Sellers, CentreD' Etudes Feminines, Universite de
Paris, France; Pat Thane, Goldsmiths' College, University of London;
Clare Ungerson, University of Kent at Canterbury.
The last twenty years have seen an explosion of publishing by, about
and for women. The list is designed to make a particular contribution to
this continuing process by commissioning and publishing books which
consolidate and advance feminist research and debate in key areas in a
form suitable for students, academics and researchers but also accessible
to a broader general readership.
As far as possible books adopt an international perspective incorporating

comparative material from a range of countries where this is illuminat-
ing. Above all they are interdisciplinary, aiming to put women's studies
and feminist discussion firmly on the agenda in subject-areas as dis-
parate as law, literature, art and social policy.
A list ofpublished titles follows overleaf

N IN SOCIETY
--
nist List edited by
Jo Campling
Published
Christy Adair Women and Dance

Sheila Allen and Carol Wolkowitz Homeworking: myths and realities
Niarnh Baker Happily Ever After? Women's fiction in postwar Britain, 194~0
Ros Ballaster et a/. Women's Worlds: ideology, femininity and the woman's
magazine
Jenny Beale Women in Ireland: voices of change
Jennifer Breen In Her Own Write: twentieth-century women's fiction
Valerie Bryson Feminist Political Theory: an introduction
Ruth Carter and Gill Kirkup Women in Engineering: a good place to be?
Joan Chandler Women without Husbands: an exploration of the margins of
marriage
Gillian Dalley Ideologies of Caring: rethinking community and collectivism
Emily Driver and Audrey Droisen (editors) Child Sexual Abuse: feminist perspectives
Elizabeth Ettorre Women and Substance Use
Elizabeth Fallaize French Women's Writing: recent fiction
Lesley Ferris Acting Women: images of women in theatre
Diana Gittins The Family in Question: changing households and familiar ideologies
Tuula Gordon Feminist Mothers
Eileen Green eta/. Women's Leisure, What Leisure?
Frances Heidensohn Women and Crime
Ursula King Women and Spirituality: voices of protest and promise
Jo Little eta/. (editors) Women in Cities: gender and the urban environment
Susan Lonsdale Women and Disability: the experience of physical disability among
women
Mavis Maclean Surviving Divorce: women's resources after separation
Shelley Pennington and Belinda Westover A Hidden Workforce: homeworkers in
England, 1850-1985
Vicky Randall Women and Politics: an international perspective
Diane Richardson Women, Motherhood and Childrearing
Rosemary Ridd and Helen Callaway (editors) Caught up in Conflict: women's
responses to political strife
Susan Sellers Language and Sexual Difference: feminist writing in France
Patricia Spallone Beyond Conception: the new politics of reproduction
Taking Liberties Collective Learning the Hard Way: women's oppression in men's
education
Clare Ungerson (editor) Women and Social Policy: a reader
Kitty Warnock Land before Honour: Palestinian women in the Occupied Territories
Annie Woodhouse Fantastic Women: sex, gender and transvestism
French Women's Writing
Recent fiction
Elizabeth Fallaize
ISOoh YEAR
M
MACMILLAN
" Elizabeth Fallaize 1993
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission

of this publication may be made without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or

transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with
the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988,
or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying
issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court
Road, London W1P 9HE.
Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to

this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and
civil claims for damages.
First published 1993 by

THE MACMILLAN PRESS LID
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG2l 2XS
and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
ISBN 978-0-333-49005-1 ISBN 978-1-349-23002-0 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-23002-0
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Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire, RG21 2XS, England
To my sister, Susan Passmore
Contents
Acknowledgements ix
1. Introduction: women's writing and the

French cultural context of the 1970s and 1980s 1
2. Marie Cardinal 30
3. Chantal Chawaf 51
4. Annie Ernaux 67
5. Claire Etcherelli 88
6. Jeanne Hyvrard 109
7. Annie Leclerc 131
8. Marie Redonnet 160
Bibliography 176
Index 181
vii
Acknowledgements
I first discussed the plan for this book with Susan Sellers, in Paris, in
1988; her enthusiastic support and Jo Campling's firm encouragement
helped me through the complex negotiations with French publishers
which followed. One of the great pleasures of the whole project has
been to work with them both. The interviews which I had in the spring
and summer of 1988 with Annie Ernaux, Annie Leclerc, Claire
Etcherelli, Marie Redonnet and Jeanne Hyvrard were also tremendously
exciting experiences; I am extremely grateful to them all. My thanks
also go to Chantal Chawaf, for answering questions, and to Marie
Cardinal for sparing time to talk to me, in Oxford, in 1991.
Both the University of Birmingham and St John's College, Oxford
have, at different times, given financial help towards this project. The
students who read women's writing with me at Birmingham in 1989-90
were a special group whose enthusiasm and interest made certain there
was no danger of my losing my impetus. A number of friends and
colleagues have read chapters and advised me: Diana Knight, Colin
Davis, Michael Driscoll and Line Cottegnies have all offered good
advice and I thank them warmly. I am indebted to Susan Sellers for her
helpful comments on the manuscript as a whole, and I apologise for her
ruined train journey. Alice and Jack have accepted my absences with
good grace; my mother-in-law, Kit Driscoll, and my parents, John and
Jill Fallaize, have stood in for me more times than any of us can
remember. My grateful thanks go to them.
ELIZABETH FALLAIZE
Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following for permission to

translate and/or reprint copyright material: Editions Gallimard for
extracts from Une femme, La Place and La Femme ge!ee by Annie
Ernaux; and from Un arbre voyageur by Claire Etcherelli, copyright©
ix
x Acknowledgements
1988, 1983, 1981, 1978 by Editions Gallimard; Editions Denoel for

extracts from Elise ou Ia vraie vie by Claire Etcherelli, copyright ©
1967 by Editions Denoel; Editions de Minuit for extracts from Rose
Melie Rose by Marie Redonnet, and from La Meurtritude by Jeanne
Hyvrard, copyright© 1987, 1977 by Les Editions de Minuit; University
of Nebraska Press for extracts from Mother Death by Jeanne Hyvrard,
translated and with an afterword by Laurie Edson, copyright © 1988 by
the University of Nebraska Press. Originally published as Mere Ia mort
© 1976 by Les Editions de Minuit; Van Vactor and Goodheart, Inc. for
an extract from The Words to Say It by Marie Cardinal, translated by Pat
Goodheart, copyright 1983 © by Van Vactor and Goodheart, Inc.
Originally published as Les Mots pour le dire © 1975 by Editions
Grasset et Fasquelle; Editions Bernard Grasset for extracts from Les
Grands Desordres and Autrement dit by Marie Cardinal; and from
Origines, Hommes et femmes and Parole de femme by Annie Leclerc,
copyright © 1987, 1977, 1988, 1974 by Editions Grasset et Fasquelle;
Flammarion for an extract from Elwina, le roman fee by Chantal
Chawaf, copyright © 1985 by Flammarion; Editions Mercure de France
for an extract from Ble de semences by Chantal Chawaf, copyright ©
1976 by Mercure de France.
Introduction: women's writing and the
French cultural context of the 1970s
and 1980s
French women's writing, which has historically tended to remain on the

margins of the literary establishment, sometimes to the point of near
invisibility, blossomed in the 1970s with a power which made it
suddenly highly visible. Publishing houses set up new series for women
writers, texts by women went to the top of the best-sellers list and a
public debate about the nature or specificity of women's writing was
begun. This high profile was undoubtedly fuelled both by the emergence
of post-1968 feminism, with its development of a new consciousness
about women and gender, and by the economic optimism of the 1960s
and early 1970s which increased access to publishing.
What kind of writing was produced in these heady circumstances?
What happened to women's writing in the 1980s with an economic
downturn and the virtual disappearance from the public eye of feminism
in France? Did the success of women writers translate into any real
measure of recognition by the literary establishment? These are the
issues on which I shall be focusing in this introduction; the translations
of the work of seven French women writers over these two decades
which follow will also, I hope, offer English-speaking readers the
opportunity to consider some of these questions in relation to the texts
themselves. However, my selection of authors and texts sets up a frame
which needs some prior explanation. A first constraint on choice is the
difficulty of persuading French publishers to allow the translation of
extracts; this inevitably affects choice in a rather arbitrary way. A less
arbitrary and an important consideration was my desire to make avail-
able writing which had not yet been translated and which deserves cir-
culation outside the French-speaking world.' For this reason, none of
the more institutionalised figures who are more widely read in English
such as Duras, Sarraute, Wittig or Rochefort has been included, even
2 French Women's Writing
though they themselves are not necessarily well known. A third and
finally paramount consideration in my choice has been the fact that all
the writers represented have consciously produced texts as women.
As is often remarked, not all women writers produce texts which
challenge traditional gender norms, even though we might think that
women currently might have much to gain by challenging them; 2 all the
women writers translated in this volume do however offer that chal-
lenge, in a variety of ways. All of them write as women, though this
may express only a part of the situation from which they write. By no
means all the writers represented here would wish their gender to be
taken as always the predominant issue; Marie Redonnet, for example,
responded to the stock question 'Do you write as a woman?' with the
firm answer that 'I write with all my differences, of which being a
woman is one' .3 By grouping together these women writers, I am of
course foregrounding their gender, and implying a reading method
which approaches women's writing exclusively alongside other texts by
women. It is not my view that this should always be done. However,
before women's writing can be read at all, it needs quite simply to be
made available and to be recognised as forming part of the pool of texts
from which reading-lists are constructed and bookshop shelves filled. I
hope this book will contribute towards that more immediate aim. As
part of my second aim, which is to contribute to what Nancy Miller has
called a 'poetics of location' (by which she means relating women's
writing to a historicised national and cultural production in order to
counteract the temptation to link women writers to each other across
cultures and periods in a universalising way), and in order to allow the
reader of this collection to explore what being a woman means for these
writers, I have in fact circumscribed quite tightly some of the other pos-
sible parameters. 4 With one exception, all the texts translated here were
published between 1968 and 1988, and the majority of their authors
only began writing in that period. All seven authors were born and
brought up in France (or in the case of Marie Cardinal spent a great deal
of time and began writing there), and most still live and write in Paris. 5
All kindly agreed to give their time to be interviewed. 6
The model of the writer
I shall be arguing that there is an obvious link between the fact that these
writers are conscious of their status as women and the fact that they are
Introduction 3
writing in a period where a new range of discourses about women and

gender gained general currency. However, before coming to 1968 and its
impact on women's consciousness of themselves, it is worth asking
where women writers stood in the late 1960s and what models of writing
they had available to them. In comparison with the situation of their
Anglo-American sisters, the model of the writer which French women
had before them was inescapably male. In terms of women writers who
would appear on most school and university courses in France, only
Madame de Lafayette, writing in the seventeenth century, could be
described as omnipresent. Only a handful of later writers - George Sand,
Colette, Nathalie Sarraute, Marguerite Yourcenar - had or have any
chance at all of being promoted into the canon. Simone de Beauvoir and
Marguerite Duras had made reputations abroad far greater than any they
had or have today inside France. In a recent interview, Marguerite Duras
herself referred to the fact that despite having become 'an international
phenomenon' her position in France is 'still shaky', and it is true that by
delaying giving her the Prix Goncourt until 1984, when she was 70 and
had been writing for forty years, the award appeared less than
enthusiastic.7
In the 1960s, Colette was in fact the only woman thus far in the twen-
tieth century to have made any major advance within the literary
establishment; she was officially honoured as a writer by the award of
the Legion d 'honneur in 1922 and in 1945 became president of the
Academie Goncourt which awards the annual Prix Goncourt for liter-
ature. She died in 1954, thirty years before her work received the plaudit
of being published in the Pleiade edition. 8 No other woman writer in the
twentieth century had achieved this level of official recognition and yet,
as Nancy Miller remarks, her work, at least until recently, was perceived
as being somehow marginal to mainstream twentieth-century writing,
often presented as offering essentially a sensitive portrayal of nature
together with a deliciously scandalous representation of sexuality, both
homo- and heterosexual. As late as 1967 Henri Peyre commented in his
influential French Novelists of Today that Colette's work is 'grossly
overrated' .9
Simone de Beauvoir, of whom many Anglo-American readers will
immediately think, had established a modest literary reputation with her
first novel L' Invitee (She Came to Stay) in 1943 and won the Prix
Goncourt in 1954 with Les Mandarins (The Mandarins), a portrayal of
France's intellectual and political crises in the immediate postwar years.
Her standing was low in the 1960s, however, and the two novels she
published in 1966 and 1967 were given a dismissive critical reception.

Marguerite Yourcenar became relatively well known in the 1950s after
the publication of her Memoires d' Hadrien (Memoirs of Hadrian) and
she received the Femina prize for L'Oeuvre au noir (The Abyss) in
1968. However, Yourcenar had lived in America since the Second
World War and her historical subjects also tended to set her apart from
the literary mainstream. Fran~oise Mallet-Jorris, whose first novel Le
Rempart des Beguines (1951) had achieved a succes de scandale with
its depiction of a violent sexual relationship between an adolescent girl
and an older woman, went on to win the Femina prize in 1958 and
achieved some prominence in literary circles. 10 In literary terms the
1950s in France were dominated by the practitioners of the Nouveau
Roman (New Novel) and their attempts to break with the conventions of
plot, characterisation and description. Although the leader of the group
was generally perceived to be Alain Robbe-Grillet, two women writers
-Nathalie Sarraute and Marguerite Duras - were associated with it.
Sarraute was amongst the theoreticians of the group and her theoretical
essays, L' Ere du soup~on (The Era of Suspicion) (1956), were
influential in the discussions of form and technique in the novel which
were taking place. During the 1950s and 1960s she produced a series of
avant-garde fictional texts exploring what she terms the 'tropisms' of
brute existence lurking beneath the thin veneer of socialisation. The
impulse in her texts towards ever greater anonymity of narrator and
character makes it unsurprising that she should deny, as she does, the
existence of any distinction of gender at the level of the tropism or at the
level of writing. 11 Duras, who wrote in a more traditional form
throughout the 1940s, moved through a progressive stripping down of
the novel which reached a turning point in 1958 with Moderato
Cantabile. She was eventually to become one of the most celebrated of
the nouveaux romanciers, but few were percipient enough to foresee this
in the pre-1968 period.
There were other women writers who had attracted attention in the
1950s. Fran~oise Sagan became famous virtually overnight with her
account of adolescent sexuality in Bonjour Tristesse, published in 1954
(title retained in English translation). Both this and her later novels pub-
lished in the 1950s challenged what Marguerite Youcenar calls the
romantic sentimentalism of much French writing about love and sex-
uality.12 Christiane Rochefort's Le Repos du guerrier ("H-arrior's Rest,
1958), examining the effects on a middle-class girl of her sexual passion
for an alcoholic and depicting the struggle for power between the two,
also became a best seller (turned into a film); during the 1960s she went
Introduction 5
on to write Les Petits Enfants du siecle (Josyane and the Welfare)

which, in giving voice to a girl living in one of the huge new housing
estates constructed from the mid-1950s onward, contributed to the
desacrilisation of the literary in France. Les Stances a Sophie (1963)
(improbably translated as Cats Don't Care for Money) has an insurgent
wife refusing the model into which her bourgeois husband tries to force
her and escaping temporarily into the arms of a woman lover. Monique
Wittig's first novel, L'Opoponax (The Opoponax, 1964), which won the
Prix Medicis and creates a childhood universe in which a small girl
develops a crush on an older one, also gestured discreetly towards a
world in which heterosexuality is displaced from centre stage. Though
Rochefort and Sagan did not attract the serious attention from the
literary establishment which Wittig's text achieved, these texts exhibit a
preoccupation with gender roles, with adolescence and with attitudes to
sexuality which reflect the social changes taking place during the 1960s
and point the way towards the events of 1968. 13
Change in the 1960s
The 1950s and 1960s were a period of rapid change in the labour market
in France which had particular consequences for women, as well as for
the young. From the early 1950s onwards, France experienced a period
of heady economic growth which continued right up to the oil crisis of
1973-4; during the 1960s France was second only to Japan amongst
OECD countries in terms of its annual growth rate, which averaged over
6 per cent per annum. The labour market expanded rapidly and women,
in common with the rest of the labour force, found themselves in a new
and stronger economic bargaining position. In general terms, the mood
was one of optimism about the economic future, about rapidly rising
standards of living, and about greater possibilities of equal opportunities
for all. It was into this apparently cloudless horizon that the revolt of
May 1968 exploded. Ironically, it seems to have been precisely these
conditions of economic optimism which fuelled an outburst of revo-
lutionary utopianism. France's fifteen years of economic growth had
brought with it a process of rapid industrialisation and urbanisation
which had not been accompanied by corresponding changes in the work-
place, in education, and in the family. 14 Whatever the narrowly political
consequences of the May events may or may not have been, they have
become the symbol of a cultural and social shift in French society. The
fact that the spark which took a generation to the barricades ignited over
the issue of student rights to receive visitors of the opposite sex in their
halls of residence has prompted Annie Leclerc to describe the events as
'strangely feminine', both because of their origin injouissance (pleasure)
and because of the desire to rethink the world along the pleasure prin-
ciple which marked some of the debates of the time. 15 More pragmatical-
ly, the issue of visiting rights exemplifies how profoundly the power
structures of parent over child, teacher over student, manager over
worker were resented at a time when individual and sexual freedoms
made possible by economic and scientific developments beckoned on the
horizon.
It is tempting, indeed, to go further, and to read 1968 as a revolution
first and foremost directed against the Father and against other models
of paternal authority. In 1968, fathers (and not mothers) had legal
authority over their children; the age of majority was 21, the sale of
contraceptives had been legalised only the year before, and abortion was
illegal. Intellectual fathers also found themselves at risk. Many of the
students used the language of Marx in their struggle, but they used it
against the ossified authoritarian French Communist Party, no doubt
contributing in so doing to the later decline of the status of Marxism in
France. 16 Many of the ideologies of the 1960s in fact disappeared from
prominence in the early 1970s. Orthodox communism had already been
in crisis before 1968; the late 1960s saw the peak of the structuralist
vogue in France, with its removal of the subject and the evacuation of
the concept of the author in literature. By the middle of the 1970s the 'I'
had returned. Psychoanalyis and the work of Freud as mediated through
Lacan had a strong grip which did not abate in the 1970s and 1980s, but
it was much contested through the anti-psychiatry movement and the
rebellion ofthe patient against the analyst.
Together with these other power relationships, the years immediately
following 1968 eventually saw the identification and then the partial
dismantlement of the power relationship between men and women.
Indeed, it is arguable that one of 1968's best known slogans, Plus rienne
sera comme avant ('Nothing will ever be the same again'), eventually
turned out to be truest of all for women. Several of the books on 1968
make the point that the women's movement was without doubt the most
significant and certainly the most long-lived of the political movements
to emerge from the events of that year. 17 A number of the women writers
with whom this book deals did involve themselves in the various strands
of the M.L.F. (Women's Liberation Movement). However, of much
greater significance than the involvement of any particular individual is
Introduction 7
the fact that the growth of the women's movement during the 1970s, the
media attention given to it and the legislatory reforms concerning women
which took place, strongly affected both the way in which women
perceived themselves and the way in which women writers were them-
selves perceived by the reading public, the publishing houses and the
media which influence the reception of fiction.
Feminism reactivated
The first stirrings of feminist activity emerged in late 1968 when,

dissatisfied with the attitudes of male militants, women began to meet
separately to forge a new women's movement. The accounts which have
been written of some of the women-only General Assemblies held at
the Ecole des Beaux-Arts give an idea of how tumultuous and how
racked by theoretical and personal oppositions the meetings were. 18
During the 1970s the movement was to become, as Jane Jenson writes
'unusually schismatic and sectarian'. 19 By 1970, the first manifestos,
demonstrations and special publications were appearing; in May 1971,
343 women signed a statement published in Le Nouvel Observateur
declaring that they had had an illegal abortion. 20 The abortion issue
eventually became one of the most important legislative successes of
the MLF leading to a new law in 1974. The issue was important in the
general mobilisation of women in a political sense, and was also the
issue which brought Simone de Beauvoir into the movement. 21 When
Beauvoir was contacted by women active in the MLF in 1971 she had
virtually no public voice in France as the author of The Second Sex.
Indeed the book, published in 1949, appeared to have had little impact
in France beyond the initial storm of protest on its publication. The
women whom Beauvoir joined were those who, for the most part, had
already been politically active in left-wing groups. They began to theo-
rise women's oppression in terms of a cultural and social oppression,
and tried to find ways of articulating the women's struggle with the
class struggle. Simone de Beauvoir worked with these women through
the 1970s and 1980s until her death in 1986. Although it later split up
into two different groups, this broad tendency in the one with which
British feminists, commenting on French feminism, have most often
sympathised.
Most of the women working with or alongside Beauvoir in this broad
tendency were, of course, much younger that her (she was 60 in 1968)
and her role was never in any sense that of a leader. Nevertheless, a
number of women who went on to write fiction have affiliations with
her, either on a personal level or in the sense of using the author of The
Second Sex as a reference point. In her autobiographical account of her
relationship with her mother, ending with her mother's death, Annie
Emaux writes simply: 'She died one week before Simone de Beauvoir',
indicating the role of symbolic mother which Beauvoir played for her. 22
In 1989, thousands of women met at the Sorbonne to celebrate forty
years of The Second Sex; in the preface to the volume which emerged
from that meeting, Michele Le Doeuff reminds us that in the introduc-
tion to The Second Sex Beauvoir admits her hesitation at writing a book
on a subject 'which is irritating, especially to women, and it is not new'.
Beauvoir's great strength, comments Le Doeuff, was in overcoming that
hesitation, reopening this invisible subject and making possible again
the discourses of feminism which the post-1968 period brought with it. 23
One of those discourses emerged from a group of women with quite
different analyses from Beauvoir's famous proposition that 'One is not
born a woman, one becomes one'. Calling itself Psychanalyse et
Politique or Psych et Po, the group drew heavily on psychoanalysis and
on Lacan in particular to make the claim that 'woman has never
existed'. They took the psychoanalytic specificity of women for granted,
but argued that women have been repressed by patriarchy in such a way
that we do not know what woman would be if left to herself. Psych et
Po formed a separatist, homosexual group which was to prove both
highly creative and highly controversial. Organising themselves around
the key figure of Antoinette Fouque, herself a psychoanalyst who had
been in analysis with Lacan, the group declared itself against 'feminism'
in the sense of a reformist movement wanting power for women within
the existing patriarchal system and became embroiled in a series of legal
actions which eventually led them to the step of patenting the name
MLF.24
Embodying female difference
The idea of female difference, so central to this strand of what, from an

Anglo-American perspective, we might call the French feminist move-
ment, developed rapidly in the mid-1970s. Three major theorists of
difference published important and influential texts in the mid-1970s
which, though they differed in some important respects, all played a part
Introduction 9
in the project of bringing about what Psych et Po called 'the Revolution

of the Symbolic', a revolution which is aimed at bringing the feminine
into existence.25 Luce Irigary' s Speculum. De I' autre femme (Speculum
Of the Other Woman), published in 1974, attempts to locate and define
the 'masculine feminine', which, she argues, needs exploration before
we can think through the 'feminine feminine'. 26 Julia Kristeva's intellec-
tual allegiances in this period were more to Tel Quel than to the wom-
en's movement; nevertheless, her La Revolution du langage poetique
(Revolution in Poetic Language) also published in 1974 was regarded as
a capital text locating the feminine in the pre-oedipal, and characterising
it as a necessarily marginal, revolutionary force which disrupts language
with what she calls the force of the semiotic.
The following year in 'Le Rire de la Meduse' ('The Laugh of the
Medusa') and in another essay, 'Sorties' ('Exits'), Helene Cixous began
to theorise what the practice of an ecriture feminine (a feminine writing)
might be, a writing which would emerge from the feminine libidinal
economy and its multiple nature. She called on women in 'The Laugh of
the Medusa' to write through their bodies. All three identified the femi-
nine with the marginal, a quality endowing it with a subversive
potential, and though both Cixous and Kristeva's work conceives of
men as well as women authors 'writing the feminine', Cixous in particu-
lar sees women as being in a privileged position to identify with the
feminine. This is partly because women find it easier than men to
acknowledge the continuing impact of the bond with the mother, and
partly because of their own potential to nurture physically, which makes
it easier for women to accept the disruptions to the self that an encounter
with the other brings. 27
The mid-1970s saw an explosion of literary texts exploring the nature
of female difference. One of the first was Annie Leclerc's Parole de
femme ('Woman's Word'), published in 1974, which made a consider-
able impact on the public consciousness and quickly became a best
seller. Its title was taken as a manifesto in itself, since it appeared to put
forward the whole notion of a female language, both about woman and
emerging from woman, though Annie Leclerc herself had not had this
primarily in mind. 28 Most of the text is an exploration of the female
body, seen through a woman's eyes, and it becomes a lyrical exploration
of female bodily experiences such as menstruation, pregnancy and
breastfeeding. Leclerc's book challenged, as many feminist groups were
doing, the idea that pregnancy is a medical discourse. Though it was
published the year before Cixous's essays, it seemed literally to answer
Cixous's call to women to write their bodies; both women were

associated at various times with the Psych et Po group, and they joined
together in 1977 with the French-Canadian writer, Madeleine Gagnon,
to write a volume of essays entitled La Venue a I' ecriture (Her Arrival
in Writing). The same year as Parole de femme appeared Les Parleuses
(Woman to Woman), a literal transcript of conversations between
Marguerite Duras and Xaviere Gauthier which raised the whole question
of a new 'woman's word'.
The idea of 'writing the body' and the notion of an ecriture feminine
came to be strongly intertwined, largely because of the way in which the
two coincide in Cixous's texts. The term ecriture feminine is usually
said to have no exact equivalent in English since the adjective
'feminine' means both female (in the biological sense) and feminine (in
the cultural sense). One might add that the other half of the term ecriture
is not simply the equivalent of 'writing', since it gestures towards the
use of the word made by Roland Barthes to mean a particularly creative
and liberatory way of using language. Its title places it in the avant-
garde stream of experimental writing, to which it self-consciously
belongs. 29 In 1982, in a special issue of the Magazine Litteraire devoted
to women's writing and the question of its difference, an article entitled
'Ecriture du corps' ('Writing the Body') grouped together Annie
Leclerc, Helene Cixous, Chantal Chawaf, Emma Santos and Jeanne
Hyvrard under this heading.
It is by no means clear, however, that these writers do in fact share a
common notion of 'writing the body' and the term ecriture feminine
itself tended to disappear from circulation in the 1980s in favour of a
more generalised notion of the feminine which does not imply a specific
language available to women which would not be available to men.
Cixous herself readily acknowledges the difficulties and traps of the
term. In 'Extreme Fidelity', a text published in English in 1988 but
based on a lecture given in French in 1984, Cixous examines the terms
'masculine' and 'feminine' in relation to the Biblical story of Eve and
the apple; Eve's decision to-taste the apple is both a subversion of God's
law and the start of a libidinal education. Every life, writes Cixous, is
'before the apple. What I call "feminine" and "masculine" is the rela-
tionship to pleasure, the relationship to spending'; the terms themselves
are 'treacherous, fearful and war-mongering', but if we were to change
them, the new words would become 'just as immobile and petrifying'.
In the last analysis, Cixous writes, 'I give myself a poet's right, other-
wise I would not dare to speak. ' 30
Introduction 11
Chantal Chawaf, one of the writers represented in this collection and

whose first text was published in 1974, was also seen as a radical practi-
tioner of ecriture feminine. Retable ('Retabulum') is a text which
attempts to come to terms with the circumstances of Chawaf's birth, of
which she was kept in ignorance for the first twenty-five years of her life.
Her parents were both killed in an ambulance on the way to hospital, and
she was removed from her dead mother's womb by caesarian.31 The text,
written in a highly poetic and elaborated style, much closer to poetry and
myth than to narrative, attempts to give birth in literary terms to
an unknown mother who had never given birth to her daughter. All
Chawaf's writing is marked by an extreme attention to the
mother-daughter relationship, and by a stress on the importance and
fecundity of maternity. Chawaf' s stylised and poetic prose plays a crucial
role in the communication of the particular area of instinctive, affective
life, the area of primordial sensations dominated by the olfactory, oral
and sense of touch in which she works. Retable was recognised as a
highly original, important piece of writing; her later work extends and
develops her attempt to translate into language an area of pre-verbal
experience which Chawaf feels has been cut off from language in the
rigid Cartesian separation of mind and body. The language of Rabelais in
the sixteenth century was, for Chawaf, a vibrant language, drawing
directly on the experiences of the body as well as on more intellectual
operations of the mind. Chawaf sees what she calls her 'fusional' writing
(fusing body and intellect) as a return to the roots of the French language
which will both enrich language and rescue from the depths of the
unsayable pre-verbal level of our being, experiences which will become
more open to analysis and progress when they are brought into language.
To the extent that her most compulsive themes are maternity, the
mother-daughter relationship, female sexual desire and other experiences
of the female body, it is evident that Chawaf speaks from a female
position. But is the writing of the body in itself necessarily a 'feminine'
writing? Although she recognises that other terms could be substituted
for the adjective 'feminine', Chawaf points to the fact that the earliest
experiences of the body take place in the feminine space of the mother's
womb. The body's most primordial experience is therefore that of the
mother. 32 Like Helene Cixous, Chawaf conceives of this 'feminine'
writing as being present in men's writing as well as in that of women, but
she also points out that since the body is so identified with the mother,
writing the body carries the risk for the male writer of 'the loss of the
phallus, of his masculine identity and of feminising himself through an
identification with woman'. 33 Women, on the other hand, if they avoid

the trap of identifying with the father and being caught up in the phallic
ideal, are more likely to have retained their links with the maternal and to
be able to redirect language back to the feminine origins of the body.
Chawaf argues that the bringing of these experiences into language is
a crucial task if we wish to go beyond the double bind of the impossible
desire for reunion with the mother on the one hand, and the fear of the
feminine which marks male-identified separation on the other. 34 How-
ever, the extent to which writers have become increasingly cautious
about the use of the term ecriture feminine in the 1980s is indicated by
Chantal Chawaf's own remarks given in a talk in 1983, when she began:
'I'm not going to talk about a "feminine writing", nor am I going to talk
about a "feminist writing", I myself prefer to talk about an "affective
writing'" - although she still goes on to define this writing as one which
aims to 'give the body a voice, give voice to affectivity, to the diffuse,
and the fluctuating which may have been called the feminine, the
maternal, but which could also have other names' .35
Not all attempts to 'write the body' in this period were based on these
premisses. Monique Wittig's Les Guerilleres (title retained for the
English translation) and Le Corps lesbien (The Lesbian Body), published
in 1969 and 1973 respectively, focus on the body just as much as the
texts by Leclerc and Chawaf, but from a radical feminist and lesbian
position. Wittig aims to highlight female sexual organs and bodies not
only in a challenge to the myths about women's bodies constructed in
the past, but also, ultimately, in an attempt to demote and go beyond the
issue of physical difference. For Wittig, the playing up of physical
differences between the sexes simply exacerbates the social and cultural
differences which she wants to see eliminated. 36 One of the many
striking features of these texts is their focus on communities of women
which have no point of reference to men; however, male converts are
offered admission to the community of female lover-warriors at the end
of Les Guerilleres so that Wittig's lesbianism does not emerge quite as
isolationist as at first appears.
Psychoanalysis and madness
The crucial importance of psychoanalysis as a body of theory to a

particular group of women writers and to one strand of the MLF is
Introduction 13
evident. It had also gained a strong hold in France as a clinical practice,

and made a particularly prominent entry into literature in 1975 with
Marie Cardinal's Les Mots pour le dire (The Words to Say It), a
fictionalised account of her own seven-year long analysis. Though
Cardinal does not specifically relate her psychological difficulties to her
femininity and does not share the concerns of the theorists of Psych et
Po, the account of how her illness expressed itself through psychoso-
matic physical symptoms is one of the most striking features of the
book, so that the female body is again foregrounded in the text. In a
follow-up, Autrement dit ('In Other Words', 1977), a book which
she produced jointly with Annie Leclerc, Cardinal relates her illness
much more strongly to her situation as a woman, and explores the
mother-daughter relationship at the heart of her illness. The joint
production of the book, its refusal of any textual linearity and use of
recorded dialogue as well as 'written' text reflects the desire of many
women writers of the 1970s to find new modes of writing and to dispel
the authority of the writer. 37
Cardinal's account of her illness tends to promote psychoanalysis as a
practice and endorses the notion of a successful cure. A rather different
perspective on the relationship between women and concepts of
madness emerges from another first novel appearing in the mid 1970s -
Jeanne Hyvrard's Les Prunes de Cythere ('Plums of Cythera', 1975).
Published by Editions de Minuit, the text met with a warm critical
reception: the poetic cry of a black woman born in the French
Caribbean, who had spent part of her life locked up in a psychiatric
hospital, was hailed as a new literary departure. In the wake of post-
colonial anxieties, and of the explosive writings of Franz Fanon which
had placed black consciousness firmly on the agenda, the blackness of
the writer created interest; the critique it offered of psychiatric hospitals
and the possibility it raised of valuing madness in a positive way
appealed to another preoccupation of the times. In 1970 appeared both
Mannoni's Le Psychiatre, son 'fou' et Ia psychanalyse ('The Psychiatrist,
His "Madman" and psychoanalysis') and Gentis's Les Murs de l' asile
('The Asylum Walls'), both criticising current practice in psychiatric
hospitals, after Foucault's seminal Folie et deraison (Madness and
Civilisation) had examined the history of the meanings attributed to
madness.
Hyvrard published two more novels in rapid succession and they
were greeted in similar terms. The fact that Jeanne Hyvrard was not
black, had not been a patient in a psychiatric hospital and was bewil-
dered by the assumptions being made about her, makes the case of the
reception of these texts one of the most bizarre episodes in the history of
the reception of literature. She herself says that her main preoccupations
in her first text were economic and social, though it is true that it is
certainly not couched in the kind of language associated with
economics, working instead through imaginative associations. Her
second text, Mere la mort (Mother Death), uses as its central symbol the
matrix smothering the female child and refusing her the right to an
independent life. As one might infer, the book does denounce certain
aspects of motherhood and mother-daughter relations, but the image of
the smothering womb of death goes well beyond this to express the
constraints of systems of thinking and writing which Hyvrard identifies
as having the basic purpose of constraining the individual. She escapes
these rules by writing largely outside the standard sentence pattern
taught at school, by abandoning any linear progression of narrative and
by deliberately inventing words - one of the features which led early
critics to identify a schizophrenic element in her writing. They also
contribute to the disturbingly poetic qualities of her texts. Hyvrard
argues that the creation of new concepts which bring into question
existing modes of thought necessarily entails the creation of new terms.
She thus rejoins those writers who believe that a new language is
required to express women's experience.
A New Realism?
At the same time that these often very poetic, avant-garde texts con-
cerned with language, with the body and with psychoanalysis were
coming out, another kind of more mainstream writing focusing on the
social and political aspects of women's lives was also attracting atten-
tion. Thus, for example, the abortion debate of the 1970s found a reflec-
tion in Annie Emaux's first novel, Les Armoires vides (Cleaned Out),
published in 1974. This was one of the first French examples of the
female confessional type of literature which had become widely publi-
cised in the United States with the publication of Erica Jong's Fear of
Flying (1974) and Marilyn French's The Women's Room (1977), and
which might broadly be termed the social realism of women's expe-
rience. 38 Such texts are often understood by the reader to be autobio-
graphical, and although this was not made explicit in the case of
Ernaux's first work, the strong autobiographical basis of her work has
Introduction 15
become increasingly apparent. Ernaux has explained that it was when

she began to teach French in a technical college that she completely
revised her own idea of literature and became convinced that she had to
try to understand her own situation. She describes her writing project as
the attempt to understand the historical and social dimensions of
individual experience. Ce qu'ils disent ou rien ('What They Say or
Nothing'), published in 1977, describes a girl's adolescence and her first
sexual encounter; La Femme ge/ee ('The Frozen Woman', 1981), offers
a powerful analysis of the traps of marriage and motherhood in which a
student finds herself caught despite her intelligence and the myth of
equality which she assumes that both she and her husband share.
The radical difference between Emaux's analysis of maternity as one
of the structures locking women into powerlessness, and the celebration
of motherhood found in Leclerc and Chawaf brings sharply into focus
the different discourses of maternity in different strands of the women's
movement. 'Destiny or Slavery?' asks Claire Duchen in her discussion
of French feminist attitudes to maternity; on the one hand, representing
reproductive power and the single most significant marker of women's
difference, on the other hand, the phenomenon which locks women into
oppressive power structures. 39 The publication in 1980 of Elisabeth
Badinter's book L'Amour en plus: Histoire de !'amour maternel (The
myth of motherhood) examining four centuries of maternal behaviour in
France to conclude that the maternal instinct is a myth, and that
maternal love is, like all emotions, contingent on other factors, fuelled
the debate just months before the publication of Ernaux 's novel. 40 A left-
wing intellectual with a strong consciousness of her working-class roots,
Ernaux articulates her analysis of female experience with her own
experience of changing social class through her educational success. She
is particularly sensitive to the class base of language use, and comes
back frequently in her writing to the way in which the working class is
cut off from the language and culture of the bourgeoisie. An important
reference point for Ernaux is the work of French sociologist Pierre
Bourdieu who sees literature, like any other cultural practice, as a means
by which dominant groups in society maintain and legitimate their
power. There is a strong oral element in her writing, like many of the
women writers in the post-1968 period, and a network of references to
Beauvoir, with whose position she clearly has a great deal in common.
Claire Etcherelli's work also depends on a strong class consciousness,
and on a depiction of women's lives which has clear links with her own
experience. Her first book Elise ou la vraie vie (Elise or Real Life),
which placed her heroine on the shopfloor of a car factory and gave her
an Algerian lover, won instant success and the Femina prize in 1967.
Her success, and the extent to which she has been anthologised in
French schoolbooks, came not because she wrote about women but
because her novel dealt with the question of France's treatment of
Algerians during the Algerian war. Her subsequent novels, which focus
more specifically on class and gender issues, have certainly not been
institutionalised in the same way. Her third novel, Un arbre voyageur
('A Travelling Tree'), came out in 1978 and focuses on the sixties. It is
often claimed for women's writing that it constructs gender in a differ-
ent way from men's writing, or at least would do if it did any more than
echo literary conventions. Etcherelli's novel is a good example of the
way in which this can be done; focusing on two central women char-
acters, it turns what are frequently thought of as stereotypical female
faults into sources of strength and value. Men are presented sympa-
thetically but they do tend to emerge as heavily reliant on women's
support. The text ends with the explosion of 1968, and the decision of
Milie - the central character - to continue her struggle in what appear
from the outside to be hopelessly difficult circumstances, rather than
throwing in her lot with the male character who offers her love and a
roof for herself and her children, but who does not share her values and
who is bewildered by the events of 1968 with which Milie feels instinc-
tively in tune. The romance plot inherent in so many works of fiction is
thus turned upside down.
Publishing in the 1970s
The 1970s were very heady days for women writers. Access to
publication is clearly difficult for most writers - a recent book on French
publishing calculated that only one unsolicited manuscript in a thousand
sent to publishers will ever reach print." But in the 1970s the interest in
women created by the women's movement opened many publishers'
doors. Most of the big publishers set up women's lists and special col-
lections, and two publishing houses were created with the specific
intention of publishing women's texts: Editions des femmes in 1974,
and Tierce in 1977, founded by Fran~oise Pasquier. Editions des
femmes was set up as a collective by the Psych et Po group, and includ-
ed not only a publishing house but a bookstore and gallery specifically
conceived as a place in which and through which women could enter the
Introduction 17
sphere of creativity. It advertised itself as a 'publishing house by and for

women' and was openly separatist in orientation, using only women at
every stage of the writing, reading, editing, publishing and selling
process. It was des femmes, as it later shortened its name to, which
published Chantal Chawaf's first book, and those of many other
unknown writers such as Victoria Tberame and Gisele Bienne. Other
women who were already established writers moved to des femmes -
most notably Helene Cixous, previously published by Gallimard, who
published all her work with des femmes between 1976 and 1982.
Alongside their books, des femmes also launched 'la bibliotheque des
voix', tape recordings of their authors reading their works, or of
actresses reading women writers of the past - Colette, Madame de
Lafayette, Madame de Stael and many others. This was intended to
illustrate the group's belief in the strong oracy of women's writing, and
the oral traditions of storytelling with which women have deep-rooted
connections.'2
Yet, ironically, the very year in which des femmes came into
existence was the year in which publishing was facing a new and
serious crisis. In the spring of 1974 the literary review La Quinzaine
litteraire ran a series of articles entitled 'The Publishing Industry in
Crisis?' (admittedly with a question mark), pointing to the internal
problems of the publishing industry, ranging from the rapid pace of
change brought about by technological advances in the production
methods of books to the changes in the commercialisation of the
products. Combined with these matters were external factors such as
the oil shock of 1973, the slowing down of France's 'miracle
economy', and the government imposed price freeze which meant that
the price of a book had to be held for five years even though world
paper prices were rising spectacularly. Print runs were reduced by
30-40 per cent. 43
Into the 1980s
Between 1960 and 1972 the average annual rise in turnover in the
publishing industry was just above 7 per cent. Between 1973 and 1981 it
dropped to less than 1 per cent, and in 1982-3 to -3 per cent. After 1983
it went back up to about 1 per cent a year, before dropping back again; it
has been calculated that sales of literature between 1980 and 1986
dropped by 8 per cent, and print runs were reduced by an average 20 per
cent. The change in the economic climate was not enough to check the
interest in women's writing in the 1970s, but by the beginning of the
1980s the situation for women and for publishing was recognisably
different from that of the 1970s. The second oil shock brought about by
the Iran-Iraq war in 1978-9 brought to a halt the weak recovery which
has followed the 1973-4 recession. The disinftationary policies used to
try to cope with the inflationary effects of the second oil shock led to
rising unemployment in France throughout the 1980s. By the end of the
decade France had one of the highest unemployment rates in Europe,
inevitably affecting women disproportionately. The institutional gains of
the 1970s remained, of course, but severely weakened economic power
inevitably slowed down the progress of women as a social group. 44
Such progress as there was included the loi Roudy of 1983 which
provides for equal opportunities at work for men and women. The
accession to power of Fran~ois Mitterrand, closely followed by the
election of a Socialist government in 1981, led to the setting up of a
Ministry for Women's Rights under Yvette Roudy, whose sympathies
appeared to be socialist rather than feminist, but who did initiate a
number of information campaigns and subsidised various feminist
projects, including the setting up of women's studies courses within the
universities. How much this achieved is something of a moot point;
interestingly, it concerned itself closely with questions of language and
set up a commission headed by Benoite Groult to decide on the official
terms for the feminine forms of a range of professions and official
functions. 45 The Ministry disappeared with the return of the right to
power in 1986, and the Academie Fran~aise, the official guardians of the
Franch language, declared the commission's new terminological
suggestions 'grotesque and unacceptable'. 46
The women's movement itself experienced a considerable decline
during the 1980s; its activities became more localised and less visible,
though there is some evidence that gender issues have been recognised
in the Socialist Party. 47 The two 'alternative' women's magazines of the
1970s, Des Femmes en mouvement and F Magazine both effectively
disappeared in the early 1980s. In 1988, the publishing house des
femmes decided radically to change its organisation and announced the
appointment of a new - male - director. Appointed to double turnover
within a year, he is reported to be entirely restructuring the company.
Where the cover text once read 'The MLF presents ... ' succeeded by 'A
Feminist publication', it became simply 'des femmes', more recently
accompanied by the name on the cover of Antoinette Fouque. A number
Introduction 19
of male writers have now been published by des femmes, although its
main production continues to be new books by contemporary women
writers, and the re-editing of classic texts by women, as well as the
book-cassettes. Production is planned to double with the publication of
four to five new books a month and two to three book-cassettes.48 This
target would bring France's principal feminist publishing outlet to about
the same size as England's The Women's Press. Virago, created at
roughly the same time as des femmes, was twice that size with
approximately a hundred new titles a year in the same period.49 Taking
the two biggest feminist publishing houses together then, the United
Kingdom feminist market is twice the size of France's- even allowing
for the greater possibility of sales worldwide in English than in French,
this is still a striking discrepancy.
Women writers triumphant?
The 1980s have also seen the accession of women writers to new
official heights. The intensive political and theoretical developments of
the 1970s appear to have been translated, in the following decade, into a
small measure of institutionalisation. The most evident case of this is the
place accorded to Marguerite Duras in the 1980s. In 1984 she received
the consecration of the Prix Goncourt for L' Amant (The Lover), an
autobiographically based narrative about her encounter as a schoolgirl in
Indo-China with a Chinese lover. She thus became the seventh woman
to receive the prize since its establishment in 1903, and the second since
1968.50 Marguerite Yourcenar was also elevated to become the first
woman member of the Academie Fran~aise in 1981.
What does the recognition of women by the prize and honours system
mean? While it is certainly true that the prize system in France fell into
ever greater discredit during the 1980s, it is difficult to disagree with
Bessiere when he writes; 'Being awarded a literary prize means that a
writer is being guaranteed by the publishing industry, by the critics and
by commerce'; the tendency of the literary prize, he points out, is to
reward works which correspond to the idea of literature which is
current. 5 1 In the press and in literary surveys it became common to read
assertions that women were taking an equal or even a dominant place in
French literary culture. Thus an article in Le Monde summing up the
literary year 1985 remarks: 'As last year, women again dominate the
roll of honour with, in first place, a name that no-one expected to see on
the best-seller lists: Marguerite Duras. ' 52 Why did Duras receive the
prize for that book and not for her earlier ones? Le Monde, describing
itself as an admirer of Duras, nevertheless clearly implies its surprise,
and underlines heavily the fact that by the time the jury made its choice,
Duras 's novel had already sold more than 200 000 copies. The sugges-
tion seems to be that Duras, whom the jury had in the past been able to
write off as 'a potential Nobel prize winner but a "difficult" writer,
ready only by intellectuals' had more or less forced her way into the
prize by proving that she could write something popular. It seems above
all to be the phenomenon of Duras's success, following Yourcenar's
elevation, plus the undoubted fact that women are increasingly domi-
nating the best-sellers lists in France, which creates the impression that
women are taking up at least their equal place in the field of literary
creativity. However, when we look at the awards of the five main prizes
(Goncourt, Renaudot, lnterallie, Medicis, Femina) made throughout the
decade of the 1980s, only seven of the forty award winners of the first
four prizes were women, together with five winners of the Femina
which has an all female jury.53 At the beginning of the 1988 round, Le
Monde decided to carry out its own survey of novelists, and investigated
202 of the 208 novelists publishing a novel for the 1988 rentree (i.e. the
period between the end of August and the beginning of November when
the great majority of novels are published, and when the prize season
gets under way). Its findings were presented as follows:
The first and most major statistic to emerge from this survey: 75 per cent of
published novelists are men (149 against 53 women). This figure is in brutal
contradiction to the impression of a 'feminisation' of novel writing which,
over the last few years, has been the subject of many an alarmist or tri-
umphant press article. Women, who make up 57 % of the working popu-
lation in France and who - all the surveys prove - read more than men do,
write barely a quarter of published novels.
Conceding the assumption that literary genius is spread randomly

over the population, Le Monde is at a loss to explain this phenomenon,
and merely asks rather lamely: 'Can it be concluded that the situation of
women has not yet reached the point - even in intellectual circles - of
allowing women the material and psychological possibility of launching
into writing novels?' 54 The figure is even more striking when compared
with those established by a study carried out in Britain which found that
58 per cent of British fiction published in that year was by women. 55
Introduction 21
Quite apart, however, from the surprisingly low figure for France, the
point at issue here is the massive discrepancy revealed between the
perception that women had taken over, and the reality.
The reality, then, in 1988, was that women were writing about a
quarter of novels published in France, gaining a disproportionately large
commercial success and disproportionately little serious recognition. To
what extent this is because women do not on the whole write what juries
want, or to what extent this is to do with a refusal on the part of juries to
take women writers seriously, is a question for debate. Certainly, the
position is very different from that in Britain, and may be connected to
the fact that whereas membership of prize juries in France is for life, the
membership of such juries in England is changed each year. In contrast
to the Goncourt race, which frequently has not a single woman's name
in its final shortlist and has been won by only two women in the period
since 1968 discussed here, the Booker prize shortlist has only once not
contained any women (in 1991), has sometimes indeed had a majority,
and the prize itself has been won by women on a number of occasions.
Though the French women's movement was just as vociferous in the
1970s as it was in the UK and in the USA, it appears to have made even
fewer gains for women writers and to have forced even sparser
institutional recognition than in the Anglo-Saxon world.
Nicole Ward-Jouve, a French writer who has lived most of her adult
life in England, points to the fact that 'Anglo-Saxon women have been in
the main, at least in the past 150 years, stronger and better organised han
the French: they earned the vote almost twenty years before their French
sisters did'. 56 A specific cause of women's lack of progress in terms of
literary recognition is undoubtedly the great prestige of literature and of
the novel in particular in France, which means that the whole terrain is
fiercely guarded. Another is the French tendency to create elites through
institutional structures which make it extremely difficult for marginal
groups to force an entry - the fixed membership of the prize juries being
a case in point. Marguerite Yourcenar, who died shortly after being
admitted as the first woman member of the Academie Fran~aise,
described herself in her discours de reception to the Academy as entering
its portals 'surrounded by, accompanied by, the invisible troop of the
women who ought perhaps to have received this honour long ago' .57
What effect has the harsher climate of the 1980s had on women
writers? Chantal Chawaf, who is quick to point to the greater rigours of
the decade compared with its predecessor, had nevertheless produced
fourteen texts by the end of the 1980s and had acquired a high literary
standing with elogious reviews from such institutionalised publications

as La Quinzaine litteraire. The idealised world of some of her early
texts is nevertheless tempered in Elwina, le roman-fee ('Elwina, the
Fairy-Tale Novel', 1986) which tells the satirical tale of a young woman
writer's dealings with an unscrupulous male publisher. The novel can be
read as an extended critique of the whole publishing system. Helene
Cixous produced her first openly homosexual novel in 1983, Le Livre de
Promethea (The Book of Promethea), and wrote a series of plays for the
Theatre du Soleil Company with its director, Ariane Mnouchkine. She
also continues to write fiction and her international standing has risen
fast. Jeanne Hyvrard, initially published by Minuit, found its doors
closed when her work began to develop away from pure fiction towards
philosophy and the essay. She moved as a consequence to des femmes,
with whom she has published both fiction and essays. Auditions
Musicales Certains Soirs d' Ete ('Musical Recitals On Certain Summer,
Evenings', 1984) is a collection of short pieces of fiction, many of
which depend on humour and social satire; both this and Monique
Wittig's Virgile, non (Across the Acheron, 1985), which wittily parodies
Dante's Divine Comedy, recall the effective use of humour deployed by
Rochefort and Emaux in the 1960s and 1970s.
Marie Cardinal went on in the 1980s to produce a whole series of
best-selling novels, of which one of the most notable is Les Grands
Desordres (Devotion and Disorder) published in 1986. Psychoanalysis
remains a theme, since the heroine is an analyst, but the text focuses OJ)
the limits of analysis and is centred on the relationship between a
mother and daughter. Annie Leclerc and Annie Emaux have both
undergone something of a sea-change in their writing. Annie Leclerc's
Hommes etfemmes ('Men and Women'), published in 1985, is in many
ways a postscript to Parole de femme, celebrating the importance of
what men and women bring to each other, particularly in the spheres of
love and sexuality. Origines (Origins), published in 1988, is a highly
sophisticated post-modem text; the origins referred to in the title are the
origins both of her lifelong passion for the writing of Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, and her own origins as a writer. Layering the two together
throughout her text, she shows that every writer is also a reader, and
that writing is a response to others' writing as much as an attempt to
convey experience. Her debt to Rousseau reminds us that writing by
men is necessarily implicated in writing by women.
Annie Emaux won the Prix Renaudot for her La Place (Positions),
published in 1983. She describes the text as a hybrid - a mixture of
Introduction 23
fiction, sociology and autobiography in which she attempts to recreate

the life of her father, fifteen years after his death. The book is at one and
the same time a demonstration of how the poor are barred from access
to the language and culture which the French think of as their national
heritage but which Emaux shows to be a class privilege, and an
affectionate portrait of a daughter's relationship with her father. The
wordy, angry and ironic prose of her earlier work disappears to be
replaced by a highly classical, condensed and sober writing, which is
almost painful in its refusal to play to sentiment.
Ernaux's text is a reminder of the increasing tendency in these two
decades of autobiography to invade the novel's terrain; the use of the
first-person in a narrative such as Ernaux's is likely to be identified by
the reader as that of the author. The same point could be made about
Duras's L'Amant, Leclerc's Parole de femme and Origines, Cardinal's
Les Mots pour le dire. Women's writing of this period, with its sense
that the personal is the political and its desire to address areas of
women's experience previously silenced or fantasised in literature, was
always likely to deal with autobiographical issues. Already in 1958
Simone de Beauvoir' s M emoires d' une jeune fil/e rangee (Memoirs of a
Dutiful Daughter) had taken the theme of her own negotiations with
femininity (underlined in the title) as a major theme. Violette Leduc had
a more exotic tale to tell in La Batarde (title retained for the English
translation) in 1964. However, the tendency towards the personal and
the confessional, perhaps in reaction to the repression of the subjective
and the authorial presence in the Nouveau Roman and in structuralist
reading strategies, was not restricted to women's writing. New novelists
Alain Robbe-Grillet and Nathalie Sarraute themselves both produced
autobiographical volumes in the early 1980s; Philippe Sollers, producer
of formal, geometric texts in the 1970s also took an autobiographical
tum with his Femmes ('Women') in 1983, to which Julia Kristeva may
be thought to have produced a riposte with her Les Samourai" ('The
Samurai') in 1990.58
Another factor encouraging the autobiographical may have been the
fact that the commercial promotion of literature has also increasingly
demanded the projection of the author. In the age of television this
commercial projection was mirrored and no doubt reinforced in France
by the creation of 'Apostrophes' in the mid-1970s. Beginning as a
humble book programme, 'Apostrophes' rapidly became a national
institution with the writer who succeeded in putting over an attractive
screen image on Friday evening certain of seeing their sales figures rise
rapidly on Saturday morning. The identification between writer and

book which the television screen naturally encourages was boosted by
the presenter's keenness to discuss the text in autobiographical terms.
Relatively few women were ever invited on to the programme (which
continued right through the 1980s), and when they did appear on it often
proved reluctant to seize the opportunity to become media stars in the
way which some male authors did. 59 The power which the programme's
success gave to its presenter, Bernard Pivot, was widely recognised and
at times fiercely attacked, notably by Regis Debray. A 1989 'referendum'
of intellectuals (university teachers, writers, journalists, publishers, etc.),
organised by a newspaper asking respondents to vote for the five top
people in France representing intellectual power, gave Pivot top place,
tying with Levi-Strauss. There were no women in the top ten (or even
twenty), contrasting sharply with the 1981 result, when both Simone de
Beauvoir and Marguerite Yourcenar were included in the top ten. 60
However, new women's voices have also emerged in the 1980s. 61
Anne Garreta published her first novel, Sphinx, in 1986, in which the
gender of the central character and narrative voice remains unsettlingly
uncertain throughout. In her second novel, Pour en finir avec le genre
humain the central figure changes gender in the middle. Alina Reyes's
Le Boucher ('The Butcher', 1988) broke a number of taboos about
women's writing with the violence of her text. One of the most original,
and the newest writer I have translated for this collection, is Marie
Redonnet, whose captivating novels began to appear in 1986 and 1987.
The strange twilight world of her texts bears a strong resemblance to
that of the fairy-tale, of myth and of dream. Although the looking-glass
world which is put before us is Beckettian in the sense that everything in
it is breaking down, dying, withering away, it is nevertheless structured
by strange and implacable rules, suggesting a discipline and meaning at
odds with the apparent disorder and meaninglessness. It also has utopian
elements; the title of the third novel, Rose Melie Rose, for example,
draws attention to the matrilinear genealogy which the text establishes,
since each element of the title is the name of a woman character, each of
whom mothers the next. Women carry on each other's teachings and
projects in Redonnet's texts: this matrilinear transmission of knowledge
helps to fill in the blank canvas of the female narrator's memory and
identity. The 'book of legends' which Melie inherits from Rose will be
passed on in tum to her own daughter, enriched by her own contri-
butions to it. Redonnet's use - and revision - of the fairy-tale mode
suggests links with the work of Chawaf and the possible emergence of a
Introduction 25
more 'magical' stream of writing, while the darker underside of her

work and its relation to the unconscious has elements in common with
the preoccupations of the work of Kristeva in the 1980s.
In trying to locate French women's writing within the cultural and
literary framework of the 1970s and 1980s in France, it quickly
becomes apparent that we are dealing with what social anthropologists
Shirley and Edwin Ardener term a 'muted group'. In other words, the
fact of being a woman writer in France in this period has meant being a
member of a subordinate group by virtue of gender, even if the same
individuals are members of other dominant groups by virtue of race,
education, profession, and so on. 62 Like all muted groups, they partici-
pate in the dominant cultural climate; it is not surprising, therefore, to
find that some of the features of their writing such as the return to the
autobiographical or the attempt to escape the linear and to suppress
syntax to follow the rhythm of the respiration can also be discovered in
the more post-modernist texts of their male contemporaries. 63 The
female signature nevertheless marks the reception and visibility of their
work just as their experience of being a woman marks, in different
ways, what they have to say, how they say it and their access to both the
writing and the publishing processes.
Writing as women has meant different things at different times to the
writers examined here: the risk-taking move of tasting the apple, the
embodying of femininity, the search for the mother within us and the
examination of our relationship with the mother, the analysis of social
and cultural practices which delegitimate women's experience, the
threading of women's lives into a network of political pressures, the
imagining of an Alice's wonderland in which old images of women fade
and new artistic inheritances come into being. In any terms, it is clear,
an opening up for women's writing which I hope the following pages
will amply demonstrate.
Notes
1. Nevertheless, I am happy to report that since my original set of choices

some works from which I give extracts have now been translated into
English in full.
2. This point is made strongly by Chris Weedon in her Feminist Practice and
Poststructuralist Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987), p. 170.
3. In an interview with Elizabeth Fallaize, June 1988.
4. See 'Editors Preface' in Yale French Studies, vol. 75 (1988) and Nancy
Miller, Subject to Change: Reading Feminist Writing (New York: Columbia

University Press, 1988), pp. 4-5.
5. Questions of 'balance' (between generations, types of writing, race and
sexual preference) in such a small number are too awkward to solve
completely.
6. Unfortunately, my interview with Chantal Chawaf ran into unforeseen
difficulties and had to be replaced by a shorter discussion over the telephone.
7. See Alice Jardine and Anne M. Menke 'Exploding the Issue: "French"
"Women" "Writers" and "The Canon"? Fourteen Interviews' in Yale
French Studies, vol. 75 (1988), pp. 229-58 (p. 239). Confirmation of
Duras's differing status in France and outside is offered by the controversy
aroused by French critic Antoine Compagnon's article, 'The Diminishing
Canon of French Literature in America', in which he expresses his surprise
that so many American scholars should be working on Duras. See Stanford
French Review, vol. 15 (1991), pp. 103-15.
8. The luxurious and scholarly Plt!iade edition was created by Gallimard in
1931 with the aim, according to its catalogue, of offering its readers 'the
masterpieces of literature'. Amongst twentieth-century French women
writers, Colette is now to be joined by Marguerite Yourcenar and Nathalie
Sarraute.
9. See Nancy K. Miller, Subject to Change, p. 241 and note 15, pp. 262-3;
Henri Peyre, French Novelists of Today (New York and Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1967), p. 276.
10. In 1970 she was to became the third woman (after Judith Gauthier in 1910
and Colette in 1945) to be elected to the Academie Goncourt, which decides
the winners of the Prix Goncourt. She continues today to be a successful
and exciting novelist.
11. This does not mean to say, of course, that her work cannot be read from a
gendered perspective. See Adele King's chapter on Sarraute in French
Women Novelists (London: Macmillan, 1989), pp. 85-107.
12. Remark made by Yourcenar in her long television interview with Bernard
Pivot for 'Apostrophes', first shown on 7 December 1979.
13. Masculinity as well as femininity preoccupied women writers. See, for
example, Christine de Rivoyre's Les Sultans ('The Sultans', 1964), a study
of 'real' men in the Paris of the early 1960s.
14. For an account of the events of 1968 consult David Caute, Sixty-Eight: The
Year of the Barricades (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1988) or the special
number of Le Debat (May-August 1988), pp. 57-78.
15. See Annie Leclerc, Hommes etfemmes ('Men and Women') (Paris: Grasset,
1985), p. 170.
16. Jacques Beynac writes on this subject: 'Marxism got worn out before ever
being used', Le Debat (May-August 1988), p. 64.
17. See, for example, David Caute, Sixty-Eight: The Year of the Barricades.
18. See Anne Tristan and Annie de Pisan, Histoires du MLF (Paris: Calmann-
Uvy, 1977). Extracts from Tristan and Pisan translated into English appear
in French Feminist Thought, ed. by Toril Moi (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987),
pp. 33-69.
19. See Jane Jenson, 'Representations of Difference: The Varieties of French
Introduction 27
Feminism', New Left Review, no. 180 (March-Apri11990), pp. 127--60 (p.
131).
20. For an account of these activities and of the development of French
feminisms, see Claire Duchen, Feminism in France: From May '68 to
Mitterrand (London: Routledge, 1986).
21. She signed the 1971 manifesto and gave evidence at the highly publicised
1972 Bobigny trial in support of a schoolgirl who was being prosecuted for
having had an abortion.
22. See extract given from Annie Emaux, Une femme ('A Woman'). On the
publication of her first novel, ten years earlier in 1977, Emaux received a
letter from Beauvoir saying how much she had liked the text and that she
was recommending it to everyone (Interview with Elizabeth Fallaize, 12
April 1988). Emaux's work contains a network of references to Beauvoir
and to The Second Sex and press articles about Emaux have often made the
connection between the two women.
23. The Second Sex, trans. H. Parshley (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986), p. 13.
Michele Le Doeuff, 'Ouverture', in Elles sont pour Simone de Beauvoir: De
Ia memoire aux projets (pp. 1-5), published by the association 'Elles sont
pour' in 1990.
24. See Nicole Ward-Jouve's account of the group in White Woman Speaks
With Forked Tongue: Criticism as Autobiography (London and New York:
Routledge, 1991), pp. 61-74.
25. For more detailed accounts of this theoretical work consult French Feminist
Thought, ed. by Tori! Moi; Susan Sellers, Language and Sexual Difference:
Feminist Writing in France (London: Macmillan, 1991).
26. For a discussion of Irigary's work see Margaret Whitford, Luce Irigary:
Philosophy in the Feminine (London and New York: Routledge, 1991).
27. See Susan Sellers, Language and Sexual Difference, pp. 142-3.
28. See my introduction to Annie Leclerc.
29. Fran'<oise Von Rossum-Guyon writes: 'To the extent that women's writing
aims precisely to subvert ideological codes and to transform representation,
it places itself in the general stream of the avant-garde (though this term is
anything but feminine) and implies both a theorisation and an
experimentation.' See 'Sur quelques aspects de l'ecriture feminine', in
Ecriture de Ia religion: Ecriture du roman, ed. by Charles Grivel (Lille:
Presses Universitaires de Lille), pp. 211-31 (p. 216). I am indebted to Leslie
Hill for the point about ecriture which he develops in a different context in
his chapter on Sollers in Beyond the Nouveau Roman, ed. by Michael Tilby
(New York: Berg, 1990), pp. 100-22 (p. 101).
30. 'Extreme Fidelity', in Writing Differences: Readings from the Seminars of
Helene Cixous, ed. by Susan Sellers (Milton Keynes: Open University
Press, 1988), pp. 9-36 (p. 15).
31. See 'Chantal Chawaf, Ecrivain', Marie-Claire, March 1979, p. 30.
32. 'I think that if the term feminine has been kept to describe the writing of the
body this is because the mother's body is biologically at the origin of the
development of human language which will of course go on developing
from birth to death, further and further away from and outside of the
mother, and will go on growing towards a spiritual and creative language
divested of any regressive immersion in the maternal fusional body',

Chantal Chawaf, 'Contre Ia fiction' ('Against Fiction'), Roman, no. 18
(1987), pp. 47--64 (p. 51).
33. 'La peur du feminin dans le langage' ('The fear of the feminine in
language'), Roman, no. 25 (1988), pp. 34-45 (p. 41).
34. See in particular 'La peur du feminin dans le langage'.
35. Quotation from 'Ecrire a partir du corps vivant' ('Writing from the living
body'), Lendemains, vol. 8 (1983), pp. 119-25 (p. 119).
36. See Jean Duffy's useful article, 'Monique Wittig', in Beyond the Nouveau
Roman, ed. by Michael Tilby, pp. 201-28.
37. An early example of joint authorship was Benoite and Flora Groult's
Journal a quatre mains ('Four-handed Diary') of 1963.
38. Emaux had not, however, read these texts herself, she told me in an
interview in 1988, though she had seen them discussed in the French press.
39. See Claire Duchen, Feminism in France, pp. 49-66.
40. Significantly, Badinter refers in her preface to Beauvoir's dismantlement of
maternity as female destiny in The Second Sex, a reference point for Ernaux,
and Ernaux mentioned Badinter's book to me in discussion.
41. See Philippe Schuwer, Editeurs aujourd' hui (Paris: Retz, 1987), p. 53.
42. See Nicole Ward-Jouve's chapter on the publishing house in White Woman
Speaks with Forked Tongue, pp. 75-90.
43. 'L'Edition en crise?' in three parts in La Quinzaine litteraire, 1-15 April
1974, p. 16; 15-30 April1974, p. 15; 1-15 May 1974, pp. 16-17.
44. In the UK, by way of contrast, women's power in the market was less
blunted than in France because the recovery in the labour market in the
early 1980s came in the service sector, where opportunities have been
greater for women.
45. See Sian Reynolds, 'Whatever Happened to the French Ministry of
Women's Rights?', Modern and Contemporary France, no. 33 (1988), pp.
4-9.
46. See 'Groult, Benoite', in Le Dictionnaire: Litterature franf:aise
contemporaine, ed. by J. Garcin (Paris: Editions Fran~ois Bourin, 1988),
pp. 221-3 (p. 223).
47. See Jenson, p. 158.
48. See Livres-Hebdo, 22 February 1988, pp. 69-70.
49. Figures published in The Independent, 11 May 1988, p. 15.
50. The French-Canadian writer Antonine Maillet, whose work falls outside the
scope of this book, won the prize in 1979. It is worth mentioning that Quebec
writing, in contrast to the position in France, has been virtually dominated in
the 1970s and 1980s by women writers. The seven women to whom the prize
had been awarded by the end of the 1980s are: Elsa Triolet (1944), Beatrice
Beck (1952), Simone de Beauvoir (1954), Anna Langfus (1962), Edmonde
Charles-Roux (1966), Antonine Maillet (1979), Marguerite Duras (1984).
51. See Jean Bessiere, Creation romanesque et sociodynamique culturelle: Les
prix litteraires de 1974 (Paris: Lettres Modemes, 1981), p. 14.
52. Le Monde, 28 June 1985, p. 17.
53. The awards made to women writers were as follows: Goncourt, Marguerite
Duras 1984; Medicis, Christiane Rochefort 1988; Interallie, Christine
Introduction 29
Arnothy 1980 and Michele Perrein 1984; Renaudot, Danielle Sallenave

1980, Annie Ernaux 1984 and Raphaele Billetdoux 1985; Femina, Jocelyne
Fran~ois 1980, Catherine Hermary-Vieille 1981, Anne Hebert 1982,
Florence Delay 1983, Sylvie Germain 1989.
54. Le Monde, 23 September 1988, p. 18.
55. Figure quoted by Dale Spender in The Writing or the Sex? (New York and
Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1989), p. 57.
56. Ward-Jouve, White Woman Speaks with Forked Tongue, p. 102.
57. Reviewing some of their names - Madame de Stael, George Sand, Colette -
Yourcenar manages humorously and adroitly to suggest a series of excuses
the Academy could have found for not admitting each of them. See
Discours de reception de Madame Marguerite de Yourcenar a l'Academie
Franr;aise (Paris: Gallimard, 1981), pp. 9-12.
58. Perhaps one of the most striking examples of this tendency is Serge
Doubrovsky, who calls his book Le Livre brise ('The Shattered Book')
published in 1989 'autofiction'. The book is 'shattered' because the writing
of this day-by-day account of his relationship with his wife is brought to a
halt by her sudden death.
59. Notably Michel Tournier and Philippe Sollers, who appeared nine and seven
times respectively. Madeleine Chapsal, when she appeared on the
programme for La Maison de Jai"s ('House of Jade') describing a love affair
between an older woman and a young man, was badgered by Pivot into
admitting to the autobiographical basis to her novel. Amongst the women
who did appear were Ernaux, Sagan, Perrein, Badinter, Mallet-Joris, Groult,
Desforges, Prou, Avril, Cerf, Collange, de Rivoyre. Yourcenar and Duras
were amongst the few individual interviews which Pivot occasionally
included in the programme format. For further details see Edouard Brasey,
L' Effet Pivot (Paris: Editions Ramsay, 1987).
60. See L' Evenement du jeudi, 2-8 February 1989, p. 66. The only woman to
appear in the list was Fran~oise Verny who squeezed into the top twenty-
five.
61. For an idea of which women writers were being discussed in France in the
late 1980s see L' Evenement du jeudi, 22-28 June 1989, which organised a
questionnaire for forty French women novelists. In addition to the names I
discuss, one could add Muriel Cerf, Catherine Rihoit, Hortense Dufour,
Nicole Avril, Anne Bragance, Emmanuele Bernheim, Sylvie Germain,
Florence Delay and many others.
62. See Shirley Ardener (ed.) Perceiving Women (New York: Halstead Press,
1978). Elaine Showalter draws attention to the Ardeners' work and
discusses its implications in her 'Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness', in
The New Feminist Criticism, ed. by Elaine Showalter (London: Virago,
1986), pp. 243-70 (pp. 261--4).
63. Thus Sollers' Paradis ('Paradise') (1981) shares textual features with
Chawafs writing, though it is not theorised by the author in the same terms.
The notion of writing as jouissance so present in Cixous is a theme of
Roland Barthes; her signalling of Joyce as a predecessor is also claimed by
male writers. I am none the less not aware of a male equivalent - yet - to
Parole de femme.
2
Marie Cardinal
Introduction
Born in 1929 into a family of white French settlers in Algeria,

Marie Cardinal began writing in 1960 at what she calls the
'late' age of 31. Her desire to write sprang in part from her
sense of exile from her native country, which had plunged
into war with France in 1954 and which she left definitively in
1956. 1 However, the period in which she began to write also
coincided with the beginning of a long period of psycho-
analysis and her gradual emergence from a situation of
virtual mental collapse. Her first novel Ecoutez Ia mer ('Listen
to the Sea') was published in 1962, won a prize for first novels
and sold quite well. 2 With her health still in a precarious state
and with three children to support, Marie Cardinal continued
writing throughout the 1960s in extremely difficult conditions;
she took on clerical jobs she could do at home and published
three other novels which had only very mediocre sales.
A turning point came in 1972 with the publication of La Cle
sur Ia porte ('Open Door'), a novel fictionalising her own
experience in bringing up three teenage children according
to the principles of freedom and respect for others. It
challenged many of the assumptions on which traditional
French family life and models of parental authority were
built. A French television magazine programme targeted at
women at home in the afternoons did a profile of her, fol-
lowed by a studio discussion in which the other discussants
openly attacked her. Cardinal returned home convinced that
the whole episode had been a disaster, but the resulting
publicity sold 75 000 copies of her book in a week. 3
30
Marie Cardinal 31
Three years later, she again shot to the top of the best-
seller lists with The Words to Say It (Les Mots pour le dire), a
fictionalised account of the psychoanalysis which had
enabled her to deal with the severely debilitating trauma
which had almost destroyed her life. One of the major symp-
toms of her illness was a continuous bleeding, for which no
physiological cause could be found. The extract given below
describes the narrator's first visit to an analyst and the
immediate disappearance of the bleeding which follows the
analyst's affirmation that it is purely psychosomatic in origin.
Later in the text we discover that both the bleeding and the
'Thing' (her illness) are related to her relationship with her
mother and, in particular, to the knowledge that her mother
had tried to abort her. The mother-daughter relationship is at
the centre of the text; the narrator is not able to detach her-
self completely from the stranglehold which her mother's
destructive desires have on her until the death of the mother.
In the last pages of the text the narrator, standing in the
cemetery where her mother is buried, is finally able to arti-
culate her love for her.
Bruno Bettelheim's commentary on the text, published as
part of the English translation, stresses its documentary
aspect as an account of the psychoanalytic experience from
the point of view of the patient, and in some ways the text is
clearly a celebration of the analytical process which Marie
Cardinal has described as 'a way of thinking which satisfies
me totally'. 4 The analysis depicted appears to have been
strictly Freudian, taking, for example, the existence of penis-
envy as axiomatic and not considering explicitly any socio-
cultural cause for women's alienation. The text can, however,
be read in other and perhaps more productive ways, 5 and the
role given to blood together with the way in which the
narrator inscribes her suffering in her body, made the text
appear related to the stream of French women's writing
which foregrounds the writing of the body. Cardinal herself
points to the contrast between the way in which blood is
perceived as a noble literary subject when it is used in a
Rimbaud poem about the blood of a fallen hero, and the
potent taboos surrounding the literary representation of the
blood of women. 6
Autrement dit ('In Other Words'), published in 1977,

follows up some aspects of The Words to Say It and links the
question of women's mental illness more strongly to their
social status and to their position within language. Produced
jointly with Annie Leclerc, the book was conceived partly as a
response to the enormous correspondence and invitations to
speak which Cardinal received after the publication of The
Words to Say ft. Parts of the text resemble the psychoanalytic
situation as Leclerc prompts Cardinal into talking about her
early years in Algeria, about her illness and about her life as
a woman and a writer. Other parts consist of tape-recorded
dialogue and other parts still of pieces written by Cardinal. A
recurrent theme is that of language, highlighted in the titles
of both books, and Cardinal stresses the role of words both
in her own recovery and as a way forward for women.
Women, writes Cardinal below, often lack the words 'to
express what their bodies know' and the French language
has been so invested with meaning by men that it can 'betray
me when I, a woman, use it'.7 She aims to open up words
such as 'mother', 'couple', 'writing' and to forge new mean-
ings for them. In the eXtract given here she describes, in a
written piece, her sense of loss on finishing the manuscript
of The Words to Say ft. The way in which she instinctively
tries to replace writing by traditional female activities -
cooking, cleaning - and is led to face the nature of women's
lives, crammed to capacity with the care of other people's
lives before being suddenly emptied, anchors her writing
firmly in the context of a life lived as a woman. There is a
strong sense of her solidarity with women and her desire to
'give them words which will serve them as arms'.
Les Grands Desordres (Devotion and Disorder, 1987),
despite its engagement with the problems of heroin, is more
about the role of addiction in society in a more general sense
than about the specific problem of hard drugs. Addiction
emerges as a necessary human trait- whether it be to heroin
or to love, the addiction which finally permits Laure to fight
her heroin addiction. The novel also questions our notions of
order and disorder- thermodynamics tells us that disorder is
a more natural phenomenon than order and Cardinal trans-
fers this idea to social organisation, where disorder is usually
Marie Cardinal 33
viewed as negative. The themes of psychoanalysis, of writing

and of the mother-daughter relationship are again central:
Elsa, both Laure's mother and herself a therapist, devotes
herself to helping her daughter shake her heroin addiction.
Neither her maternal love nor her textbook knowledge
suffice, and Elsa has to reconsider her own certainties and
rebuild both herself and her life once her daughter does start
moving into recovery. As in Autrement dit, the text is made
up of fragments of differing status- some attributed to Elsa,
some to the ghost-writer to whom she turns, some to tape-
recordings. The interplay between the spoken and the written
word, the sense in which all narrative is construction rather
than faithful echo of experience, is thus brought to the fore.
One of Cardinal's most powerful texts, questioning some of
society's most cherished certainties, it nevertheless finally
reaffirms the confidence in love and in the couple found
throughout her work. 8
Marie Cardinal is the author of a dozen texts, widely
translated, and makes her living as a writer. She divides her
life between France and Quebec.
Notes
1. Marie Cardinal had left Algeria earlier to teach abroad (in Greece
and Portugal) but had always returned home, notably for the
birth of her first two children. She describes her exile from
Algeria as an 'amputation' (Interview with Elizabeth Fallaize, 23
October 1991); Au pays de mes racines ('In the Country of My
Roots') describes a return journey to Algeria twenty-four years
after her departure from it.
2. Her first novel was in fact accepted for publication by two
publishers within a week of their reception of the manuscript.
The prize which she received (Prix International du Premier
Roman) contributed towards high sales figures.
3. The programme, entitled 'Aujourd'hui Madame', took the form
of a fifteen-minute film of Marie Cardinal at home with her
children, followed by a discussion in which three of the
participants were in theory for Cardinal and three against. In the
event, as Marie Cardinal recalls it, all six turned against her and
the view was even expressed that her children should be taken
away from her and put into care.
4. Quotation taken from a discussion on French television shown
on 14 June 1988 in which Marie Cardinal participated and which

followed a showing of the film made of her book by Jose
Pinheiro. Much of the discussion centred on the psychosomatic
nature of illness, and on the cultural nature of bodily symptoms.
5. See, for example, Phil Powrie's reading of the text in 'Reading
for pleasure: Marie Cardinal's Les Mots pour le dire and the text
as (re)play of Oedipal configurations', in Contemporary French
Fiction by Women, ed. Margaret Atack, pp. 163-76.
6. In a talk given at the Maison Fran~,taise, Oxford, on 23 October
1991.
7. Autrement dit, pp. 81, 96.
8. The notion of the couple is discussed at length in Autrement dit
where Cardinal argues that the couple can exist perfectly well
'outside a shared daily life, outside of children, material tasks and
money' (p. 157). See also her novel Une vie pour deux(' A Life for
Two') which explores the basis on which a couple is built.
Marie Cardinal bibliography
Works by Cardinal
Ecoutez Ia mer (Paris: Julliard, 1962).

La Mule et /e corbillard (Paris: Julliard, 1963).
La Souriciere (Paris: Julliard, 1963).
Cet ete-la (Paris: Julliard, 1967).
La Cle sur Ia porte (Paris: Grasset, 1972).
Les Mots pour le dire (Paris: Grasset, 1975); The Words to Say It,
trans. by Pat Goodheart (Cambridge, Mass.: Van Vactor &
Goodheart, 1983).
Autrement dit (Paris: Grasset, 1977).
Une vie pour deux (Paris: Grasset, 1979).
Au pays de mes racines (Paris: Grasset, 1980).
Le Passe empiete (Paris: Grasset, 1983).
Les Grands Desordres (Paris: Grasset, 1987); Devotion and Disorder,
trans. by Karen Montin (London: The Women's Press, 1991).
Les Pieds-Noirs (Paris: Editions Belfond, 1988).
Comme side rien n'etait (Paris: Grasset, 1990).
Prefaces, articles and interviews by Cardinal
'La Rentree des prix', Rouge, 22 November 1977.

'Le Trone perce', Le Matin, 6 December 1977.
'Marie Cardinal parle de son dernier livre', Rouge, 1 June 1978, p. 18.
'Entretien avec Marie Cardinal: Une Femme et l'ecriture' by L. Levy-
Delplan, Diplomees, no. 110 (September 1979), pp. 61-3.
Marie Cardinal 35
'Preface' to La Sexualite des femmes by Franc;:oise Dalto (Paris:

Grasset, 1980).
Books and articles on Cardinal's work and selected reviews
Bettelheim, Bruno, 'Preface' and 'Afterword' to The Words to Say It,

trans. by Pat Goodheart (Cambridge, Mass.: Van Vactor &
Goodheart, 1983), pp. ix-xii, 297-308.
Cairns, Lucille, Marie Cardinal: Motherhood and Creativity (Glasgow:
University of Glasgow French and German Publications, 1992).
Cairns, Lucille, 'Passion and Paranoia: Power Structures and the
Representation of Men in the Writings of Marie Cardinal', French
Studies, vol. XLVI (1992), pp. 280-95.
Chalon, Jean, 'L'Enfer selon Marie Cardinal', Le Figaro, 18
September 1987.
Clouzot, Claire, 'Marie Cardinal: Une pub vivante pour Ia
psychanalyse', Biba, October 1983, p. 44.
Daverdin-Liaroutzos, Chantal, 'La supreme loi de l'entropie', Le
Magazine litteraire, October 1987.
Durham, Carolyn, 'Feminism and Formalism. Dialectical Structures
in Marie Cardinal: Une vie pour deux', Tulsa Studies in Women's
Literature, vol. IV, no. I (1985), pp. 83-9.
Durham, Carolyn, 'Patterns of Influence: Simone de Beauvoir and
Marie Cardinal', French Review (February 1987), vol. LX pp.
341-8.
Durham, Carolyn, The Contexture of Feminism: Marie Cardinal and
Multicultural Literacy (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992).
Elliot, Patricia, 'In the Eye of Abjection: Marie Cardinal's The Words
to Say If, Mosaic, val. XX (1987), pp. 70-81.
Hall, Colette, '"She" is more than "1": Writing and the Search for
Identity in the Works of Marie Cardinal', in Redefining Autobio-
graphy in Twentieth-Century Women's Fiction: An Essay Collec-
tion, ed. by Colette Hall, Janice Morgan and Carol Snyder (New
York: Garland, 1991).
Le Clezio, Marguerite, 'Mother and Motherhood: The Daughter's
Quest for Origins' Stanford French Review, val. V (Winter 1981),
pp. 381-9.
Martin, Elaine, 'Mothers, Madness and the Middle Class in The Bell
Jar and Les Mots pour le dire', French American Review, vol. V
(Spring 1981), pp. 24-7.
Min-ha, Trinh, 'L'inecriture: feminisme et litterature', French Forum,
vol. 8 (1983), pp. 45-63.
Poirot-Delpech, Bertrand, 'Les Mots pour le dire de Marie Cardinal',
Le Monde des livres, 30 May 1975, p. 2.
Powrie, Phil, 'Reading for Pleasure: Marie Cardinal's Les Mots pour
le dire and the text as (re)play of Oedipal configurations', in
Contemporary French Fiction by Women, ed. by Margaret Atak
and Phil Powrie (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990),

pp. 163-76.
Renard, Marion, 'Les Mots pour le dire', La Ouinzaine litteraire,
16-30 June 1975, p. 10.
Roberts, Colin, 'Cardinal: La Cle sur Ia porte', in Gilbert Cesbron:
Chiens perdus sans collier/Marie Cardinal: La Cle sur Ia porte by
Colin Roberts (Glasgow: University of Glasgow French and
German Publications, 1988).
Savigneau, Josyane, 'Devoilements: Les Grands Desordres de Marie
Cardinal' Le Monde, 11 September 1987.
Werner, Pascale, 'Marie Cardinal et le sexe des mots', Magazine
litteraire, 21-27 March 1977.
Yalom, Marilyn, 'They Remember Maman: Attachment and
Separation in Leduc, de Beauvoir, Sand and Cardinal', Essays in
Literature, vol. VIII (Spring 1981), pp. 73-90.
Yalom, Marilyn, 'La Souriciere, Les Mots pour le dire', in Maternity,
Mortality and the Literature of Madness (Pennsylvania:
Pennsylvania University Press, 1985), pp. 35-48,49-67.
Marie Cardinal 37
Les Mots pour le dire (The Words to Say It)*
It was a difficult night following this first visit. The Thing was rumbling
inside me. For a long time, I had been in the habit of going to sleep
only when put to sleep by a massive dose of drugs. But the little man
had said to me: 'You will have to stop taking all medication.'
I was in my bed, oppressed, suffocating, covered with perspiration. If
I opened my eyes I experienced the decomposition of the outer world, of
objects and the air. If I closed my eyes I experienced the decomposition
of the inner world, of my cells and my flesh. This frightened me.
Nothing or no one could stop even for a second this degradation of
everything. I was drowning, I couldn't breathe, there were microbes
everywhere, maggots, pustules, and acids were gnawing at my insides.
Why this existence which feeds on itself? Why these agonizing periods
of gestation? Why is my body aging? Why does it produce stinking
liquids and stinking matter? Why my sweat, my shit, my piss? Why this
dung heap? Why the war of everything that lives, of every cell, to
decide which one will kill the other and gorge itself on the corpse? Why
the ineluctable and majestic round of phagocytes? Who is controlling
this perfect monster? What inexhaustible driving force keeps the rat race
going? Who is shaking up the atoms with so much power? Who has his
eye upon every pebble, every blade of grass, every bubble, every baby,
with unfailing attention, only to bring them to the putrefaction of death?
What is stable other than death? Where to take one's rest unless it is in
death, which is decomposition itself? To whom does death belong?
What is this soft, enormous thing, indifferent to beauty, joy, peace, love,
that lies down on me, suffocating me? What is no less fond of shit than
tenderness, making no distinction? Where do others find the strength to
endure the Thing? How can they live with It? Are they crazy? They're
all crazy! I am unable to hide myself. I can't do anything, I am in the
power of the Thing which is coming after me slowly, inexorably, which
wants to feed off me.
Life's putrid current swept me along, whether I wanted it to or not,
towards absolute and compulsory death, which was the real horror. This
inspired in me an overwhelming fear. Since there was no other fate in
store for me than to fall into the ignoble belly of infection, to do so as
quickly as possible was all that was left to me. I wanted to kill myself
*Courtesy of the publisher Van Vactor & Goodheart and the translator Pat
Goodheart.
and get it over with. Towards morning I finally fell asleep, exhausted,
curled up in a ball like a fetus.
When I awoke I was drenched in my own blood, which had seeped
through the mattress and the box spring and was dripping onto the floor.
He had said, 'Don't do anything, I'll expect you tomorrow.' Six more
hours to wait; I couldn't last that long.
I stayed motionless in my bed, stiff as a corpse. I expected the worst.
Two horrible memories came back to me in every detail, two disasters,
two waking nightmares. One time the blood had flowed in such large
clots that it might have been said that I was producing slices of liver,
one after another, with an absurd obstinacy; as they passed through me
they caressed me gently, softly. They had taken me to the hospital for an
emergency curettage. Another time, the blood had come out of me like a
red thread which wouldn't stop unwinding- an open faucet. I remember
the shock of seeing it, and how it terrified me: 'At this rate the blood
will drain out of me in ten minutes flat.' Again, the hospital, transfu-
sions, doctors and nurses covered with blood, throwing themselves on
my arms, my legs, my hands, trying to find a vein, struggling through
the night. Then, in the morning, the operating room and again, a
curettage. I was not aware of the fact that in having surrendered to the
blood I was misrepresenting myself, I was concealing the Thing. At
certain times this cursed blood invaded my existence so completely that
it left me exhausted, again more fragile in the face of the Thing.
At the appointed hour I was at the dead end of the cul-de sac, bundled
in cotton pads I had put together to form a kind of diaper. I had to wait a
while, since I was early. The person ahead of me came out. Like the day
before, I heard the opening and closing of the two doors. At last I
entered and said right away, 'Doctor, I am bled dry.' I remember very
well having chosen the words because I found them beautiful. I also
remember that I wanted in my look and my posture to communicate the
pathetic. The doctor answered me quietly and calmly: 'Those are
psychosomatic disorders. That doesn't interest me. Speak about
something else.' There was a couch there. I didn't want to lie down on
it. I wanted to remain standing and fight. The words that this man had
just uttered were a slap in the face. Never had I encountered such
violence. Right in the face! My blood dido 't interest him! If that is so,
then everything is destroyed! He took my breath away. I felt as if I were
struck down by lightning. He did not want me to speak about my blood!
But of what else did he want me to speak? What ELSE? Apart from my
Marie Cardinal 39
blood there was only fear, nothing else, and I could no more speak of it
than think about it.
I broke down and cried - I who had been unable to cry for so long,
who for so many months had sought in vain the comfort of tears. Now
at last they flowed freely, dissolving the tension in my back, my chest,
and my shoulders. I cried for a long time. I reveled in the storm.
As soon as the door had closed again behind me, after that first ses-
sion, I was reminded of the blood and I thought the doctor was a madman,
a charlatan, one of the worst. What witchcraft had I allowed to trap me?
Now I had to act quickly. I was going to get a taxi and see a real doctor.
The driver was talkative, or perhaps he found me a little odd. In any
case, he didn't stop speaking and I continually caught his eye observing
me in the rearview mirror. In these circumstances and especially given
the way I was bundled up to go and see the doctor, it was impossible for
me to make one of my brief and secret verifications of the blood. The
more we drove towards the address of the doctor I had given him, the
more imperative it became to make the verification. I was getting upset,
aggressive. I wanted the driver to stop and at the same time to continue
driving. He didn't know what was going on with me. Finally, on the
edge of the seat, I put my left arm on the back of the seat in front of me,
my head resting on my arm. I made it seem as if I was listening to what
he said. Meanwhile, I rummaged under my dress with the right hand,
undid the zipper, tore at the diapers fastened by diaper pins until I got to
the source of the blood. I ascertained that nothing remarkable had
occurred. The hemorrhage was no worse; if anything it seemed to have
let up a little. Difficult to say. Only an hour earlier, before leaving, I had
been bleeding heavily.
Suddenly I changed my mind, disconcerting the taxi driver by giving
him Michele's address. Then I hid in the back of the cab. Perhaps I
could wait it out until the day after tomorrow.
I ran up the stairs four at a time, clutching my clothes that I had torn to
ribbons. Quick, to the bathroom. The soiled rags on the floor between my
feet, me on the bidet. The bleeding had stopped! I could not believe my
eyes. I didn't know, I couldn't know it, not on that day, that the blood
would never flow again without stopping for months and years. I
believed that it had only stopped flowing for a few seconds. I wanted to
savor it, as I had my tears. I washed up and lay down naked on the bed,
legs apart. Pure. I was pure! I was a sacred vessel, the altar for the blood,
the receptacle of tears. Clean, shining! The doctor had said, 'Try to under-
stand what happens to you, what provokes, attenuates, or accentuates
your crises. Everything is important: noises, colors, odors, gestures,

atmospheres ... everything! Try to proceed by the association of ideas and
images.'
That day, clumsy as I was in the manipulation of the analysis, it was
still easy enough for me to establish a link between hemorrhaging and
the blood stopping, with the doctor's slap in the face at the center of it:
'Your blood doesn't interest me, tell me about something else ... ', and
my tears. That night, liberated from the blood, my mind ventured forth
as if on a holiday into facile reflections, simple calculations and restful
thoughts - activities of the mind which I normally regarded as a
playground in which I might not linger, under pain of being captured by
the Thing. I could only fight it off when I was at the peak of my intelli-
gence or in the farthest reaches of my imagination on the path of the
infinite, the unknowable, the mysterious and the magical. In this way,
quite unthinkingly, with the freedom of a spring and the simplicity of an
egg, I realized I had been subjected to dozens of tests and there had
never been any evidence to indicate something abnormal in the various
bodily functions. Not with respect to hormones or the circulatory
system, the organic or chemical. I understood my blood was the life
buoy which allowed the doctors and me to keep afloat on the sea of the
inexplicable. I bleed, she bleeds. Why? Because there is something
wrong, something physiological, something very serious, complicated,
fibromatous, introverted, lacerated, abnormal. The tests reveal nothing,
nothing significant; however, one doesn't bleed like that without a
reason. The doctor has to open you up and have a look. He has to make
a long incision in the skin, in the muscles, in the veins, open up the flesh
of the belly, the viscera, and take hold of that hot, pinkish organ, cut it
away and eliminate it. Then there won't be any more blood. No
gynecologist, psychiatrist or neurologist had ever acknowledged that the
blood came from the Thing. On the contrary, I was told the Thing came
from the blood. 'Women are often "nervous" because their gynecologi-
cal equilibrium is precarious, very delicate.'
That evening it was apparent to me that the Thing was the essential
element: it was all powerful.
I was made to face the Thing. It was no longer so vague, although I
didn't know how to define it. That evening I understood that I was the
madwoman. She made me afraid because she carried the Thing inside.
She at once disgusted and attracted me, like those magnificent reliqua-
ries in a religious procession enclosing the remains of a saint. The gold,
the precious stones, these beauties to contain a skull with rotten teeth,
Marie Cardinal 41
shinbones yellow with age and dried blood! Around it the priests with
their censers, their canopies, their banners, the stultified crowd chanting
the response in procession behind those vile and stunted remains! The
lamentation and the ecstasy which come from so many wagging tongues
and vacant eyes and bended knees, and from all those fingers entwined
with the rosary! Madness!
It had become impossible for me to comprehend the division of lives
into years, months, days, hours, seconds. Why did people do the same
things at the same time? I no longer understood anything, the lives of
those around me made no sense. Hostage to a hostile or indifferent
universe to which I was accountable, I accused myself of bad deeds and
I did penance for them. My thoughts were so entangled that the more
the years went by, the more I had the impression of sinking into evil, or
imperfection, or the indecent, or the unseemly. I was never able to be
satisfied with myself. I looked upon myself like so much garbage, an
anomaly, a disgrace, and, what was worse, I believed that I had allowed
myself to be overrun by error because of an evil nature. With a little
courage, willpower and by taking in the advice lavished upon me, I
might have been on the side of the angels, or so I thought. But by being
cowardly, lazy, mediocre, and low, I was in the wrong camp, irre-
vocably. I was the lowest of the low! My body had thickened and sunk
in upon itself. I believed that I had become ugly inside and out.
And then, that night, because the bleeding had stopped and the doctor
had spoken to me as if I were a normal person, I looked at myself in
another light. What had that small man set into motion? What instinct
propelled me? I began to doggedly follow my new path. I was like
honeybees whom nothing can distract from their task, solely occupied in
choosing the best pollen. The honey would be my equilibrium. Nothing
else interested me. I thought of nothing else. It did not cross my mind to
telephone my uncle. It was only much later that I told my husband.
*
Autrement dit ('In Other Words')*
Where was I?
I'd written 'A time comes when the manuscript is finished .. .'
Yes, my beloved manuscript did get finished. I even found a name for
*Marie Cardinal, Autrement dit, copyright Grasset & Fasquelle, 1977.

(Translated by Elizabeth Fallaize.)
it. And, late one afternoon, I took it to my publisher, in a handsome

folder with a strap and a metal clasp. I left it on an executive desk, in the
hands of a stranger. Good riddance!
Then I went home and slept for twelve hours.
The next morning, I realised the split second I woke that the manu-
script wasn't there any more, open at the last page. No pencil in my
hand. No touch of paper against my cheek.
It's finished, it's at the publishers, it can stand on its own feet now.
At first there was a sense of satisfaction, like sitting a hard exam and
passing it ( I knew the publisher was going to accept it). The pleasure of
carrying a task through to completion. The rows and rows of knitting
had turned into a proper sweater that would keep you warm. The hard
work of ploughing furrow by furrow had created a field with green darts
of wheat pushing up in it.
Then, emptiness. Like the silence of a country railway-station after
the noise, the bustle of the train times. The surprising resonance of small
sounds: birds chirping, a bee buzzing, a blast on the station-master's
whistle. My stop. Stationary. Has everything come to a halt? Will I be
able to live in this calm? My head reels. Is such perfect peace death?
Will I set off again?
Then, a holiday mood. I've worked hard, now I'm going to enjoy
myself. I'm going to have fun. I'm going to do things I like doing.
Like what, for example?
Like some really good food for example. I love cooking when I've
got enough time. Something that the family adores. Like leg of lamb
with creamed potatoes. I'll get the leg from my Arab butcher, his lamb
smells like lamb, not like that mawkish, whiteish lamb the French eat.
Spicy-tasting lamb, full of garlic. And creamed potatoes that aren't too
dry, nor too liquid, beaten thoroughly with a fork. The kids call it
'Moumousse' potatoes because my family call me Moussia. And what
shall we start with? Eggs mayonnaise. Quick to do and all the better for
it. Everyone likes that. And dessert? I'll buy a tart from the baker's,
theirs are better than mine. I'm not going to start racking my brains.
Never mind if it costs more, just for once.
A thought struck me quite suddenly. With such force that I sat down
on my bed, stunned, and stayed there, sitting bolt upright with my knees
drawn into my chest: who was this gagantuan feast for? For the children?
But the children have gone. How stupid of me! How could I have got on
so well with my work if they'd been here? The children have grown up
and left home.
Marie Cardinal 43
I wanted to avert my mind from the danger and I tried to think of

something to keep me occupied rather than something to amuse me.
Something to take the place of the manuscript. A job to do.
And what about clearing out the hall cupboard! For the last six
months I'd been pulling out the linen I needed straight from the dry
cleaner's packets in the cupboard, just tearing open the wrapping and
hauling out the sheets, towels, drying-up cloths, whatever I needed at
the time. After six months the cupboard was awash with crumpled linen
and bits of paper mixed up with an avalanche of see-through plastic
from the shredded wrappings. It didn't look much like the linen cup-
boards of my childhood, storehouses of fine embroidery work, armou-
ries of lawn and linen, repositories of orderly white columns of sheets,
fragrant with lavender.
Yes, that was it, I was going to do out the hall cupboard. Get every-
thing out, get it all clean, line the shelves with paper, put all the sheets
together in one place, all the pillow-slips in another...
What time is it?
Six thirty a.m.
In the fifteen years that I've been writing, I've got into the habit of
getting up very early to give myself as much as time as possible before
the children have to get up at seven. Fifteen years of black winter
mornings and summer dawns. Now the children aren't at school, they're
not even living at home, but I'm stuck with the habit, I still start my day
with the dawn. Six thirty a.m. There's no point in getting up at six thirty
to do out the hall cupboard. I've got all morning. I could go back to
sleep, read a book, anything.
By a quarter to seven I'm concentrating on hoovering the sitting room.
Bonnie's hairs are a real plague! You have to keep going over the carpet
to pick them up. The trick is to angle the hoover brush with a flick of the
wrist so that the opening which sucks in the air is partially blocked. That
creates a sort of hiccup which often picks up the hair. It's not difficult but
it takes a long time and it's important to do it. Otherwise, Bonnie's hairs
form amazingly hard little balls which wear the carpet out when you
tread on them. It's fantastic the way one form of matter attacks another,
the way even concrete walls deteriorate if you don't look after them!
Children don't understand. It's no good saying there's no point. I told
them often enough, we can't afford dirt and mess!
What is all this crap! Why the hell do Bonnie's hairs need doing this
morning! Who's going to tread on them at seven o'clock, at eight
o'clock! When is anyone going to tread on them at all?
I switched off the hoover, I stood up, I had a long useless tube in my
hands. Useless. Ten minutes later I was out in the street. I had fled from
the house. Useless. Empty. Nobody.
Who's empty? Who's useless? Who's nobody? The house is empty,
useless, nobody? So what! Is that why I'm crying?
Swimming with tears from deep down, welling up from who knows
where. Floods of tears, enough to wash down the early morning pave-
ments of my neighbourhood. It's so stupid. What's the point?
I'm the one who's empty, useless, nobody. I'm crying over the early
morning scramble, over the unfinished breakfasts, over Benedicte who
was always last, always late, in her pretty little kilt that I bought her at
Galeries Lafayette and kept letting down the hem as long as I could.
I'm crying over Alice and the beautiful solemn face she had when she
hadn't done her homework and at the last minute panicked, wanting to
stay at home. 'You should have got on with it...' I'm crying over Benoit
who always felt too hot and went off in his shirtsleeves on February
mornings when the grass was frozen, his anorak sleeves dragging on the
ground, the stitching on his school-bag coming undone so that his
rubbers, his rulers, everything was spilling out: 'This is the last time I'm
sewing it up for you and you won't get another one my lad ... ' I'm crying
over days that were crammed too full, minutes that weren't long
enough. Quick, get the socks in to soak, I'll wash them tonight. Quick,
sweep the kitchen lino. Quick, make the bed. Quick, get the morning
shopping done, bread, milk, something for lunch. Quick, I'll be late
again. Hell.
Quick. Quick. Quick. Tonight ... In a minute ... Tomorrow ... On
Sunday ... The shopping, the washing-up, the hand-washing, the potato
peeling, the mending, Alice's silences, Benedicte' s whimpering,
Benoit's fighting. Quick. Quick. Quick. Going up to secondary school.
To the sixth form. Parents' evenings. The clothes and the iron. The
spring-cleaning, walls and ceiling, once a year. It's easier though than
when they were little, all those nappies and feeds ...
Time goes so quickly! Twenty-two years! It soon passes at that rate.
I'm crying over my empty useless arms, over my empty useless
hands, over my empty useless body. Over my half a small loaf when I
used to need two large ones. Over my slice of ham when I used to be
weighed down by two baskets of eight to ten kilos apiece. Over my
knickers and bra to wash when I used to have tubs full of washing. And
the strength it took to heave all that wet washing up afterwards.
I was crying. I was sobbing, even. The baker's wife had appeared at
Marie Cardinal 45
the shop door, ready for a chat. I liked to exchange a few words with her
in the morning, a youngish plumpish woman, pink and well scrubbed,
her peroxide curls glued into an immutable structure above her know-
ing, sensible smile. The baker often came and stood in the doorway
when he heard us talking. He would be in shorts and old shoes, naked
above the waist, young and vigorous like his wife, the hair of his
powerful arms and chest powdered with flour. He never started chatting,
that wasn't his role.
The baker's wife hao seen my face and withdrew in embarrassment
into the shop. How could I explain to her what the matter was? She
wouldn't have understood. It wasn't the fact that I was alone and useless
which was making me cry. My manuscript had absorbed so much of my
attention that I hadn't been aware of my children leaving home. It was
even because they had left that I had been able to write as I had never
written before. As for the manuscript, I'd start another, later, I'd soon
feel better about the other one.
I was crying over women. Yes, over women's lives. I'd never seen so
clearly before the absurdity of the way their lives are wiped out by
common accord. It wasn'tjust their labours, their exhaustion, their self-
denial which ended up being obliterated, it was something essential
which was struck out: the wisdom that women gain from their constant
contact with matter, the knowledge that they acquire from their daily
handling of substance, the intuition of life and death that comes from
their dogged relationship with the body, their own, their husband's, their
children's, all that negated!
They lead their lives in submission and resignation. Unconsciously
developing, in their need to protect themselves against non-existence, a
detestable possessiveness, latching on like harpies to those whom they
have served all their lives, to give their lives a meaning. A meaning. How
could women dare to speak of what they know? The words to say it, the
real words, the words about beginning, about birth are all shameful, ugly,
dirty, taboo. For their profound intelligence comes from blood, from
crap, from milk, from snot, from the earth, from sweat, from flesh, from
the juices, from fever. They don't know how to express what binds all
that to happiness, to freedom, to justice, about which, nevertheless, they
know something essential. They don't know how to translate into words
what their bodies know: the slowness of gestation, the fecund viscosity,
the nourishing density, the danger of fermentations, the necessity of
mutations, the weight of time, the uncontrollability of space, the
precariousness of limits ... The archaism of our lives as women.
I want to write for women, I want to give them words which will
serve as anns.
Les Grands Desordres (Devotion and Disorder)*
The two women went back to Paris, where autumn was turning red, and
the first relapse occurred.
On her return, Elsa was convinced that the worst was over, that she
would be able to get her life back on an even keel now and organise
Laure's definitive recovery.
As soon as she got back she phoned her colleague in Marseilles to
give him an account of the previous two weeks. He advised getting
some air into Laure's life. 'She's too isolated,' he had said, 'she needs to
see friends of her own who aren't too dangerous for her. Former addicts
. . . Something like Alcoholics Anonymous, you see. They help each
other, it works well.' Laure had taken the receiver, talked to him and
eventually had said she could contact someone called Alex who had
been into heroin but was off it now.
Half an hour later Alex arrived, channing and in the best of health.
Laure was smiling, pleased to see him, and Elsa left them alone
together.
She went into her study to phone Jacqueline. Elsa herself was also
pleased to be in touch with a friend again, to talk about work and find
out what had been going on while she was away. She chatted away. She
listened to a whole list of queries her secretary wanted to raise with her
... Then she heard someone go into the bathroom- Laure, obviously,
since the door had been left open- and, shortly afterwards, the noise of
a metallic object falling to the floor. The noise terrorised Elsa. She put
the phone down straight away, barely apologising.
The bathroom door was opposite the study. From the study, when she
got to the door, Elsa saw her daughter slumped forward on the toilet,
anns hanging down, her left sleeve rolled up, a strap and a syringe in
her right hand, a teaspoon on the floor. Laure lifted up her head with
what seemed to Elsa to be a considerable effort. Her eyes had a faraway
*Marie Cardinal, Les Grands Desordres, copyright Grasset & Fasquelle, 1987.
Marie Cardinal 41
look, she was smiling, looking as innocent, as calm and contented as a

child who has fallen asleep over her supper and who allows herself to be
carried up to bed, a picture of trust. Laure's body back again! Her little
girl, her own little girl!
Elsa crossed the corridor, put her arms beneath her daughter's knees
and shoulders.
She's heavy, children grow so quickly!
She carries her to her bedroom, lies her down on the bed, pulls the
blanket over her, but there's no need, Laure is glowing with warmth.
My baby, my cherub, my little poppet...
'Did Alex give you the dope?'
'Yes. I didn't want to, but I didn't take much you know, not much at
all.'
She's asleep.
For three weeks Elsa had watched Laura struggling with heroin, fight-
ing for heroin and against heroin; she had never seen her abandoned to
heroin. This was the first time she had seen her in heroin's embrace. She
finds it indecent. She finds it beautiful. That satisfied woman is Laure!
She's ashamed of being there, she feels like a voyeur, she feels jealous...
My baby, my baby, what have 'they' done to you!
Laure's body!
The peace of mind she had felt the last few days in Morocco had
disappeared. The peace of exile, of alienation, of solitude ... Knowing
nothing, knowing nothing and no one ... It had been restful, reassuring ...
The sight of Laure's languid body, of the rapture on her daughter's
closed-in face sends violent emotions surging uncontrollably through
her. She is submerged by the wash of a primitive wave which lashes
her, harries her, tears into her. She doesn't know where she is, who she
is any more. Her instinct makes her rock Laure in her arms, again and
again, mechanically. She waits for her own heartbeats to calm down,
and then, gets to her feet.
As she walks towards the living-room she whips up her internal
agitation by taking big energetic strides which make her walk erect and
look tall. She thinks of the Statue of Liberty in New York harbour that
she had once seen close up when she crossed the Atlantic by ship. A big
adult woman, well built and strong, brandishing a torch with her right
arm. Elsa strides forward. The statue strides with her, she's sure. But
she, Elsa, is going to smash her torch into Alex's face with all the force
she can muster, that's absolutely certain.
Elsa has never been in a fight, has never declared war on anyone, it
doesn't matter, it doesn't even cross her mind, she's going to beat hell
out of that boy. Full stop. And no one can tell her that it doesn't make
sense, that this is no way to behave. She's beyond caring, she'll behave
later...
The boy, waiting for Laure to come back, sees the mother bearing
down on him. His eyes widen, he takes a step backward. He is struck in
the leg by a violent kick that hurts.
'You can't do that, you're mad!'
'Bugger off out of here, bugger off or I'll kill you!'
Rubbing his shins he whimpers: 'She didn't pay me, give me my
money.'
'You must be joking! You shouldn't have given her drugs!'
'It was her that phoned me, she asked me.'
'That's not true, you're lying, I was here when she phoned you! She
didn't ask you at all.'
He's taken refuge behind the sofa.
'Look here, you ... think about it. She's a dope addict and I'm a
pusher. So when an addict phones a pusher and says she wants to see
him, you don't have to be a wizard to work that one out, eh! You don't
have to be a psychiatrist...'
That makes him laugh. She hates him.
*
Elsa Labbe is an educated woman, more educated than most people.
She has become a specialist. She has accumulated knowledge which has
enabled her to interpret and even to design batteries of tests, to
determine mental age, to evaluate intelligence quotients ... but she'd
learned more than that. Her education had taken place in a scientific
environment which was questioning itself. She had a real taste for the
surprises that knowledge held in store for her. She felt that she was well
prepared to face those surprises ...
Elsa's world had not changed since her birth. It had developed but it
wasn't different. Her world was the same as her parents': a world that
had remained the same in France for a hundred years or so. She knew it
hadn't always been like that, she could name and date the stages of its
Marie Cardinal 49
development. She was familiar with the excesses and ftounderings of

the Age of Enlightenment. She was conscious of what had been gained
and what had been lost. There was a balance there, the two equalled
each other out. She took this world for what it was, no more and no
less, she criticised it, but she felt at home in it, it was her world, she
liked it.
She liked it.
It was her era, her time, her piece of History. She thought about how
the rest of her life would tum out, knowing that she would have to make
choices. She tried to imagine what those choices might be and she
looked forward to them; each of those choices would mean a step
forward ...
And then the business with Laure had crashed into her life with
unbelievable violence, shattering it. She's fallen to pieces, she knows
that. In these circumstances, how can she help her daughter when she's
adrift herself?
Elsa comes to these conclusions as she thinks about her ex-patient,
little Alain. She looks round her, she's in her own home, but that
doesn't mean anything any more. At home, at home with herself, within
herself, all that seems highly suspect to her now.
She tells herself that she must economise every ounce of energy if
she's going to see this thing through. She has to avoid planning, stop
organising for the future, just cope as straightforwardly as possible with
the present. No analysis, no moralising, no solutions; or only basic
solutions, solutions to preserve her daughter's health, and her own, in
the immediate future, no more than that.
Laure has slipped noiselessly into the living-room. She sees her
mother sitting upright in her chair, gazing into the distance. She doesn't
know that Elsa is powerless. How could she know? She has only ever
known her mother be strong. She doesn't know that Elsa's strength
comes from what she has learned. She doesn't know that in the space of
a few weeks Elsa's knowledge has served only to make her face her
ignorance. She doesn't know that her mother is a wasteland.
She approaches her mother who at last becomes aware of her
presence and looks at her. Laure's face takes on the expression of a little
girl who has been naughty playing the repentant; she slithers gracefully,
very gently, on to Elsa's lap, slipping her arms round Elsa's neck and
shoulders, nudging her mother's body. She wants to be rocked, looks
cajoling, still wrapped in the warmth of the drug. Elsa rocks her. She
doesn't rock her in a spirit of forgiveness, or consolation, she rocks her
because it does her good herself, the gentle rhythm of the movement
calms her. The two women rock each other, until they've had enough.
Elsa says: 'We'll have something to eat.'
In the kitchen, Elsa looks in the fridge and the cupboards to see what
sort of meal she could make. Laure is sitting at the table, still sluggish.
'Well now, I could do an omelette with herbs, a runny one, the way
we both like them. Ham and salad, some cheese and a glass of red
wine ... and fruit. Okay?'
'Okay ... Elsa, I can't stay in Paris. I know I'd never hold out.'
'Well then, we'll have dinner and then we'll go. All right?'
'All right. You're wonderful. What about your work?'
'I've sorted something out, don't worry. Do you want to talk about it
any more?'
'No ... It's all muddled.'
Drifting became a way of life for them.

There were many relapses. Terrible failures that cut Laure and Elsa to
the quick like a razor blade. Laure couldn't hold out, couldn't get herself
off heroin, so they would set off again. There was never any question of
breaking the agreement they'd made on the first day.
They drifted geographically. They kept away from Paris and from
other people. Now the two women knew how to avert the most painful
part of the craving: they had medicines. Elsa's psychiatric friend had
given them prescriptions.
But there is no medicine for the other craving, the one that comes
afterwards, the worst one, the one that racks you with desire, that
destroys you with contradictory obsessions. Slowly Elsa came to know
that craving, very slowly. Because of that other craving, the one that
Laure called the 'psychological craving', Elsa began on a terrifying
intellectual drift, at the same time as they drifted geographically. From
now on, her knowledge would resemble quicksands, her intelligence
would be of little use, she would no longer be able to communicate with
others.
3
Chantal Chawaf
Introduction
Does writing today not require work of a different nature

to fictional creation as we know it? Would not that work
be nearer to poetic creation? And would it not lead to an
intermingling of languages and genres? Would it not
mean going forward into the unknown, seeking out new
effects? Could it not be aimed more at the body rather
than at being read? And, would not the reading which
would follow be displaced more towards a reading of the
unconscious, moving away from the conscious, from the
known, from solutions, from the already said, the already
read, the already seen, to give words to what had none
before, to allow parts of ourselves which have never spo-
ken to speak, the psyche, the deeply intimate which has
not yet been socialised, if modernity is a transgression of
our reading habits? (Chantal Chawaf, 1983)1
Is it not possible to oppose a passive writing to an active

writing, the writer who takes to the writer who gives? Life
creating literature to literature creating life? The old novel
to a newer novel? The novel which speaks the image to
the novel which speaks the body? The order of separation
to the order of fusion? (Chantal Chawaf, 1988) 2
Chantal Chawaf is deeply conscious of writing in a new and

difficult direction, a direction which she spent seven years
struggling towards before producing her first text, Retable/La
Reverie ('Retabulum'/'Dreaming'), published in 1974. 3 The
51
subject of 'Ratable', the search for the mother whom Chawaf

never knew, necessarily entailed a reaching back into the
unconscious, into the experiences of the unborn child, since
Chawaf lost her mother even before her own birth.4 The
second text which forms part of this first publication, 'La
Reverie' ('Dreaming'), evokes the experience of lovemaking
for the female body in terms which attempt to counter male
erotic fantasies about female sexuality; Chawaf feels strongly
that the reality of the female body has not been described
but fantasised. One of her tasks is to express that reality:
'living woman and not woman imagined, not the idea of
woman'. 5 In this sense, she does not regard herself as writing
fiction but as developing a language which would be closer
to the reality of the body. 6 Love, the mother, sexuality,
orality, the deepest and most intimate experiences of the
body, the 'unsayable' as one of her characters calls the sub-
ject matter of her writing -these are the materials which fre-
quently recur in Chawaf's work and which are not so much
themes as constitutive elements of her texts.
Much of her writing and theory is supported by a reading
of psychoanalytic theory and practice. 7 In particular, Chawaf
discusses the work of analyst Michael Balint on regressive
patients to argue that literature can explore the same
domains as the regressions explored by Balint and bring lan-
guage closer to our earliest and deepest affective experi-
ences. The regressive is the mode of being which dominates
sleep, desire, sexuality: 'We are thus all regressive since we
all have a body.' 8 At these deep levels of the psyche the ver-
bal does not yet exist, the visual plays a greatly diminished
role and the other senses - the tactile, thermal, auditory,
gustatory and olfactory - dominate. The return to the body
and to its earliest experiences is always, for Chawaf, the
return to the mother, but her purpose in doing this is not to
tie writing down in a regressive fusion with the mother. Her
aim is to create a bridge between the regressive and intel-
lectual parts of ouselves, a bridge which enables the entry of
the body into writing and the entry of the feminine and the
maternal into the symbolic. The writing of the feminine-
l'ecriture du feminin, a term she has sometimes used in pref-
erence to the better known ecriture feminine - can, she
argues, escape Lacan's Law of the Father and create a space
Chantal Chawaf 53
which represents the union of the mother and the father, the
body and the intellect, a 'fusional' writing which escapes
both the stage of total identification with the mother and a
father-dominated separation. Language thus carries the
biological into an ethical dimension. 9
In order to create this language of the body, Chawaf elab-
orates a richly embroidered vocabulary and a generous,
rhythmically sensual style. Linear plot developments and
traditionally organised syntax have little place in her prose of
abundance which builds up and up, piling on words and
clauses in a sweeping poetic style. As she herself ruefully
remarks, the absence of external descriptions in her work
breaks one of the major conventions of narrative prose: 'I
have been asked to describe visually a face, a hairstyle, cloth-
ing, to visualise the already visible whereas in my texts, gen-
erally, I seek to visualise the inside, what escapes the look. It's
another way of looking.' 10 Part of this 'other way of looking' is
the use of elements of the fairy-tale. In Fees de toujours
('Fairies Immemorial'), Chawaf examines the history of fairy-
tale and its origins in ancient Gaul, where fairy-tales were told
in the Romance language in a vocabulary rich in pagan and
rural elements. The way in which fairy-tale has gradually
come to be considered suitable for children rather than adults
is an instance, for Chawaf, of the way in which adults have
gradually distanced themselves from the imaginary.
Elwina, /e roman-fee ('Eiwina, the fairy-tale novel'), pub-
lished in 1986, is one of Chawaf's most interesting and most
immediately approachable texts. It combines a number of
her central themes and places the practice of a writing of the
feminine at the heart of the text, since the central figure,
Elwine, herself 'comes to writing' (in Cixous's phrase) in the
course of the text. Elwine, like Chawaf herself, 'writes the
body'; in the extract given below she describes the products
of her first attempts at writing as 'blood, flesh, nerve-end-
ings, still body, part of my own body'. For Elwine, writing the
body is clearly a regression since she seeks to write about
'the other reality, the one that we lose before getting to know
it', a reality that will make Elwine's reader feel 'penetrated all
over, suffused with liquid, a warm liquid that flows through
you'. Elwine's writing inevitably takes her back to the earliest
experiences of the unborn body in the womb since her
writing is above all a search for the mother that she scarcely
knew. Exploring these buried memories, together with the
fragments of images she retains of a maternal presence,
gradually helps her to create 'Eiwina', an imaginative vision
which is both her writing (the title of the 'fairy-tale novel'
itself) and her mother.
Writing becomes a 'mother-tongue' which enables Elwine
to penetrate a world of mythology, of the fairy-tale, of the
unconscious, of dream, of the fantastic. The power of this
writing is immense: on the one hand, Elwine ascribes explo-
sive social and political power to this nurturing language
which can offer an alternative to the violence, folly and visual
obsession of the world in which she lives; on the other, it
literally produces her mother since her writing eventually
persuades a relative to reveal the facts about her mother and
about Elwine's own identity. 'The imaginary has forced
reality to articulate itself,' says Elwine, echoing Chawaf's own
claim that the contrast between the vision her writing pro-
duces and the real world itself produces social and political
meaning.
Elwine's relationship with her publisher, Pierre Duval,
establishes such a contrast, and produces a satirical account
of the difficulties for a young and vulnerable woman writer in
the male world of publishing. Duval is presented as a sadist
and a voyeur, part of a Paris which is described as fixated on
the visual, a world in which the glare of television screens
and neon lights insistently signal the alienation of lives which
hold themselves as far away as possible from the original
relation between mother and child. Duval's sadism points the
way forward to a universe in which the child will be the result
of genetic manipulations, the relationship between parent
and child will be lost and the body will be cut off from its
origins. 'The body just doesn't exist,' asserts Duval; despite
his pronouncements about sexual pleasure and women's
bodies it becomes clear that his only pleasure is in his
sadistic manipulations of young would-be writers. This
sadism, together with his alienation from the body, place him
at the antithesis of the mother-child relationship.
Ble de semences ('Seeds of the Corn'), published in 1976,
is a much earlier text than Elwina; however, the extract from
Chantal Chawaf 55
it has been placed here after Elwina, because it enacts the

kind of writing which Elwine discusses, and can perhaps be
better understood in that light. The text produces a shock in
the reader, partly because of its evocation of sickeningly rich
food, partly because of its deliberate mix of the animal and
the human, which foregrounds the intense physicality of
experiences such as lactation, urination, sexuality_,, The real-
ist dimension of Elwina barely exists in 818 de semences;
only the most fleeting references are made to a child who
stands looking out of a window in an apartment block. Her
state of mind is represented by a narrative drawing on myth,
on archetype, on the fairy-tale and on the unconscious. The
extract given below focuses, like Elwina, on the relationship
between mother and child, but this time it is the adolescent
daughter's struggle towards separation from the mother
which is at the centre of the narrative. The mother becomes
the Queen; the daughter's ambiguous feelings towards her
are represented in the extract below where the Queen is both
light and heavy, both understanding and oppressive, both
beautiful and repulsive. The Queen is surrounded by 'the
women', a subordinate group of secondary mothering
figures, all relating to the adolescent girl through food and
nurturing. 12 Their half-human, half-animal status allows them
to represent the unconscious, repressed dimension of the
relation to the mother. The adolescent girl feels both pro-
tected and suffocated, both nurtured and literally 'fed up'.
Poised between childhood and sexual maturity she is at
times overwhelmed by her fevered imaginings of sexual
experience, and by the waiting for the archprince. In the
Freudian scenario it is the archprince who will seduce her
away from the mother and towards desire for the male body
and, as the mother herself suggests, towards the desire for
penetration. The luxuriant imagery and vocabulary of the
text, its borrowings from fairy-tale, the rhythmic patterning of
the sentences (imperfectly captured in translation) produce a
prose which, like the text which Elwine wants to write, is 'felt'
by the reader as much as read.
Chawaf is one of the most original and poetic writers of
contemporary France. She is well reviewed in the press but
remains little known to the general public. None of her books
has as yet been translated into English, though many have

been translated into German.
Notes
1. Quotation from 'Aujourdhui' ('Today'), Roman, no. 5 (1983), pp.

135--40 (p. 139).
2. Quotation from 'Deux ou trois choses pour Ia survie de notre
heros' ('Two or three things for the survival of our hero'),
Roman, no. 23 (1988), pp. 26-35 (p. 27).
3. See 'De Retable a Rougeatre' ('From "Retabulum" to
"Reddening"'), Des Femmes en Mouvements, no. 6 (1978), pp.
86-8 (p. 86).
4. See Introduction, p. 11. Valerie Hannagan discusses this text in
her 'Reading as a daughter: Chantal Chawaf revisited', in Atack
and Powrie, pp. 177-91. Hannagan's reading of it supports
her more general critique of Chawaf as enmeshed in a
mother-daughter symbiotic from which neither partner is able
fully to merge.
5. Quotation from 'Contre Ia fiction' ('Against fiction'), Roman, no.
18 (1987), pp. 47-64 (p. 60).
6. Hence the title of the article referred to above.
7. Names cited by Chawaf in her articles include Michael Balint,
Jacques Lacan, Ferenczi, Gerard Pommier, Robert Stoller and
Catherine Millot.
8. Quotation from 'Contre Ia fiction', p. 54.
9. See in particular her article 'La peur du feminin dans le langage'
('The fear of the feminine in language'), Roman,no. 25 (1988),
pp. 34-45.
10. 'Contre Ia fiction', p. 50.
11. In 'De Retable a Rougeatre' (p. 88) Chawaf notes that some male
readers of the text were reported to have literally vomited.
12. The community of women which these figures represent is
reminiscent of Wittig's utopian community in Les Guerilleres.
Chantal Chawaf bibliography
Fictional works by Chawaf
Retable/La Reverie (Paris: Editions des femmes, 1974).

Cercoeur (Paris: Mercure de France, 1975).
Ble de semences (Paris: Mercure de France, 1976).
Le Solei/ et Ia terre (Paris: Pauvert, 1977).
Rougeatre (Paris: Pauvert, 1978).
Chantal Chawaf 57
Maternite (Paris: Stock, 1979).

Landes (Paris: Stock, 1980).
Cn§pusculaires (Paris: Ramsay, 1981).
Les Surfaces de l'orage (Paris: Ramsay, 1982).
La Vallee incarnate (Paris: Flammarion, 1984).
Elwina, Je roman-fee (Paris: Flammarion, 1986).
L'Jnterieur des heures (Paris: Editions des femmes, 1987).
Fees de toujours (Paris: Pion, 1988).
Redemption (Paris: Flammarion, 1989).
L'Eclaircie (Paris: Flammarion, 1990).
Articles by Chawaf
'De Retable a Rougeatre', Des Femmes en Mouvements, no. 6

(1978), pp. 86-8.
'La Chair linguistique', Les Nouvelles litteraires, 26 May 1976, p. 18.
Extract translated in Elaine Marks and Isabelle de Courtivron
(eds), New French Feminisms (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1980),
pp. 177-8.
'Chantal Chawaf, Ecrivain', Marie-Claire, March 1979, p. 30.
a
'Portrait: Ecrire partir du corps vivant', Lendemains, no. 30 (1983),
pp. 119-25.
'Aujourd'hui', Roman, no. 5 (1983), pp. 135--40.
'Contre Ia fiction', Roman, no. 18 (1987), pp. 47-64.
'Deux ou trois idees pour Ia survie de notre heros', Roman, no. 23
(1988), pp. 26-35.
'La Peur du feminin dans le langage', Roman, no. 25 (1988), pp.
34-45.
Articles on Chawaf's work and selected reviews
Accad, Evelyne, 'Interview avec Chantal Chawaf', Presence

Francophone, no. 17 (1978), pp. 151-61.
Arsand, Daniel, Review of Elwina, Je roman-fee, Masques, no. 2
(1986).
Cesbron, Georges, 'L'Inconscient au feminin dans Les Surfaces de
l'orage de Chantal Chawaf', L'Ecole des Lettres, LXXVI (1985), pp.
27-34.
Cledat, Franc;;:oise, 'L'Ecriture du corps', Magazine Jitteraire, January
1982, pp. 20-2.
Galimard-Fiavigny, Bertrand, Review of 8/e de semences in
Magazine litteraire, October 1976, p. 40.
Hannagan, Valerie 'Reading as a daughter: Chantal Chawaf
revisited', in Contemporary French Fiction by Women, ed. by
Margaret Atack and Phil Powrie (Manchester: Manchester
Jardine, Alice and Anne Menke, 'Chantal Chawaf' (Interview), in
Shifting Scenes: Interviews on Women, Writing and Politics in

Post-68 France (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), pp.
17-31.
Lefevre, Fran~oise, Review of Ble de semences, Le Monde, 25 June
1976.
Lempert, Annegret, 'Le desir dans le fleuve immense', Lendemains,
no. 30 (1983), pp. 156-60.
Nerlich, Michael, 'Le desir de se rythmer par les mots', Lendemains,
no. 30 (1983), 141-51.
Powrie, Phil, 'A Womb of one's own: the metaphor of the womb-
room as a reading-effect in texts by contemporary French women
writers', Paragraph, 12 (1989), pp. 197-213.
Powrie, Phil, 'Myth, allegory and the problematisation of narrative in
Chantal Chawaf's Le Solei/ et Ia Terre', in The Body and the Text:
Helime Cixous, Reading and Teaching, ed. by H. Wilcox and
others (Brighton: Harvester, 1990) pp. 78-86.
Rihoit, Catherine, 'Huit femmes a plumes', F Magazine, July-August
1981, pp. 115-16.
Thiessen, Monika, 'Les mots me multiplient les yeux', Lendemains
no. 30 (1983), pp. 152-55.
Chantal Chawaf 59
Elwina, le roman-fee ('Eiwina, the fairy-tale novel')*
'You should write .. .'

They are striding along the boulevard towards the restaurant in which
their weekly meetings customarily take place.
'You're looking very well.'
A writer, a friend of Elwine, had introduced her to Pierre Duval three
months previously.
'You interest me', Pierre Duval, a literary publisher, is saying to
Elwine, 'because I sense that you have great moral rigour.'
She leaves most of her food on her plate. Her appetite had
disappeared with the arrival of the first course. The sight of the oily
lettuce leaves, the pieces of bacon, the croutons, the runny egg, had
filled her with nausea. She is dwindling fast, wishes she could lose yet
more weight, become flatter. The edge of the table is protruding into her
stomach. Opposite her, Pierre Duval is eating, drinking, talking. As she
sits listening to him, he divests her of her self; he drains away her
female energy, a physical and symbolic energy that he devours avidly,
carried along with the oral stream of food and words that flows
uninterruptedly through his mouth.
Elwine is on her guard. Beyond the flexible exterior on the other side
of the table, she senses a barrier of steel, a hermeticism resistant to
everything coming from outside, to everything coming from others, as
though this man dominated his body with such strength of will, with
such powerful discipline, that self-control was in his case a repression, a
pathological censorship of life. He gazes into her eyes:
'The body just doesn't exist, my dear. Once you've understood that
the body has no existence you'll have understood eternity. When a man
and a woman make love, you see, the man can do anything, the body is
no longer an obstacle for him. And, afterwards, what a reward for the
man to see the smile of the woman he has just brought to orgasm! But
... let's get back to our project; when are you going to make a start on
our novel?'
'Our novel?'
'You are a novel that we must write together.'
'I've never written anything ... just a few poems when I was in my
teens.'
*Chantal Chawaf, Elwina, le roman-fee, Flammarion, 1986; courtesy of the

publisher. (Translated by Elizabeth Fallaize.)
'It's not a question of writing a book; just transcribe your emotional

experience, your femininity. Just love and let yourself be loved. I can
see the woman in you, I can read her, I can hear her as I listen to you, I
am beside her, devoted to her, I love her with the greatest respect, with
the greatest esteem. You are one of those men and women who make
the imaginary give reality its reason for existing. You have an ally in
me, Elwine, an ally who will always support you, so that you can
remain free to dream. I want to form a little group of writers, I want to
try to create a space for these creative spirits, I want to stimulate them,
help them by publishing them in my series. In the desert of this world
our hearts are otherwise destined to die of thirst ... In the last analysis
we always return, do we not, to love, always to love. There's no hurry.
You have plenty of time ahead of you; twenty years, twenty-five years
of patient labour almost always lead for a genuine writer to the
blossoming and recognition of their talent. At first only three - perhaps
two- thousand copies of your work may be printed. Only five hundred
will get sold. Perhaps eight hundred. Nobody will have heard of you.
Your publisher will lose money on you. What does it matter? You'll be
read in twenty years' time, thirty years' time. Literature is a slow
process. Don't aim for financial rewards, or for glory, aim for the truth
... And write that truth. You must enter into literature as you would a
religion. And later, your star will rise, a bright little light, high up. Other
people wear themselves out in grubby little adventures, change their
lover or their mistress every week, every day, but the pure ascetism of
writing offers, like all ascetism, so much more. I sense that you're
unsure. Don't worry, you're not alone for Heavens' sake! You have a
friend on this earth, if you will allow me to be your friend, of course!'
He slips her cold little hand into his.
Elwine, her throat constricted, is holding her glass of mineral water
with her free hand. She tips her head back to empty the glass. She feels
as though she were drinking poison.
Outside, her eyes are hurt by the blinding, almost blood-red light of
day.
Back in her room, she has seated herself at her desk. She has started to
write. Her words have the lightness of mist, the blondness of light curling
round like long strands of hair. The milk of writing flows from her chest,
feeding the void, soothing it, smooth as velvet. Elwine no longer feels so
alone. A few days later she telephones Pierre Duval on an impulse.
'Thank you for encouraging me to write. I've begun. I feel so much
better. I wish I had the time and energy to write day and night.'
Chantal Chawaf 61
'Elwine, let's celebrate this good news! When shall we meet?'

'I don't want to be a nuisance!'
'But you're never a nuisance, my dear! You know that. Write with
your soul, Elwine, you have it in you to follow the path. When can I
read a chapter? I know I'm going to love it as much as I love you.'
'I'm still in the dark, it's all unreadable at the moment...'
'I'm sure it isn't. Elwine, I have faith in you: you're a believer.'
'A believer?'
'My child, we are nothing without God. All our passions are linked to
God. Right, let's meet on Wednesday the 16th, shall we?'
'Yes .. .'
'A whole week to get through until I see you!'
In the restaurant, on the 16th, Pierre Duval asks Elwine:

'And your chapter?'
'It's not a chapter yet, it might never be a chapter. At the moment it's
still blood, flesh, nerve-endings, it's still body, part of my own body, it's
not detached from me yet, it's all pulsating in my stomach, in my belly,
in my bowels, all those words, all those sentences, blood red and fleshy
pink, they're like living things, they're my life, they're more than my
life, it's as though I'd met someone I've always been searching for, it's
as though I was getting closer to someone than it's ever possible to get,
even when you caress them, when you touch them, when you kiss ... '
She is trying to explain out loud the inexplicable, to say the unsayable.
Duval is watching her closely through his cruel little grey eyes. A
sadistic light glimmers in them.
'You're right, it doesn't sound much like a novel, but you talk so
movingly about your work!'
'I haven't got a theme yet. I might not have one at all. I don't want to
tell a story. I don't even want to write, not write literature. I want the
reader to feel what I'm searching for, I want them to feel penetrated all
over, suffused with liquid, a warm liquid that floods through you, a tide
of well-being that makes you feel good from the inside, that affects you
physiologically. I want to write about the other reality, the one that we
lose before even getting to know it, I want to remember what we have
forgotten.'
Duval is fiddling with his fork handle. He's bored. He's not listening.
He exclaims: 'Did you see the President on television the other night?
Wasn't he looking awful? He was ashen-faced!'
If she could avoid having a face, having arms, hands, a mouth, a voice,
she would be able to fade even more into the background. If her blouse
were a bit less blue, she would be even less visible . . . She must avoid
upsetting Pierre Duval, above all else. She really feels the blue is almost
indecent, and the pleated silk, and the collar that is too wide, her blouse
is too garish, she'd like to hide herself away, her hair is too long, she
shouldn't have hair, not this hair, a woman's hair, she shouldn't have a
voice either because it's a woman's voice. He wants her to be neutral,
asexual, invisible, yes, she disturbs him, she shouldn't be the woman that
she is, not this woman, but another kind: an image. Elwine feels heavy,
clumsy, grotesque. He, meanwhile, is talking about women, about their
seductiveness; he had dinner last night with a magnificent creature, such
a tiny waist, the figure of a ballerina, and the more he talks, the more
fluent he becomes, the more gauche Elwine feels, the less intelligent she
feels in her blue blouse and the more she tenses herself on her chair.
Pierre Duval is looking straight through Elwine and, if she answers, he
doesn't hear her. He seems cheerful, almost excited. At dessert he returns
to the subject of Elwine herself.
'Do you need money? If you want to we can sign a contract, you only
have to say the word.'
'I'm not ready, I don't even know if I'll ever produce a single chapter
of a novel; what I do know is that I'm going to write, I won't stop
writing.'
He projects his steely eyes at her like missiles in a surprise attack.
'It's quite possible to live without writing. I have no desire to write and
I'm perfectly happy ... '
Had he meant to stop her in her tracks? She continues determinedly:
'It's also quite possible to write without living; perfectly possible.'
She can't retreat now. He knows it. She won't escape now. She's in
his clutches. Pierre Duval knows these solitary, infantile beings, still
yearning for maternal comfort, these neurotic and frustrated men and
women who eventually hurl themselves at writing more hungrily than a
starving dog hurls itself at a dustbin. And they always end up coming to
him, bringing him their childhood leftovers. He receives their manu-
scripts through the post or the novices bring them themselves to
Editions Noires and leave them at the reception desk. Pierre Duval
watches carefully over these apprentice authors, goes as far as giving
them six months, a year, two years of his life; he puts time and effort
into creating a structure which never varies, the master-pupil relation-
ship which procures him so much pleasure, corresponds so closely to his
own obsessions. And they, the young hopefuls and the lesser geniuses,
they are prepared to sacrifice all for the lure of literature. Duval relishes
Chantal Chawaf 63
it. He encourages each and every one of them to ensnare themselves in

the thickets of the imagination where he, the general literary editor, can
pounce on his prey, play with the naive, interchangeable authors, submit
them to his voyeurism, his fantasies, his hypocrisy, torment them, spy
on them, flatter them, intimidate them, reject them definitively and
exercise his professional power as if he held the power of life and death
over the mind. He loves it. He begins with life and sooner or later ends
up ruthlessly with death. He aims to inflict pain. Pain is his pleasure. He
never tires of the weakness of men and women, of their innocence, their
vanity or their ambition which enable him to endlessly explore the full
extent of his power, to fine-tune the gamut of destruction which runs
from love to hatred.
Elwine? ... But Elwine refuses to separate the real from the
imaginary. Elwine muddles everything up. She confuses reality and
unreality. She's a bit crazy. She thinks writing is living. Deep down he's
thrilled. Because for her, the game is going to be even more dangerous
than it is for the fragile authors he usually plays with. The hurt, this
time, will go deeper.
And so the rules of the game between this man and this woman are
set up. Sincerity on the one hand, cynicism on the other, the life instinct
and the death instinct, each dependent on the other but in an unequal
balance: one has a vice at stake, the other an ideal...
Ble de semences ('Seeds of the Corn')*
And, in the evening, the Queen floats lighter than mist into my room,
turns out the lamp, gently caresses my forehead with her breath, then
glides furtively out to leave me to sleep.
But, instead of going to sleep, I toss and tum in my bed. Could I
leave? Would I really have the courage to leave? To tear myself away
from this abundance? From this comfort? From this web of protec-
tiveness? But my body is maturing, instinct is working on me, wearing
away at my nerves, preventing me from drawing sustenance from my
food; I am losing weight as though, little by little, my organism was
*Chantal Chawaf, Ble de semences, copyright Mercure de France, 1976.

beginning to demand a nourishment of another kind, as though all these

dairy products, all these cheeses pressed in hay, were no longer the
experiences my adult body needs. And, so often, the Queen smiles as
she notes the thickening of my lips.
'Soon you will be given richer and heavier food to eat ... you will
experience sensations you have never known with me, you will be pene-
trated with a force that the milk entering your mouth has never had.'
I ask myself questions: 'Am I to be married already? Has my mother

someone in mind to be my husband? Is a fiance to take the place of the
sun? A fiance so boundless that I would have no fear of passing from
life on earth to life on the sun, no fear of burning myself out there . . . '
In the dining-room, the Queen leans back on the cypress wood chest:
'Go and help Pig-Comber to crush acorns for flour, I feel like making
biscuits.'
I fly into the corridor; she calls me back: 'And tell her to make a pate,
we might be having the archprince to lunch.'
She calls me back: 'And tell her to wrap the hare in chives. Oh! and
the bouillon, she musn't forget that either: tell her to break the hare's
bones and to boil them up.'
'But the archprince never comes here!'
'You don't know! He might be passing by one day. He might want to
come in and eat.'
And, in the evening, as I eat my acorn flour biscuit alone in my room,
I begin to imagine something like tangible bliss, something like the
substance of a movement of which I could feel every pulsation, and I
imagine fingers reddened in the fire making me catch alight as the move-
ment takes hold of me, as its enflamed sweat drips on to me, as, through
the opening beneath my belly, flaming drops are introduced into me.
But this morning, the little window high up on my bedroom wall still
frames a sky of milk-white opacity. The Milk-Mother, my skin's care-
taker, opens the door: 'All right? Did you sleep well? Here's your
flannel and a nice jar of double cream to clean your face with.'
She comes up to me. She spoons the cream on to my cheeks: 'There
now, that will make your skin even more tender.. .'
And she also brings me a little bar of soap made from tallow and veg-
etable ashes to dye my hair scarlet so that, if the archprince did honour
us with a visit, he would notice me.
Chantal Chawaf 65
But I hardly see anyone, apart from the people in the neighbourhood,
and sometimes, driven by boredom, I walk into the town with its towers
of leather-coloured armouring, standing out against the sky visible from
the wheatfields at the edge of our land, and then I cross the ramparts and
venture down the narrow streets where huts with roofs of fern are
crammed in next to workshops, pigs, grainstores, goats, barns, towered
over by the Chief's farm, and I walk at random through the overflowing
gutters, and I often don't get home, filthy dirty, until after sunset, when
the women and the Queen are already gathered in the kitchen round the
horsehair sieve in which we sift the grain for the meal. And the sight of
these women sends ripples of comfort and gratitude through me, fills
me with the sense of recovering my body.
'Where have you been?'
I go up to change, take off my doeskin tunic and my shoes with the

straps, go back down and huddle up close to the women, their bodies
warming me as they crouch together on the straw of the kitchen floor,
built at a slope so that the urine runs off it.
'Do you want some hay?'
The Queen is mashing the potatoes up with bran.
'Do you want your fodder, my love?'
'Can I help myself?'
I scrape at the contents of the trough with my spoon. We could walk
for several days. There are no clearings, it appears, to lighten the
darkness of the forest...
'Where did you go this afternoon?'
The Queen dishes out spoonfulls of mashed potato.
'I walked into town .. .'
'You've made your mind up to tum your back on the forest?'
'Yes, since I'll never be able to go in it...'
'Don't be sorry. It's impossible to grow crops there. The only things
to eat are acorns, chestnuts, hazelnuts ... '
'Not if we cleared the land.'
'Even if we cleared it good grass would never grow there, nor clover,
nor our good fodder crops ... Come on, eat up some more dinner before
your dessert.'
The Queen makes me fill my bowl up again with flax seeds.
'I've already got too much, don't give me any more!'
The Queen, arrayed this evening in a necklace of eyeteeth and a
diadem of phalanxes, is engaged in ruminating some grass; a piece
protrudes beyond her thick lips and tickles me. It's hot in here. The
kitchen is situated in he deepest part of the shelter, between two rocks,

closed off in front by branches and hides.
'I need some fresh air... '
The sun has climbed high in the sky again. I still feel so far away
from my goal! So far! So far! I still feel incorporated into these women,
into their nourishment and warmth, like the hot buttermilk in the feed,
still feel that I am just a drop of the liquid that drips from their vaginas
where the man fits, or from their breasts when the infant suckles, or
from their veins when, mortally wounded, their blood flows.
At night when the Queen has checked that the doors of the cavern are
sealed, she talks to me as she prods the fire: 'They're decent women,
half-human, half-animal - but what about me? Tell me, do you love
me?'
'You are the Queen, you are my mother... '
'Tell me, is my hair as fair as the wheat-fields in July?'
'The wheat-fields in July are your tresses covering the earth ... '
'What tumbles you took in it, do you remember your holiday in
July?'
'I remember: you didn't come with me, but the wheat, the wheat
bending in the wind, made me think of you, made me think I was
brushing your hair... '
'And you saw the barley! Barley has a greener tinge to it...'
'I didn't look at the barley; the barley wasn't you.'
And then I listen to her footsteps, fading into the distance. It's time to
put out the light. Time to sleep. I stretch out on my bedding and make
myself close my eyes. I try not to think anything, not to see anything, I
try to find rest. This is the hour of the night when the women are sunk
most deeply in sleep, like children, the hour when the silence seems to
draw all the rooms in the house together; I ought not to be awake. I hear
the bang of the Queen's bedroom door and the sound of the sawdust in
her bedding disturbed by her body as it heaves itself in and seeks out a
position for sleep.
4
AnnieEmaux
Introduction
Born in Normandy in 1940 to parents who ran a combined

cafe and grocer's shop, Annie Ernaux's writing is strongly
marked by her consciousness of her working-class rural
background and the chasm between the socio-cultural milieu
of her parents, in which she was largely immersed until the
age of 18, and that of the left-wing intellectual which she
later became. As an adolescent, she dreamed only of escape
from the small town of Yvetot; as a writer she returns con-
stantly to it, agreeing eventually with Flaubert, as she ironi-
cally remarks in an autobiographical article: 'In art, Yvetot is
as good as Constantinople.' 1 She dates her conviction that
writing for her had to be about 'the real' from the time when
she began to teach literature to classes which included many
pupils from a background similar to her own:
In the classroom, which I had imagined as a pure space,

where the beauty of the text would impose itself on every-
one, social and cultural differences were blindingly obvi-
ous ... ! realised that the dream of 'writing about nothing',
literature as a search for interiority or the expression of
metaphysical alienation would no longer ever be accept-
able to me. I began at the same time to return to my own
history, a return sparked off by the sudden death of my
father, in 1967.2
Her first novel, published in 1974 and entitled Les Armoires

vides (Cleaned Out), centres on a student who has apparently
67
successfully escaped from her Normandy working-class

background to the superior world of university. Sexuality,
which her mother warns her against as a trap forcing
working-class girls into pregnancies and early marriages,
instead serves her as a tool to progress in her new world and
acquire the bourgeois intellectual boyfriend tempted by her
sexual availability. The abortion to which she has to have
recourse is used as the narrative framework of the text and as
the dramatic device revealing to the narrator both the extent
to which she has after all been trapped by the pitfalls of her
background, and the masochistic nature of her relationship
with the boyfriend, whose gender and class had made her
feel automatically inferior. 3 The bitter tone of the book is
reflected in the style which deliberately breaks with traditional
notions of literary discourse to wield a satirical, sometimes
violent popular speech. Ernaux has called the book a 'cry of
rage', and the structure of self-discovery by a first-person nar-
rator gives it a considerable cutting edge. 4
A second novel, Ce qu'ils disent ou rien ('What they say or
nothing') focuses on the chasm between the romantic dis-
course of sexuality and the adolescent heroine's actual expe-
rience of it one summer holiday in Normandy. Class, gender
and sexuality are again dominant themes. However, it is
Ernaux's third novel, La Femme ge/ee ('The Frozen Woman'),
published in 1981, which has been perceived as the most
overtly feminist of her writings and which in many ways
provides the closing volume to this triptych of texts. Like the
earlier novels, it examines the construction of the narrator's
femininity against her class background, but this time in a
wider sweep, beginning with childhood and extending into
the experience of marriage and motherhood. Ernaux has said
that as she approached the age of 40 she felt an urgent need
to re-examine the whole question of what her life as a
woman had meant to her. More than a novel produced by
the concerns of the 1970s, Ernaux is thus inclined to see it as
a novel of middle age. 5
The first half of the text evokes the narrator's happy and
active childhood, surrounded by strong women and a devot-
ed, caring father; the opening pages, which form the extract
from the novel given below, are an exuberant account of the
Annie Ernata 69
working-class women whom Ernaux knew as a child and

whom she presents as the antithesis to received images of
womanhood pedalled by advertising and her school reading
books. Femininity is an exciting future, not a handicap. The
exploration of the lives of her immediate female ancestors -
aunts, grandmother - includes violence, depression and the
burden of childbearing, but in spite of everything these
women retain an appetite for life and its pleasures - her
grandmother sucking up the last drops of coffee and brandy
in her cup, her Aunt Caroline still 'farting with life' and living
alone at over 80. As in the earlier Armoires vides, it is
effectively when the narrator proceeds to university that her
downfall is set in motion. The kind of culture which she is
asked to study at university, the expectations of society and
of the middle-class boy she marries, gradually lead her along
a route which begins with meal preparation and leads inex-
orably to the roles of housewife and mother. Even though
the narrator eventually succeeds in finishing her training as a
teacher, her life has been a series of disappointments: 'The
whole history of my life as a woman has been that of a
grudging descent down a staircase' (p. 178), concludes the
narrator. A striking aspect of the book is its identification of
institutional factors such as patterns of work, of food con-
sumption and of consumerism which virtually dictate their
roles to two liberally minded students of the 1960s.6 These
factors are also identified as having a particular class orien-
tation - the women of her childhood are less alienated than
middle-class women, do not regard themselves as at the
beck and call of their husbands and do not participate in
what Ernaux calls 'the religion of childcare'. 7 The book ends
on a bleak future for its heroine, but in life the writing
process itself, together with the role models of her child-
hood, permitted Ernaux to break out of the cultural script. 8
The consciousness of her own social and cultural trajec-
tory, brought into sharp focus by the writing of La Femme
gelee, undoubtedly accounts for the apparent change of
direction which Ernaux's writing subsequently took. The
humour and wordplay of the earlier texts is replaced by a
much more controlled and sober style, marked by a suspi-
cion of cultural elitism. In writing about the life of her father,
the subject of La Place (Positions) published in 1983, Ernaux

was both returning to her own history and following up her
project to 'understand and question first of all cultural and
social hierarchies'. 9 Style itself, as she goes on to argue, is
heavily implicated in this hierarchy, and Ernaux is at pains to
discuss her choice of style within the texts themselves. In the
first short extract from La Place, given below, she emphasis-
es her desire to avoid any ironic complicity with her reader in
her description of the tastes, behaviour, language and values
of a father whom she deeply loved but from whom she
became cut off by her education.
Ernaux has underlined her debt to the work of Pierre
Bourdieu on the relations between language, culture and
class, and the text is perhaps first and foremost a recovery of
the cultural inheritance which was her's before she entered
the university world. There is a tension in the work, however,
referred to in the extract below, between the objective
attempt to describe and understand her father's life and
values, placing them in a wider social and historical context,
and the writer's desire simply to evoke her father in purely
personal terms. The two nevertheless often coincide, produc-
ing accounts of her father's social practices which, in the very
detail of observation offered, convey at the same time a
strong sense of a daughter's love for her father. There is also
a sense of guilt, flagged by the quotation from Jean Genet
used as an epigraph to the text: 'I hasard an explanation:
writing is the last recourse when one has betrayed.' The
betrayal in question is partly to do with Ernaux's awareness
that she has become part of a world which does not value
the experience and tastes of her father, but is not just a per-
sonal sense; as Ernaux pointed out in a radio broadcast, a
sense of guilt is one which anyone might feel in the face of a
social and cultural fabric which leaves some of its members
freer and happier than others. 10
Une femme ('A Woman'), written four years later, is in one
sense a parallel project, but with at least two major differ-
ences. The first is the ambivalence of the daughter-mother
love which Ernaux describes, complicated by the mother's
dominant position in the household. The second is the fact
that the text is this time more obviously caught up with the
Annie Ernau:x 71
narrator's own feelings since the writing is begun a week

after her mother's death. Ernaux's childhood identification
with her mother and her idealisation of her as a strong and
powerful force (evoked in the extract from La Femme ge/ee)
is shown to give way to struggles between the two in ado-
lescence, and then to a succession of periods in which the
daughter either keeps her distance or resigns herself to more
or less awkward spells of communal life. In the closing pages
of Une femme, given below, the mix of love and irritation
which Ernaux describes as their characteristic mode of com-
munication is replaced by the shock and outrage felt by the
daughter at the transformation which Alzheimer's disease
wreaks on her mother. The narrator's pain at seeing the
reduction to literal captivity of a woman who had always
been brimming with life and energy, emerges strongly,
though it is rarely articulated as such; as in La Place, the
choice of detail carries the meaning. The text ends on a
series of images of identification and loss (including the
dream in which she both identifies her sexual organs with
those of her mother and imagines a regression to the womb,
and the reference to the death of Simone de Beauvoir, the
symbolic mother of a generation of women 11 ) which confirm
the sense that this text is a 'militant, combative form of
mourning'. 12 The sociological observation of her mother's life
disappears as she writes: 'Now that my mother is dead I
don't want to discover anything more about her than I knew
when she was alive' (p. 105). Writing remains capital, how-
ever: 'I'm writing about my mother to bring her into the
world in my turn' (p. 43) remarks Ernaux earlier in the text,
and in the final paragraphs she speaks of bringing her
mother through the process of writing into the 'world of
words and ideas' which Ernaux herself inhabits, as her
mother wished. That this process is also the final stage in the
daughter's separation from the mother is underlined by the
title of the text, 'A Woman'. In attempting to see her mother
as the woman she was, and not simply as a mother, the
daughter is perhaps able to move forward herself.
Many commentators wondered what direction Annie
Ernaux's writing would take after these two books on the
lives of first her father, then her mother. In 1991 she
published Passion simple ('Straightforward Passion'), which

continues the rigorous examination of an aspect of her own
life but this time focusing on the brief duration of her passion
for a married man, younger than herself, a foreigner working
in France for a limited period only. The epigraph from Roland
Barthes reads: 'Nous Deux- the magazine- is more obscene
than Sade' and the book faces the realities of adult sexual
passion head on, its obliterating effects on all other concerns,
the pain which follows its termination. There are no moral
considerations and no false sentimentality; as the epigraph
from Barthes suggests, it raises the whole question of the
terms in which passion can be represented, especially by a
woman.
Although she is a best-selling author, Annie Ernaux has
remained in the educational world and works for a state
distance-learning centre. Her work has recently begun to be
translated into English.
Notes
1. This is nevertheless an ironic agreement; Ernaux explicitly dis-

tances herself from her fellow writer from Normandy's well-
known literary aspirations when she states a few lines further
on that she did not want to write a novel 'about nothing'. See
her autobiographical article in Le Dictionnaire: Litterature
fran9aise contemporaine, ed. by Jerome Garcin (Paris: Editions
Fran9ois Bourin, 1988), pp. 179-83.
2. Le Dictionnaire: Litterature fran9aise contemporaine, p. 181.
3. For an analysis of the narrator's masochism see Lorraine Day's
useful article, 'Class, Sexuality and Subjectivity in Annie
Ernaux's Les Armoires vides', in Contemporary French Fiction
by Women, ed. by Margaret Atak and Phil Powrie (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1990), pp. 41-55.
4. Le Dictionnaire: Litterature fram;aise contemporaine, p. 182.
5. In an interview conducted on 12 April 1988 Annie Ernaux told
me: 'When I wrote that book I was in my thirties, I was about to
be 40, and it's a crucial period. I think it's really a passage, and I
can say that now I'm 47. So I went through that stage and it's
one where there is a great emptiness. One asks oneself have I
done everything I wanted to do, all those promises, all that great
enthusiasm for the future I felt between the ages of 18 and 25,
what happened? And is it going to carry on like this?'
6. Ernaux suggests that the French preoccupation with food is a
Annie Ernaux 73
major reason why the situation of women in France has lagged

behind that of women in England and America (interview 12
April 1988).
7. Interview 12 April1988. See also interview in Combatwhere she
says: 'in the working-class milieu in which I spent my childhood
women did not have the maternal instinct. Children did not
necessarily mean joy. The obligation to be first and foremost a
mother is a bourgeois notion, a dogma. As Elisabeth Badinter
has shown, the maternal instinct is cultural. It can only come
from a conscious choice' (Combat, 13 March 1981, p. 14).
8. The novel is dedicated to 'Philippe', the husband who failed to
understand that the text was literally addressed to him. Ernaux
eventually divorced and set up home with her two sons.
9. Le Dictionnaire: Litterature fran9aise contemporaine, p. 182.
10. Interview on 'France Culture' with Jeanne Rollin-Weisz, 30
January 1984. Other extracts from this broadcast are given by
P.M. Wetherill in his edition of La Place (London: Methuen, 1987).
11. Ernaux sees a certain similarity between Simone de Beauvoir
and her mother, not simply because both served her in different
ways as role-models but because they shared a tremendous
appetite for life. Ernaux's reference to Beauvoir here is part of a
wide network of textual references to Beauvoir; Beauvoir's
account of her own mother's death in Une mort tres douce (A
Very Easy Death) and her study of old age in La Vieillesse (Old
Age) are both obvious intertexts to Une femme.
12. Phrase taken from a review of the book by Frederic Ferney in Le
Figaro Jitteraire, 8 February 1988.
Annie Ernaux bibliography
Books and articles by Ernaux
Les Armoires vides (Paris: Gallimard, 1974); Cleaned Out, trans. by

Carol Sanders (New York: Dalkey, 1991 ).
Ce qu'ils disent ou rien (Paris: Gallimard, 1977).
La femme gelee (Paris: Gallimard, 1981).
La Place (Paris: Gallimard, 1983); Positions, trans. by Tanya Leslie
(London: Quartet, 1991).
Une femme (Paris: Gallimard, 1988).
Passion simple (Paris: Gallimard, 1991).
'Ernaux, Annie', in Le Dictionnaire: Litterature fran9aise
contemporaine, ed. by Jerome Garcin (Paris: Editions Francois
Bourin, 1989), pp. 179-83.
Preface to Francois Salvaing, Le tour du Tour par trente-six detours
(Paris: Messidor, 1990), pp. 11-15.
Books, articles and selected reviews of Ernaux's work
Alliot, Bernard, 'Renaudot: Annie Ernaux pour La Place', Le Monde,

14 November 1984.
Alphant, Marianne, 'Une femme apparait', Liberation, 21 January
1988.
Bernstein, Michele, 'Annie Ernaux: Souvenirs d'en Normandie',
Liberation, 1 March 1984.
Courchay, Claude, 'L'Infortune d'etre femme', Le Monde, 27 March
1981.
Day, Loraine and Tony Jones, Annie Ernaux: La Place/Une femme,
Glasgow Introductory Guides to French Literature, no. 10
(Glasgow: University of Glasgow French and German
Publications, 1990).
Day, Loraine, 'Class, Subjectivity and Sexuality in Les Armoires
vides', in Contemporary French Fiction by Women, ed. by
Margaret Atack and Phil Powrie (Manchester: Manchester
Delbourg, Patrice, 'Annie Ernaux', Les Nouvelles litteraires, 26
February 1981.
Dumas, Mireille, 'Une femme dans l'engrenage', Combat, 13 March
1981.
Ferney, Frederic, 'Annie Ernaux: La ceremonie des adieux', Le
Figaro Litteraire, 8 February 1988.
Nourissier, Fran~,tois, 'Mort et resurrection d'une femme', Figaro-
Magazine, 16 January 1988.
Savigneau, Josyane, 'Annie Ernaux ou Ia femme blessee', Le
Monde des Livres, 3 February 1984.
Savigneau, Josyane, 'Le retour d'Annie Ernaux', Le Monde, 14
January 1988.
P.M. Wetherill (ed.), La Place, Methuen's Twentieth Century Texts
(London: Methuen, 1987).
Annie Ernaux 15
La Femme gelee ('The Frozen Woman')*
Fragile women full of grace, angels of the hearth with a gentle touch,
silent heroines, magical creators of order and beauty, voiceless submis-
sive women- however hard I think back, there weren't many of them
about in my childhood universe. Or even many of the inferior model,
less refined, more tacky, the type who polish the sink until you can see
your face in it, who can make meals out of scraps and are always at the
school gate quarter-of-an-hour before the bell goes, all their jobs done,
organised to death. The women of my childhood were all loudmouths
with bodies that had not been kept in order, too fat or too few curves,
roughened hands, faces with no trace of make-up, or else the lot, garish-
ly coloured and heavily plastered on cheeks and lips. Their culinary
skills were limited to rabbit stew and rice pudding, and even that was
rather sticky; it had never occurred to them that dusting is done every
day, they had worked or still worked in the fields, in factories, in corner
shops open from morning till night. Then there were the old ladies that
got visited on Sundays after lunch; we used to take biscuits and a drop
of brandy in the flask with us, to pour in the coffee. They looked black
and withered, their skirts smelt of butter left out in the larder, they were
nothing like the sugary grandmammas in the reading-books, the ones
topped with a snow-white bun who sweet-talk their grandchildren with
fairy-stories, female ancestors they're called. Mine, my great-aunts and
my grandmother, were prickly to deal with, they didn't like us jumping
up on their aprons, were out of practice, just a peck on the cheek when
you arrived and when you left, apart from the invariable 'you've grown
since last time' and 'still getting on well at school are you', they didn't
have much else to say to me, they talked to my parents in dialect about
the cost of things, about the rent and how it was calculated, about the
neighbours and, from time to time, they would look over at me and
laugh. Aunt Caroline was the summer Sundays aunt, we used to ride to
her house on our bikes down bumpy paths with holes that filled with
mud as soon as there was any rain, the middle of nowhere, just two or
three farms amongst the crops in the plain. We would try the latch half-
heartedly, Caroline was never in, we'd have to go and ask for her at the
houses nearby. We'd find her busy tying up onions or helping with a
calving. Back at the house she would rake her stove, break up kindling
*Copyright, Gallimard, 1981, La Femme gelee, by Annie Emaux. (Translated

by Elizabeth Fallaize.)
for the fire and make us a snack for supper, soft-boiled eggs, bread and
butter, angelica liqueur. The family looked on with admiration: 'Still
farting with life Caroline! Don't you get fed up?' She would laugh and
protest 'Plenty to do, you know'. She must get frightened sometimes,
living all on her own? That would puzzle her, and she'd screw up her
eyes: 'What do you expect 'em to do to me at my age ? ... ' I didn't listen
much, I used to go down to the pond, along the blind wall of the house
with nettles growing up it taller than I was, and turn over the bits of
broken plates and the rusty tins that my Aunt threw out there, full of
water and creepy crawlies. Caroline would keep us company for a bit on
the way back, walking alongside the bikes for a kilometer or so in good
weather. Then we would see her in the distance, a tiny figure amongst
the rapeseed plants. I knew that that eighty-year-old woman, wrapped
up in jumpers and skirts even at the height of a heat wave, had no need
of pity or protection. No more than did Aunt Elise, rolling with fat but
always lively, a bit squalid; whenever I crawled out from under the bed
at her house, my dress was covered in lacy cobwebs, and I would fiddle
endlessly with my half-washed spoon before making up my mind to
pierce the wrinkled skin of my poached pear. She would look at me
uncomprehendingly: 'what's up with you, you're not eating' and then,
with her loud laughter, 'it won't block your arse hole for you'. Or my
grandmother, who lived in a line of huts between the railway line and
the sawmill in the Gaiete neighbourhood. When we arrived she would
be darning or collecting food for the rabbits or doing a bit of washing
and my mother would be irritated, 'can't you sit still at your age'. It
made my grandmother wild, my mother telling her off like that. A few
years earlier she'd climbed up the bank to the railway tracks, pulling
herself up on the tufts of grass to go and sell apples and cider to the
American soldiers in the Normandy landings. She would mutter to
herself under her breath, then she would fetch the saucepan of boiling
coffee with its flecks of white foam, and, afterwards, pour a drop of
brandy over the sugar sticking to the bottom of our cups. Everyone
rinsed out their cup with brandy, slowly stirring the sugar into it. They
would be talking, more conversations about the neighbours, about land-
lords refusing to do the repairs, rather boring for me, no hope of any dis-
coveries in this tiny house with no ground, and practically nothing to
eat, my grandmother sucking greedily at the last drops in her cup. I'd
examine her face with its prominent cheekbones, the same yellow
colouring to her skin as the wood of the heel she used for darning socks.
She's been known to do a pee standing up, legs astride under her long
Annie Ernaux 77
black skirt when she thinks she's alone in her patch of garden. Yet she
carne top of the district in her school-leaving certificate and she could
have been a teacher but my great-grandmother said over my dead body,
she's the eldest, I need her at home to bring up the five younger ones. A
story I'd heard a dozen times before, the key to a destiny that had not
turned up roses. I imagined her playing like me, unsuspectingly, going
to school and then, a single blow of bad fortune had struck, five kids
pulling her down, everything over. What I couldn't understand was how
she could have gone on to have six herself, and all in the days before
family allowances, I'll have you know. No one had to spell it out for
me, I knew at a very early age that kids - the chickybids, as everyone
around me called them- were a recipe for disaster, the final straw. And,
at the same time, it showed a lack of nous, a culpable slovenliness,
proof that you were poor. To me, large families meant swarms of
children with runny noses, women encumbered with prams and bags
bursting with food which made them walk lopsided, and perpetual com-
plaints at the end of the month. My grandmother had been had, but there
was no use blaming her, in those days everyone had six kids, ten kids,
things had changed for the better now. My uncles and my aunts had had
their fill of large families, so much so that nearly all my cousins are
only children. I'm one as well, an only child, and a second-thoughts
child, as they say, to boot, a child belonging to that race of individuals
born to parents who had never wanted a child, or no more children, and
who had changed their minds. I was their first and last, that's for sure. I
was convinced I was a lucky girl.
Aunt Solange was the exception, poor old Solange with her brood,
my mother used to say. She lived in the Gaiete neighbourhood as well
and we often went there on Sundays. It was like one long playtime with
no rules and no limits. In the summer, with my seven cousins and their
friends from the neighbourhood we screamed with excitement on see-
saws made out of wood stored alongside the factory wall. In winter we
played tag in the one big bedroom, packed with beds. I plunged fever-
ishly into all the warmth and activity, for two pins I would have liked to
live there. But I was frightened of my Aunt Solange, she looked like an
old lady already, always whirling about in her kitchen, her mouth
disfigured by twitches. For months on end she would talk to us huddled
in bed, her womb had started to float around her insides. And there were
times when, her eyes staring fixedly, she would fling open the window,
shut it again, change all the chairs round and then burst out, shouting
that she would leave and take her children with her, that she'd always
been unhappy. My uncle would remain calmly sitting at the table, a
glass in his hand, not replying or else sneering 'you wouldn't know
where to go, stupid cow'. She would rush outside in tears: 'I'm going to
throw myself in the water tank.' Her children caught her first, or the
neighbours. We used to slip away discreetly as soon as the shouting
started. When I looked back, I could see the face of the youngest girl
pushed up against the window, her mouth wide open and tears running
down her face.
I don't know if the other aunts were happy, but they didn't look
defeated like Solange and they dido 't let anyone hit them. Fierce
women, with red cheeks and red lips, always in a hurry, it seems to me
they were perpetually rushing off somewhere, barely the time to stop on
the pavement, clasping their shopping bags to their bosom so as to bend
down and give me a quick kiss and a resounding 'what are you doing
these days, girl?' No excessive displays of emotion, none of those
pouting mouths and coaxing eyes specially addressed to children. Rather
stiff women, a bit brutal, quick to use bad language when their tempers
were up, and who would end up crying into their napkins with laughter
at family get-togethers and communions. My Aunt Madeleine even
laughed so much you could see the folds of her pink knickers. I don't
ever remember seeing any of them with a piece of knitting or standing
over a sauce. They'd bring out from the dresser a selection of char-
cuterie and the pyramid of white paper from the cake shop, stained with
cream. They closed their eyes to dust, to tidying up, apologised purely
for form's sake, 'don't pay any attention to the mess' they would say.
They were no proud housewives, they were always out of the house,
brought up from the age of twelve to work like men, and not even in
fabrics, clean work, but in ropes and preserving jars. I liked listening to
them talking and I'd ask them questions, the siren, the obligatory
overalls, the female supervisor, the way they all laughed together in the
same room made it seem as though they went to school like me, but
minus the punishments and the homework. Early on, in the days before I
admired the teachers, so superior and awe-inspiring, before I learned
that checking jars of gherkins being filled up is not much of a career, I
looked forward to doing the same as them.
More than the episodic figures of my grandmother and my aunts,

there is one image which crowns them all, leaving the others far behind,
Annie Ernaux 79
the pale figure of the woman whose voice echoes in me, who surrounds
me, my mother. Living in proximity to her, how could I not have been
convinced that being a woman is a glorious thing, and, even, that
women are superior to men. She represents a whirlwind of strength, but
also beauty, curiosity about things, a figurehead opening up the future to
me and telling me I must never be frightened of anything or anyone. A
woman who battles against everything, the suppliers and the debtors,
the blocked gutter in the road and the bigwigs who are always trying to
ruin us. In her wake she trails a soft-spoken gentle dreamer of a man,
upset for days over the slightest difficulty, but who knows lots of riddles
and funny stories, 'twenty thousand donkeys in a field', songs that he
teaches me while he does the garden and I look for worms to throw to
the chickens- my father. In my head I don't make a difference between
them, I'm her little doll and his little sweetie, the second thoughts child
of them both and it's her I'll look like since I'm a girl and I'll have
breasts and a perm and stockings like her.
In the mornings daddy-goes-to-work, mummy-stays-at-home, she-

does-the-housework, she-makes-a-wonderful-meal, I repeat along with
my class-mates without thinking. I'm not ashamed yet not to be the
daughter of normal parents.
That father of mine doesn't go out to work in the morning, nor in the
afternoon, nor any other time. He stays at home. He serves in the cafe
and in the shop, he does the washing-up, the cooking, the vegetable
peeling. He and my mother live together in the same rhythm, my world is
made up of the men coming and going on one side of the house, the
women and the children on the other. They know the same things, share
the same worries, the cash-box that he empties every night while she
watches, and one of them says, either him or her, 'pretty thin' or,
sometimes, 'did well today'. Tomorrow one or other of them will take
the cash to the post-office. They don't do exactly the same jobs, there's
always a code, but theirs owes little to tradition, just the washing and
ironing for my mother, the gardening for my father. The rest seems to
have been established according to the tastes and capacities of each. My
mother tended to look after the shop, my father the cafe. In the shop the
lunchtime rush meant not a minute to spare, the clients don't like being
kept waiting, a crowd of women on their feet with multiple demands, a
bottle of beer, a packet of needles of a particular make, always sus-
picious, having to be reassured, 'you'll see, this is a far superior make'.
Pure blarney, playacting. My mother emerged from her shop exhausted,

beaming. In the cafe, time stretched out endlessly, drinks were sipped
slowly, tranquilly, the men settled on their chairs for hours at a stretch.
No point in rushing to serve them, no need to push the products or indeed
anything at all, the clients had plenty of conversation for two. Just as
well, my father lives in his own little world, according to my mother.
And the cafe clients leave my father time to do lots of other jobs. When I
hear the sound of the plates and saucepans, mixed in with the songs on
the radio and the advertisements for Banania, I wake up properly, go
down to the kitchen and find my father washing up last night's dishes. He
gets my breakfast. He'll take me to school. Do the lunch. In the afternoon
he'll do a bit of carpentry in the yard or he'll nip off to the garden, his
spade over his shoulder. For me he's still the same gentle, dreamy man
whether he's carving the potato peel into pretty ribbons that curl between
his fingers, or turning the sausages that make our eyes smart so badly
under the grill, or teaching me to whistle while he's planting leeks. A
serene and secure presence at all hours of the day. By comparison with
the factory workers or the travelling salesmen away from their homes all
day, it seemed to me that my father was permanently on holiday, and
that suited me down to the ground. On Thursdays when it was too cold to
play in the yard, or when my friends weren't speaking, my father and I
got out the dominos or the horses game and played in the cafe. In the
spring I went with him to his garden, his passion. He would teach me the
funny names of vegetables, 'straw virtue onions' or 'fat lazy blond
lettuce'. I would help him pull the string over the soil he'd dug. Together
we would tuck in to cold sausage and black radishes, then tum over the
plate to eat a baked apple. On Saturdays I watched him kill the rabbit,
press on its belly to empty its bladder, then skin it with a noise of old
material being tom. Nurse-daddy instantly and anxiously at my side for a
cut knee, rushing off to get a plaster and, for my bouts of chickenpox,
measles and whooping-cough, settling himself for hours at my bedside
playing hangman or reading me Little Women. Child-daddy, 'you're
more of a kid than she is' she said. Always ready to take me to the fair
and to Femandel films, to make me a pair of stilts, to initiate me into the
mysteries of pre-war slang, strange-sounding words that delighted me.
Indispensable-daddy, there to take me to school and waiting for me when
I came out twice a day, his hand on his bicycle, standing a little way
apart from the crowd of mothers, the bottoms of his trouser-legs pinched
in by metal clips. Agitated if I was a minute or two behind. Later, when I
was old enough to come home by myself, he would watch out for my
Annie Ernaux 81
arrival. A father already into old age, thrilled to have a daughter. In the
fixed yellow light of my memory he is crossing the yard, head down
because of the strong sunlight, a basket under his arm. At four years old
teaching me to hold down my jumper sleeves when I put my coat on so
they won't get caught up at the tops of my arms. Nothing but images of
gentleness and solicitude. Patriarchs whose word is law, domestic deities
incarnate, heros of the battlefield or the workplace, you are strangers to
me, I was the daughter of another kind of man.
*
La Place (Positions)*
I'm writing slowly. My efforts to pick out the thread of meaning in a life
from a mass of facts and decisions make me feel that I'm losing sight of
my father as a person in the process. The outline tends to dominate, the
theory takes on a life of its own. If, on the other hand, I allow the
pictures of my memory to roll, I see him again as he was, his laugh, his
walk, his hand in mine at the fair and my fear of the merry-go-rounds,
all the signs of what he had in common with others from his background
fade into insignificance for me. Each time, I tear myself away from the
snare of the individual.
Naturally, there is no pleasure in this writing, in this enterprise in

which I stay as close as I can to the words and the phrases I heard,
emphasising them sometimes with italics. Not to indicate any double
meaning and to offer the reader the pleasure of a complicity, which I
refuse in all its forms, nostalgia, pathos or derision. Simply because
those words and phrases form the contours and the flavour of the world
in which my father lived, in which I lived too. And in which one word
was never taken to mean another.
*
He was cheerful.
He used to joke with the women customers who liked a laugh. Risque
remarks with hidden meanings. Excremental humour. Irony an unknown
quantity. On the radio he listened to cabaret singers, quiz programmes.
*Copyright, Gallimard 1983, for La Place by Annie Emaux. (Translated by

Elizabeth Fallaize.)
Always ready to take me to the circus, to silly films, to fireworks dis-

plays. At the fair we went on the ghost train and the switchback, we'd
go in to see the fattest woman in the world and the Lilliputian.
He never set foot in a museum. He would stop to look at a beautiful

garden, at blossom on the trees, at a bee-hive, at girls with plenty of
flesh on them. He admired giant architecture, modem feats of engineer-
ing (the Tancarville bridge). He liked circus music and trips in the car to
the countryside, that is, he seemed happy when he was looking at the
fields and beechwoods, when he was listening to the Bouglione band.
The emotion that listening to a tune or looking at the countryside pro-
vokes was not a subject of conversation. When I first began to mix with
the middle classes of Y ... and people opened the conversation by
asking me if I preferred jazz or classical music, Tati or Rene Clair, that
was enough to make me realise that I had stepped into another world.
One summer he took me to stay with relatives for three days, at the
seaside. He went barefoot in his sandals, looked in through the doors of
blockhouses, drank beers on cafe terraces and I had sodas. He killed a
chicken for my aunt, holding it between his legs, thrusting a pair of
scissors into its beak and the blood oozed thickly out on to the floor of
the storeroom. They all sat on round the lunch-table until mid-afternoon,
talking about the war and members of the family, passing round photos
over the empty coffee cups. 'We' II take our time about dying, go on!'
Perhaps, despite appearances, a deep-seated tendency not to let things

get to him. He invented occupations for himself that kept him away from
the business. He kept chickens and rabbits, built storerooms, a garage.
Things often changed place in the yard, according to how he felt, the
toilets and the chickenhouse moved three times. Always wanting to
demolish and rebuild.
My mother: 'He's a country man, what do you expect.'
He recognised all the birds by their song and looked at the sky every
evening to see what the weather would be like, cold and dry if the sky
was red, rain and wind when the moon was in water, that is, immersed
in cloud. Every afternoon he slipped off to his garden, always kept tidy.
A messy garden with poorly tended vegetables was a sign of sloppiness
on a par with neglecting personal hygiene or drinking too much. It
Annie Ernau:x 83
meant losing all sense of time, of when the sowing of the different
varieties takes place, it meant losing all concern with what other people
would think. Notorious drunkards sometimes rescued their reputations
with a splendid garden, cultivated between drinking bouts. When my
father failed with his leeks, or with anything else, he felt despair. At
dusk, he emptied the chamber pot into the most freshly dug row, furious
if he discovered as he poured that I had thrown old stockings and biros
in there, to save me the trouble of going downstairs to the bin.
He never ate with anything except his Opine} knife. He would cut up
little cubes of bread and keep them by the side of his plate, spearing them
with bits of cheese, or sausage, and using them to mop up his plate. It
grieved him to see me leave food on my plate. His could have been put
away without being washed. When he'd finished eating, he'd wipe his
knife on his overalls. If he'd been eating herring, he would plunge the
blade in the soil to get rid of the smell. Up until the end of the fifties he
had soup in the mornings, then he changed to drinking milky coffee,
diffidently, as though he were giving in to some feminine refinement. He
drank it in teaspoonfuls, sucking it in like soup. At five o'clock he made
himself his snack, eggs, radishes, boiled potato, making do with soup in
the evening. He couldn't stomach mayonnaise, rich sauces, cakes.
He always slept in his shirt and his woollen vest. When he unbuttoned
his collar for his shave, three times a week in the kitchen sink with the
mirror over it, I could see his skin, white from the neck down. After the
war when bathrooms became more common, a sign of prosperity, and
my mother had a toilet and washbasin put in upstairs, he never used it,
he carried on washing himself in the kitchen.
In the yard, in winter, he spat and sneezed with relish.
I could have written this portrait of my father years ago, in the essay
class at school, if it had not been forbidden to describe things we knew
about. One day, a girl in the top junior's class, sent her exercise book
flying with a royal sneeze. The teacher at the blackboard turned round:
'Really very refined!'
None of the middle class people in Y ... , the town centre shop-
keepers, the office workers, want to look as though they're country folk.
To behave like a peasant means that you're backward, never up with
what the done thing is to wear, to say, to look like. An anecdote that
found much favour: a peasant, visiting his son in the town, sits down in
front of the washing-machine in mid-cycle and stays there, lost in
thought, staring at the washing going round behind the glass door. When
the wash is finished he get up, shakes his head and says to his daughter-
in-law: 'They can say what they like, television isn't up to much.'
But in Y ... , less attention was paid to the behaviour of the big
farmers who turned up to market in a Vedette, then in a Citroen DS,
now in a ex. The worst thing was to look and behave like a peasant
without actually being one.
He and my mother continually used a tone of reproach between

themselves, even when they were expressing their concern for each
other: 'Put your scarf on when you go out!' or 'Can't you sit still for a
bit!' It sounded like abuse. They were constantly bickering about who
had lost the soft drinks bill, who had left the light on in the cellar. She
shouted louder than he did because everything got on her nerves, a late
delivery, the dryer too hot at the hairdresser's, her period and the cus-
tomers. Sometimes: 'You weren't cut out to be in business' (meaning:
you should have stayed in the factory). Stung, losing his usual calm:
'COW! I should have left you where I found you.' A weekly routine
exchange: 'Useless! -Nutcase!'
'Pathetic!- Slut!'
Etc. Without it mattering in the least.
We didn't know how to speak to one another except in a tone of com-

plaint. A polite tone was kept for strangers. A habit so strong that my
father, trying to mind his manners in front of people, would revert to his
curt tone and his Normandy accent and invective to warn me not to
clamber up a mound of gravel, destroying in the process the good
impression he had wanted to give. He didn't know how to reprimand me
in an elegant style and I would never have taken seriously the threat of a
slap expressed in correct French.
Courtesy between parents and children long remained a mystery to

me. It also took me years to 'understand' the extreme niceness that well-
educated people inject into a simple hello. I would be covered in con-
fusion, I didn't deserve to be treated so considerately, I went as far as
imagining that a particular liking had been taken to me personally. Then
I realised that the questions put to me with an air of special interest, the
Annie Ernaux 85
smiles, had no more meaning than eating with your mouth closed or
blowing your nose discreetly.
Deciphering these details has become a necessity to me now, all the
more inescapable because I repressed them, convinced of their insignifi-
cance. Only humiliation had kept them alive in my memory. I bowed to
the wishes of the world I live in, which tries to make you forget memo-
ries of the world beneath it as though they were in poor taste.
Une femme ('A Woman')*
The following summer she cracked her hip bone. They didn't operate. A
new hip, like the rest - new glasses, teeth - wasn't worth the trouble any
more. She never got out of her wheelchair now, fastened in by a strip of
sheet tied tightly round her waist. They put her in the dining-room with
the other women, facing the television.
People who had known her wrote to me, 'she didn't deserve this', in
their view the best thing would be for it all to be 'over' as quickly as
possible. The whole of society will perhaps one day share this opinion.
They didn't come to see her, she was already dead for them. But she
wanted to live. She tried all the time to tear off the strip of sheet and pull
herself up on her one good leg. She stretched out her hand towards
everything within reach. She was hungry all the time, her energy had
concentrated itself in her mouth. She liked to be kissed and held out her
lips to do the same. She was a little girl who would not grow up.
I brought her chocolate, and cakes that I fed to her in little pieces. At
first, I kept buying the wrong cakes, too gooey or too solid, she couldn't
manage to eat them (the unutterable pain of seeing her struggling with
her fingers and tongue to manage it). I washed her hands for her, shaved
her face, put perfume on her. One day I started to brush her hair, then
stopped. She said, 'I like it when you do my hair.' After that, I always
brushed it. I would sit opposite her in her room. Often she would grab at
the material of my skirt, feeling it as though she was examining its
quality. She ripped the paper from the cakes, her jaw clenched tightly.
She talked about money and customers, laughing and throwing back her
*Copyright, Gallimard 1988, for Une femme by Annie Emaux. (Translated by

head. These were things she had always done, things she had said all her
life.
I didn't want her to die.
I needed to feed her, to touch her, to hear her.
Several times, there was the sudden desire to take her away, to do
nothing else but look after her, and at the same time I knew I wasn't
capable of it. (The guilt of having put her in the home even if, as they
say 'I couldn't do anything else'.)
She got through another winter. The Sunday after Easter, I came to
see her with some forsythia. It was a cold, grey day. She was in the
dining-room with the other women. The television was on. She smiled
at me when I went up to her. I pushed her chair into her bedroom. I
arranged the branches of forsythia in a vase. I sat down beside her and
gave her some chocolate to eat. They had put brown wool socks on her,
reaching up over the knee, and a top which was too short and showed
her wasted thighs. I cleaned up her hands and her mouth, her skin felt
warm. Later on, I took her back to the dining-room, it was the Jacques
Martin programme, 'Fan School'. I kissed her and took the lift. She died
the next day.
In the week that followed, I kept seeing that Sunday when she was
alive, the brown socks, the forsythia, her gestures, her smile when I said
goodbye to her, and then the Monday when she was dead, lying in her
bed. I couldn't put those two days together.
Now, everything links up.
It's the end of February, there's been a lot of rain and the temperature
is mild. This evening, after the shopping, I went back to the old people's
home. From the carpark, the building looked less sombre, almost wel-
coming. The window of the room which had been my mother's was lit
up. For the first time, in astonishment, I thought: 'Someone else is there
in her place.' I thought as well that one day, in 2000 and something, I'll
be one of the women folding and unfolding my napkin while I wait for
my dinner, here or somewhere else.
During the ten months that I was writing, I dreamt about her nearly
every night. Once, I was lying down in the middle of a river, between
two streams. From my belly and my sexual organs, hairless once again
Annie Ernaux 87
as those of a little girl, long strands of greenery floated gently upwards.

They weren't just my sexual organs, they were my mothers' as well.
Every now and again, I have the feeling that I'm back in the time
before she went into hospital, when she still lived with us. Fleetingly,
while remaining perfectly conscious of her death, I find myself expect-
ing her to come down the stairs and settle herself with her sewing-box in
the sitting-room. This experience, in which the illusion of my mother's
presence is stronger than the reality of her absence, is doubtless the first
form that forgetting takes.
I reread the first few pages of this book. Stunned to realise that I'd
already forgotten certain details, the morgue attendant on the telephone
while we were waiting, the tar inscription on the supermarket wall.
A few weeks ago, one of my aunts told me that when my mother and
father first started seeing each other, they used to meet in the toilets at
the factory. Now that my mother is dead, I don't want to discover any-
thing more about her than I knew when she was alive.
Her image is beginning to merge with the one I imagine I had of her
in my early childhood, a large white shadow bending over me.
She died a week before Simone de Beauvoir.

She liked giving to everyone, more than receiving. Is writing not a
way of giving.
This is not a biography or a novel, of course, perhaps something in

between literature, sociology and history. Born into a dominated milieu
which she wanted to leave behind her, it was necessary that my mother
should become history in order that I feel less alone and less artificial in
the dominating world of words and ideas which, as she wished, I have
joined.
I won't hear her voice again. It was my mother, her words, her hands,
her gestures, her way of walking and laughing, who joined the woman I
am today with the child I once was. The last link with the world I came
from has been severed.
5
Claire Etcherelli
Introduction
Claire Etcherelli is often identified as a writer with a strong

political and feminist consciousness; her writing bears the
mark both of her own roots in the working class and of her
strong left-wing sympathies. Born in Bordeaux in 1943, she
was brought up in the docks area where strikes and clashes
with the police were a common occurrence, and led to her
early politicisation. Her father, himself a docker, was deport-
ed and shot by the Germans during the Second World War.
Brought up in her early years by her grandfather, who led an
unconventional life as chieftain of a tribe of women and
children, Claire's education was completely neglected until at
the age of 9 she was removed to a church boarding school;
here, however, she was acutely aware of social differences
between herself and her classmates. Although a star pupil,
she left school at 17 without taking the baccalaureat exami-
nation, and married a trade unionist at 18. 1
In 1956, when she was 21, she left her husband and went to
Paris, taking with her her young son and the manuscript of a
novel. The manuscript was refused everywhere and she had
no financial resources. She took a job checking cars on the
production line at a Citroen car factory - it was the first time
that a woman had done the job and the men shouted and
whistled every time she crossed the factory floor. A large
percentage of the workers on the shopfloor were North
African. After a further spell of factory work, her health
88
Claire Etcherelli 89
collapsed and, whilst in hospital, she began to write a novel

fictionalising her encounter with the double alienation of
racism and work on the production line. Out of hospital she
survived first by taking cleaning jobs, and then obtained a
clerical post in a travel agency. Her novel was finished over
the next five years by dint of writing between 5 and 7 a.m. in
the mornings. Refused by five publishers, Elise ou Ia vraie vie
(Elise or Real Life) was eventually published by DenoEU in
September 1967, and won a major literary prize (the Femina,
of which she had never previously heard) a few weeks later.
She received considerable media attention, including an
interview in the left-wing Le Nouvel Observateurwith Simone
de Beauvoir. The novel was made into a film by Michel Drach
in 1970.
In 1968, she gave up working for a period and finished her
second novel, A propos de Clemence ('About Clemence') in
1971. The novel has a much more complex narrative frame-
work than her earlier text; whereas Elise narrates her own
story, Clemence is first a character in a novel by Gabrielle,
and then a character in a script for a stage adaptation of the
novel. The relationship between Gabrielle, her character,
and the character in the script is constantly scrutinised. A
central strand of the book deals with the way in which a
political refugee gradually loses his courage and personal
integrity, and turns his disappointment and rage on the
innocent Clemence, who shares his life. It has its source in
Etcherelli's memories of a Spanish political refugee who
lived in her street as a child, and who was put on trial for
attempting to murder his wife. The novel raises questions to
do with male heroism and female vulnerability to violence
which are often painful; some readers and critics were dis-
appointed that the book was not a sequel to Elise and it was
much less well received. 2 In 1973, Simone de Beauvoir
offered her a job on the editorial staff of Les Temps
Modernes, the journal which Beauvoir and Sartre had
launched after the Second World War to act as a focus for
left-wing opinion; Etcherelli has continued to work for the
journal ever since. Her third novel, Un arbre voyageur ('A
Travelling Tree'), was published in 1978, and she is now
writing her fourth. 3
As Claire Etcherelli herself remarks, it is not always an

advantage to a writer to achieve great success with her first
novel, since it subsequently becomes extremely difficult to
get the reading public to accept that she might write a differ-
ent kind of book. Widely read in French schools, 4 Elise ou Ia
vraie vie has achieved continuing success and high sales
over the twenty years or so since it was published, especially
as the subject of the Algerian War becomes an object of his-
torical interest rather than a live political issue. The novel is
set in 1956 and 1957, at the height of tension in France over
what was not at the time officially called the Algerian War
but simply 'the events'. The French colony of Algeria had
been actively struggling for independence since 1954; 1956
saw a wave of shootings and bombings which the French
army responded to with a massive military campaign which,
whilst ultimately successful in crushing opposition, led to an
international outcry about the methods employed. Algeria
was eventually granted full independence in 1962, but, in the
years covered by the text, the war was causing considerable
tensions within French society and was still virtually a taboo
subject when Claire Etcherelli published her novel in 1967.
The racism and police repression to which Algerians work-
ing in France in those years were subjected is at the centre of
the text. In the second episode given below Elise goes out for
the first time with an Algerian fellow worker, Arezki, and
comes face to face with public reaction. The third episode
shows her going to his room in the notorious Goutte d'Or
area of Paris, a scene of considerable emotional and sexual
tension which is shattered by a police raid. Arezki, who we
understand to have political responsibilities within the FLN,
the Algerian liberation movement, later disappears altogether.
Although his fate remains uncertain the likelihood of his
having simply been removed and then killed would hover in
any French reader's mind. 5
Etcherelli, as I said earlier, discovered the conditions under
which Algerians were living in France in the mid-1950s at the
same time as she experienced work on a production line. The
first episode given here recounts the arrival of Elise on the
factory floor and describes the alienating physical conditions
doubled, in her case, by the sexism of the male workforce.
Throughout the text the noise, the dirt and the dehumanising
rhythm of the production line are shown to wear down the
people working there to the point where they have no energy
left for the ordinary pursuits of life. Elise's brother, Lucien
Letellier, originally goes to work in the factory for political
purposes but finds, ironically, that the work saps his will and
motivation to struggle even on behalf of the people he sees
every day. In the first episode below, Elise glimpses her
brother at work in the paintshop. Before Elise meets Arezki,
Lucien is the most significant male figure in Elise's life; his
death occurs in the text at almost the same time as Arezki's
disappearance. Elise is thus left alone, at the end of the
novel, but she faces the future with a new determination and
strength. 'She has become herself' comments Etcherelli, and
in this sense the novel is a female bi/dungsroman, con-
structing the political and sentimental education of its
heroine. 6
Un arbre voyageur (1978) centres on the lives of two
women, Anna and Milie, and is set in the mid-1960s.
Focusing on the way in which the two women set about
surviving the myriad practical and emotional problems which
engulf them, the novel constructs in detail the balancing act
of which many women's lives consist. Anna (a character who
figures in all three texts) appears at first to be the stronger of
the two women, and their friendship begins when she tries to
help Milie out. However, it is the apparently fragile and over-
burdened Milie who emerges as the character most able to
sustain her own instinctive values and most able to support
others. The crushing burden of motherhood is central to the
women's lives. In the first extract given here, Milie is on her
way to her teenage daughter Vera's school, summoned by
the authorities to explain Vera's frequent absences. Milie
knows that her daughter is unhappy with her school but is
unable to persuade anyone that Vera should be allowed to
attend the lycee (grammar school) with her brothers, Marc
and Paul. Later in the novel Vera makes a suicide attempt.
Milie supports her three children and a shifting group of
dependents in situations even more hopeless than her own,
but she is rarely able to find work. When she does get jobs
her own ill-health together with her children's illnesses soon
ensure that she loses them. Her main daily concern is provid-
ing the children with enough to eat and the other bare
necessities of life.
In the midst of this daily struggle comes the glimmer of the
hope of a new life with Walter, the character whom she is
suddenly driven by the desire to see in the second extract.
Walter and Milie can still feel hope and desire despite the
physically exhausting and mentally dejecting nature of their
existences. The obstacles to their relationship are numerous -
Milia's children, Walter's 'understanding' with the dress-
maker, Fanch the poet whom Milie supports, and the sheer
lack of space in their days dominated by physically demand-
ing tasks - but they persevere. A plan for Walter to build a
home for themselves and Milia's children slowly emerges,
though Walter insists that Milie must leave to their fate the
other dependents whom she has taken on. The events of 1968
burst into the final part of the text and, in the last extract,
Walter and Milie go to see for themselves what is happening
at the Sorbonne. Their bewilderment at the speeches and the
slogans underlines the gap between the students and the
working class, but, beneath all the intellectual posturing, Milie
detects a hope for the future with which she instinctively
identifies. 'Everything that's happening is setting me free,' she
tries to explain to Walter, but Walter is frightened by the
turmoil and is unable to follow her. Milie goes on alone to
face the stunning blow of the news of the entry of Russian
tanks into Prague, received in the closing pages of the text.
Failure rather than success tends to characterise the lives
of Claire Etcherelli's characters. Most of them belong to the
least privileged groups of society, those, as Milie says 'with
an inheritance of humiliation'. The women characters tend,
however, to survive their failures. They are 'the people who
carry society on their shoulders' says Etcherelli - and they
carry their burdens in her texts with increasing strength. 7
Notes
1. For a biographical account of Etcherelli see Veronique Neiertz,
'Claire Etcherelli', in Femmes et Societe (Paris: Editions
Martinsart, 1981), vol. VI, pp. 147-69. I have, however, found that
some of the dates given differ from those given to me by Claire
Etcherelli in a recorded interview (20 April 1988). Claude
Lanzmann's article in Elle (16 November 1967, pp. 82-5, 135,
137) is also useful.
2. Etcherelli herself declares that she is not entirely satisfied with
the text (interview 20 April 1988). It was nevertheless highly
praised in Le Monde (25 June 1971, p. 4).
3. In 1989, Claire Etcherelli also wrote a play entitled Germinal: An
111 ('Germinal, Year 111'), which was produced in April 1989.
Commissioned by Jean Danet as part of the celebrations of the
bicentenary of the French Revolution, the play evokes Olympe
de Gouges who believed that the Revolution would liberate
women. She was guillotined in 1793.
4. It is also a firm favourite with English sixth-formers studying
French and regularly appears on 'A' level syllabuses.
5. The novel is sometimes read as a love story in which the
different race of the two partners matters only to outsiders and
not to themselves; see, for example, John Roach's 'Introduction'
to his edition of Elise ou Ia vraie vie, Methuen's Twentieth
Century Texts (London: Methuen, 1985), pp. 1-50 (p. 28). The
novel clearly shows, however, the different cultural and political
baggage which the two carry with them and Etcherelli's fiction
does not encourage a view of romantic love as triumphing over
all.
6. 'She has become herself ... she has become a real woman',
interview of 20 April 1988.
7. Interview of 20 April 1988.
Claire Etcherelli bibliography
Works by Etcherelli
Elise ou Ia vraie vie (Paris: Denoel, 1967); Elise or the Real Life,
trans. by June Wilson and Walter Ben Michaels (London: Andre
Deutsch, 1970).
A propos de Clemence (Paris: Denoel, 1971).
Un arbre voyageur(Paris: Gallimard, 1978).
Cent poemes contre le racisme selected by Claire Etcherelli, Gilles
Manceron, Bernard Wallon (Paris: Le Cherche Midi, 1985).
Preface to Vlad, by Vitia Hessel (Paris: Arlea, 1990).
'Les carnets de bord d'une voyageuse', Le Monde, 20 August 1982,
p. 12.
'Fetes de village', Les Temps Modernes, no. 471 (October 1985), pp.
549-56.
Books and articles on Etcherelli
Atack, Margaret, 'The politics of identity in Elise ou Ia vraie vie', in

Contemporary French Fiction by Women, ed. by Margaret Atack
and Phil Powrie (Manchester and New York: Manchester
Champroux, Charles, 'La langue et le style des ecrivains: Claire
Etcherelli', Les Lettres franfaises, 17-20 August, 1968, pp. 14-15.
Doumazane, Franc;;oise, 'De Ia production d'une oeuvre a sa
reception: Elise ou Ia vraie vie de Claire Etcherelli', Pratiques, no.
32 (1981), pp. 66-104.
Giraud, Michele and Franc;;oise Plouquin, Elise ou Ia vraie vie de
Claire Etcherelli (Paris: Bordas, 1976).
Neiertz, Veronique, 'Claire Etcherelli', in Femmes et Travail (Paris:
Editions Martinsart, 1981), vol. VI, pp. 147-169.
Ophir, Anne, 'Elise ou Ia vraie vie', in Regards feminins (Paris:
DenoiWGonthier, 1976), pp. 153-235.
Roach, John, 'Introduction', in Elise ou Ia vraie vie, ed. by John
Roach, Methuen's Twentieth Century Texts (london: Methuen,
1985).
Interviews and selected reviews of Etcherelli's work
Alliot, Bernard, 'La petite musique pour matins blames de Claire

Etcherelli', Le Monde des livres, 16 June 1976.
Autrand, Dominique, 'Claire Etcherelli fidele a elle-meme', La
Quinzaine litteraire, 16-30 June 1978, pp. 5-6.
Beauvoir, Simone de, 'Ecoutez cette femme ... Un entretien de
Simone de Beauvoir avec Claire Etcherelli', Le Nouvel
Observateur, 15 November 1967, pp. 26-8.
Bott, Franc;;ois, 'A propos de Clemence de Claire Etcherelli', Le
Monde, 25 June 1971, pp. 13-14.
Freustie, Jean, 'La chaine', Le Nouvel Observateur, 11 September
1967, p. 34.
Lanzmann, Claude, Elle, 16 November 1967, pp. 82-5.
Levy-Willard, Annette, 'Les arbres voyageurs de Claire Etcherelli',
Liberation, 15 June 1978, p. 16.
Mallet, Francine, 'Les Prix Femina: Claire Etcherelli parle', Le Monde,
29 November 1967.
Manceron, Anne, 'Vivre au feminin: Un arbre voyageur de Claire
Etcherelli', Le Matin, 7 June 1978, p. 27.
Tournier, Franc;;oise, 'Onze ans apres Elise', El/e, 30 October 1978,
pp. 57-9.
Elise ou Ia vraie vie (Elise or Real Life)*
Gilles came towards us. He was wearing a white overall and he beck-
oned to me to follow him. A booming sound reached my ears and I
began to tremble. Gilles swung back one side of a heavy double door,
and stood back to let me go through. I stopped and looked at him. He
said something but I could no longer hear him; I was in shop 76.
The infernal noises of the machines, the hammers, the tools, the saws,
the engines driving the production line, clashed together in a dreadful
cacophany of dull rumbles, shrill whistlings and ear-splitting shrieks so
unbearable, so inhuman-sounding that I thought there must be some-
thing wrong, that the noises were so discordant that some of them were
bound to stop. Gilles saw my astonishment.
'It's the noise!' he shouted in my ear.
It didn't seem to worry him. Shop 76 was immense. We made our
way forward, stepping over trolleys and crates, and when we came to
the rows of machines where a large number of men were working, a
roar went up and spread out until, it seemed to me, it was taken up by
every man in the shop.
Gilles smiled and bent down to my ear.
'Don't be frightened. It's because of you. Every time a woman sets
foot in here it's the same.'
I looked down at the floor and walked on, accompanied by the roar
which now came from all over the shop.
To my right, a line of cars snaked slowly forwards, but I didn't dare
look at it.
'Wait here,' shouted Gilles.
He disappeared inside a glass cage in the middle of the shopfloor and
came out again almost immediately with another man, young and
impeccably clean looking.
'Monsieur Bernier, your foreman.'
'She's Letellier's sister!' yelled Gilles.
The man nodded to me.
'Have you got an overall?'
I shook my head.
'Go to the cloakroom anyway. Bernier will show you, you can leave
your coat there. But you're going to get your clothes dirty. Haven't you
got sandals either?'
*Elise ou Ia vraie vie by Claire Etcherelli, copyright Editions Denoel, 1967.
He looked put out.

While we were talking, the roar had died down. It started up again
when I went by with Bernier. I concentrated on looking straight ahead
of me.
'They'll keep it up for three days,' Bernier mouthed to me.
The caretaker kept the cloakroom key on him. It was always kept
locked, because of the thefts, Bernier explained. I hung up my coat and
bag as quickly as I could. The cloakroom was in darkness, with the only
light coming in through two small barred window-lights. A smell of
urine and artichokes pervaded it.
We went back in again. Bernier led me right to the end of the shop,
where it overlooked the street. The light came in through wide glass
panes painted over in white and scratched off in places, by the workmen
I suppose.
'This is the production line,' said Bernier with pride.
He got me to climb up on a sort of bench made of wooden slats. Cars
were passing by slowly and men were working inside them. I realised
that Bernier was speaking to me. I couldn't hear and apologised.
'Don't worry,' he said, 'you'll get used to it. But you're going to get
your clothes dirty.'
He called a man over to us.
'Here, this is Mademoiselle Letellier, she's the sister of the big guy
over there. Take her with you on quality control for a few days.'
'Oh? Women are doing the inspecting now are they?'
Ungraciously, he jerked his head, and we crossed over the line
between two cars. There wasn't much room. Thrown off balance by the
movement, I stumbled and clutched him to save myself from falling. He
grunted. He was getting on in years and wore glasses.
'We'll go back up the line a bit,' he said.
The line twisted downwards at a gentle angle, carrying on its belly the
cars anchored down on it; men moved hurriedly in and out of them. The
noise, the movement, the shaking of the wooden slats, the comings and
goings of the men, the smell of petrol, made me feel faint and dizzy.
'My name's Daubat. What was yours? Oh yes, Letellier.'
'Do you know my brother?'
'Of course I know him. He's the big guy over there. Look.'
He pulled me over to the left and pointed towards the machines.
The production line dominated the shop. We were near its beginning;
it finished a long way off in the distance after going all the way round
the huge shop. On the other side of the gangway were the machines on
which a large number of men worked. Daubat pointed out a shape

wearing a beret and a protective mask over the eyes; he was dressed in
thick white overalls, his hand was wrapped round with rags and he held
in it a sort of gun from which he was firing a jet of paint over small
components. It was Lucien. From where I was, half hidden by the cars
passing, I looked round at the men working in that part of the shopfloor.
Some were putting on undercoat, others were hammering parts and then
hanging them up on a line. The part went on to the next man. It was the
dirtiest part of the shopfloor. The men, dressed in bespattered overalls,
had smears on their faces. Lucien had not seen me.
*
In the cloakroom there was a scramble. The women were putting on
their outdoor clothes, talking loudly. It was like the quick rush of joy at
the school bell. Once outside the gates, in the metro on the way home,
they would sink into a different form of alienation.
I looked around for Arezki. He hadn't arrived yet. I joined the queue.
There was no peace for me now. The turmoil I had so avidly desired
churned inside me. Suddenly Arezki was there. His clothing surprised
me. He wore a dark suit and a white shirt, but no coat or anything warm.
He joined the queue behind me without speaking but let me know he
had seen me. A tall Algerian called Lakhdar who worked on the line
passed close by us. He held his hand out to shake Arezki's.
'Where are you off to?'
'Oh, I have to see someone.'
At last we got on the bus and found ourselves squashed together on
the platform. Arezki didn't look in my direction. When the bus got to
Porte de Vincennes, we were able to move along a bit.
'Shall we get off at Porte des Lilas, what do you think? Do you like
walking?'
'Yes, that's fine,' I said.
I felt more and more awkward and my companion's silence did
nothing to help. I read from top to bottom the bus company's regula-
tions, displayed above my head.
Arezki looked at me meaningfully. We got off. I didn't know the area.
I said so to Arezki, that gave us something to talk about. We crossed the
square and went into a cafe 'A la Chope des Lilas'. The lettering of the
sign was an acid green. There were lots of men clustered round the bar.
Some of them stared at us. All the tables were taken. 'Over here,' said
Arezki, and we threaded our way through to a corner on the left where
there were a few empty chairs. Arezki sat down opposite me. The people
at the next table stared at us openly. I saw myself in the glass pillar, blue
with cold and hair in a mess. I lifted up my hand to pull down my coat
collar, and as I was doing it, it dawned on me that I was a figure of
curiosity. I was with an Algerian. It had needed the look in other people's
eyes, the expression on the face of the waiter who had come to take the
order, for it to sink in. I was suddenly seized with panic, but Arezki was
watching me and I blushed, 11fraid that he would guess what the matter
was.
'What are you having?'
'The same as you,' I said dully.
'A hot cup of tea?'
He didn't seem any more at ease than I was.
'Happy birthday,' I said twice before putting my cup to my lips.
He gave a strange smile and started asking me questions. I talked
about Lucien and our childhood with our grandmother.
'I thought you were younger than him.'
'Because I'm small? No, I'm 28.'
He looked at me in surprise.
'You're very fond of your brother. .. '
'Yes,' I said.
And I asked him if he had brothers, a mother. He had three brothers, a
sister, and his mother was still alive. He said she was yellow like a leaf
about to fall, bruised looking, like an overripe fruit, her sight almost
gone. I thought about my grandmother.
To relieve the tension, we talked about Mustapha.
'Shall we walk for a bit?' he asked.
We went outside. Boulevard Serrurier. Welcome darkness. Nobody to
see us. Everyone in a hurry to get home to the warm.
I was talking virtually uninterruptedly. Arezki listened, nodding,
walking along looking straight ahead of him. Several times he asked me
if I was tired. I was trying to think what would capture his attention. He
agreed with everything I said. I told him about the rally at La Grange-
aux-Belles.
'If you go to political meetings,' he said, 'you'll get into trouble.'
I interrupted him, told him about Henri, Lucien, Indochina, I threw in
dreams and realities. I couldn't stop talking. We walked as far as the
Porte de Pantin. He looked at his watch.
'Will you be all right going home by yourself? It's 8 o'clock.'
'Of course.'
'I'm going to have to leave you here. But I'll wait till the bus comes.'
'How are you getting back?'
'By metro.'
'Don't you get stopped by the police in the evenings?'
'Sometimes,' he said.
We waited in the bus shelter. Arezki must have been freezing. He
stood bolt upright, his hands in his pockets and gazed over my shoulder.
When the bus came into view he took his hand out of his pocket and
held it out to me.
'Thank you,' he said. 'It was nice of you. See you tomorrow.'
I got back home tired, hungry and miserable.
The next day Arezki behaved just the same as usual towards me. I felt
rather piqued that he was not more openly friendly. Had I disappointed
him? But I was glad that no one had seen us together that night.
*
Rue de la Gbutte d'Or. The name fired the imagination. But it was dark
and I couldn't see anything special about this particular road.
'This is mad. I must be mad,' he kept exclaiming.
He went ahead down a corridor, and I followed. Twice he turned
round to point out uneven or cracked places in the tiled flooring. At the
bottom of the stairs he took my hand. I let him lead me. I wished the
stairs could stretch out endlessly, that we could go on climbing silently
upwards for eternity. I was afraid of getting there, of the moment when
the door would close and we would find ourselves in the light. Perhaps
the best part of love would be this tranquil journey upwards. He pulled
me along impatiently, more and more quickly, bringing my fingers up to
his mouth and nibbling them.
He opened a door and I went in. A few seconds went by before he put
the light on and I stood motionless in the darkness. He switched the light
on. The room had two beds, one small double and the other a folding
bed, pushed up in a comer. How many of them slept there? The double
bed had a cover with a pattern of bouquets of big round purple flowers,
quite spaced out. The material still had the folds from the packet in it and
the fresh smell of new fabric hung in the air. It had just been bought, it
seemed. Bought for me. On a table in the right-hand comer some glasses
were perched on top of a pile of boxes. I stood looking at the window,
my hands hanging down by the sides of my coat.
Arezki came towards me and took my hands in his. Above his
eyelids, his eyebrows formed almost a single thick line. His eyes were
sombre and, with the naked light bulb reflected in their centre, no longer
glowing with desire. He seemed, suddenly, weighed down by my
presence. He pointed to the window, with no curtains or shutters.
'Just a minute,' he said, 'I'll switch the light off.'
The lights from the rooms across the street gave enough light to see
by. I felt more at ease in the semi-darkness. I could make out the darker,
shinier skin round Arezki's mouth. I would have liked to say something,
but I felt unsteady, gripped by a violent swirl inside me.
Arezki smiled. I relaxed a bit. He helped me take off my coat, folded
it slowly, put it down carefully on the only chair. There was nowhere
left to sit down but on the bed, the bed with the huge flowers. He drew
me towards him.
The flowers dissolved, the walls crashed down, the light faded. He was
talking rapidly, saying things in his harsh-sounding language. I felt
myself caught up in his web of tenderness. I wished that he would nibble
my fingers again. I was thinking about Lucien and Anna, and at the same
time about what was happening to me, and it was like a whirlwind in the
narrow confines of a circle in which my life was receding, shrinking; the
years, the months, the days to come and those left behind were suddenly
frozen and this instant was at the exact centre of a circle, a round,
shining, shattering centre. I let myself sink into his arms, my face
squashed up against the rough material of his jacket. The wailing of a
siren invaded the road. 'A fire engine,' I thought. Arezki had remained
motionless. There must be several engines, the sirens were getting
louder, going on an alarmingly long time and coming to a halt beneath
our window. Arezki let go of me. Then I understood. The police. I began
shivering. I wasn't frightened but I was shivering anyway. I couldn't stop
shivering from the sirens, the squeals of the brakes, the slamming of
doors and the cold - I could feel it now - the cold of the room.
Un arbre voyageur ('A Travelling Tree')*
Her third encounter with Walter took place on the road from Verville to
Parmain. Milie was walking into the wind. Underneath her mac she was
wearing two sweaters and her hair was scraped back under the yellow
*Copyright, Gallimard 1978, for Un arbre voyageur by Claire Etcherelli.

headscarf. The sound of a car engine slowing down made her think that
it could be Walter. He was at the wheel. She recognised his profile, the
hair coming down over the forehead, the long line of the eyebrow
plunging down towards the nose, the shirt collar under the same grey
jacket. His partner wound down the window. They would be driving
through L'Isle-Adam, he said. 'I'm out for a walk actually,' she replied,
and the engine revved up again.
As she had to catch the 11 a.m. train, she began to walk more quickly,
still against the wind. The level crossing signal crackled out just as she
arrived at the station, bathed in sweat.
She closed her eyes as far as Pontoise, trying her best to doze.
Repeating over and over the phrases prepared in the night, in those
moments of lucidity after the first few hours of sleep when the scales
masking obvious truths have fallen from the eyes. When the train
slowed down she walked to the end of the corridor, tried to imagine her
daughter and to work out at what point in the journey Vera decided not
to go to school. Milie had received a letter the previous day, requesting
her to explain Vera's more and more frequent absences. So, after setting
out every morning with Marc and Denis and saying goodbye to them at
Pontoise, Vera was disappearing off, no one knew where. She had not
replied to her mother's questions, had burst into convulsive sobbing,
crying that she would never go back to that school and that, anyway, no
one there cared about her. Where did she spend her days? Did she eat
anything? What did she do with the dinner money? 'I don't mind going
to school, but I want to go to a lycee like the boys, where I'll learn
things. 'Marc told her she was mad; if she knew how many things they
had to learn! Vera was adamant. The certificate class that she was
redoing after failing it last year would lead to nothing more than an
apprenticeship. She kept repeating, 'I want to learn things.' Like Marc.
'I don't know what the maternal instinct is Anna,' Milie had once said.
'But the instinct for justice, yes, I know what that is, and it can make me
capable of anything!'
It had been one evening at the brasserie des Ternes, she had been in
her outfit that was violet like velvety skin, and Anna, in black, her hair
up, had talked to her about her maternal instinct.
*
Only just five o'clock. She couldn't bear to think of the hours still to be
got through before tomorrow morning, to think of the night still to
come. Walter's pessimism disturbed Milie. It kindled all the fears that
Anna was always bringing up. Of course she was worried. But things
had to work out. Everyone was saying it was a good time for business.
Everyone was talking about expansion. That project for a new town near
Pontoise ... If she could just manage until then.
It was too long to wait. She must do something. For a moment, the
idea of how long it would take to get there disheartened her. It had been
raining since lunchtime. She got dinner ready and left it keeping warm
on the comer of the stove. After the postman had been, Vera had gone
into Pontoise. Her friend Arlette was starting her first job the next day.
She had promised to be back by 8 p.m. Fanch was asleep; no light on in
his room. 'Marc, I'm borrowing your bike. Got something to do in
1 'Isle-Adam. Just keep me a bit of mashed potato.' Paul had heard.
'What have you got to do?' 'Something very boring.' But he wanted to
come, he liked boring things.
'Then get out the brush and sweep the attic!'
Milie got the bike out quickly. She had left the house in too much of a
hurry to cover herself up properly. Her mac was ballooning out in the
wind and the rain drove into her face.
This morning he had said, 'I'll go home early.' She rode through
Nesles. House lights shone and the pipe was illuminated above the cafe.
What if Walter was in there? But she felt too dripping wet to go in. She
passed by the dressmaker's house, all its windows lit up. Milie began
imagining the ordered elegance of that solid mansion. And imagining at
the same time that woman and her daughter who 'knew what they
wanted'. As she began going downhill the rain started to ease off. She
missed the bend just as Paul had done one day and the fall left her
shaken. She decided to walk the rest of the way, holding on to the bike's
handlebars. The white fence. It was reassuring to discover that her body
could still tremble, still tauten at the sight of the white fence. No lights
on. The shed and the house empty. The door locked. Nothing to dry her
face on or her hair, which would stand on end. Time went by. Each time
she saw car headlights she felt hopeful. Now that the rain had stopped, it
was cold. Maybe Walter had stayed on for dinner in Parmain? At the
dressmaker's house? No, he would have come home to change. She
went out of the shed because of the draughts and crouched down on the
ground in front of the house, out of the wind. Suddenly the van was
there. Walter was taking ages, after he had parked it, walking round it,
checking it over carefully. Silence shrouded the whole of the grounds,
the shed, the field, the house. He walked towards the door, Milie stood
up. He stepped back in surprise, recognised her, thought there was
something wrong and that she had come to tell him. Soaked and
shivering, she had a tragic look about her.
'I couldn't wait till tomorrow.' He breathed out, opened the door, put
the light on, repeated that she was mad to go out in the rain. He wanted
to get her dry first. A fire. 'No,' she said, 'I can't stay long. But if
you've got a sweater I'll give it you back tomorrow.' He was quite
shaken. He took off his wool jacket, told her to put it on because it had
taken his body warmth. Still covered in dust, his hands and face stiff
with paste and plaster. They had put in a hard day. He told her about it
rapidly, thinking 'put the bike in the van, take her back home, wash my
hands, splash my face'. Now he could approach Milie. She was waiting.
He hesitated at the bedroom door. The last time he had tidied it up for
Milie. This evening there were dirty clothes on the floor, the bed was
unmade and the sheets hung down. And cold as the grave.
On the way home she felt fear and embarrassment. She could hear
music from the road where Walter had dropped her off. That was reas-
suring. They must all be in the attic, she would be able to slip in
unnoticed.
All three were in the kitchen. Paul sitting on the table, Marc and Vera
pointedly doing nothing. 'Your mashed potatoes,' said Marc, 'stuck to
the pan.' But, as always these days, it was Vera who led the attack.
Questions first, then reproaches; she was angry because she was upset.
Milie kept repeating, 'I did tell Marc. I don't go off without saying any-
thing.' She knew it was past 9 o'clock. She would have to put up with
recriminations, it helped them work off the anxiety that had built up
while they were waiting. Had they been worried? About an accident?
They were surprised by the question. No, they hadn't thought of that.
They were just upset and resentful that they didn't know what she'd
been doing. Vera was calming down now because Milie was promising
that soon she would be explaining a 'lot of things' to her.
Fanch, who had heard something going on over the sound of the
music, arrived out of breath. 'Oh, Milie!' She went up to her room and
took off the mac which she had been holding carefully together so that
they would not see Walter's sweater underneath. She was just changing;
there was a knock on her door.
'It's Fanch, I wanted to say goodnight, that's all.'
She opened the door.
'Yes Fanch, goodnight!'
'What a tragedy, Milie!'
'What? Your poem? The story of Jeanne Ia Flamme?'

'That's what I meant. Right then, good evening, good night, good
life. Life must be good to get up as early as you do.'
She would keep quiet to Walter about the family making a fuss. Their
half an hour passed so quickly. 'Don't come tomorrow morning, get
some rest.' No, he would be there, on the dot. He had to be at the site for
the men at 7.30 a.m.
Milie didn't put the kitchen light on, went out on tiptoe, listened at
Fanch's door. Everything seem quiet. Still raining, but a cold drizzle.
Walter was silent, his mind on the previous day. The whole episode had
thrown him, right from the moment when he had caught sight of Milie
at the door; it had also wiped out the uncomfortable memory of that
New Year's Day visit. Milie had gashed open the wound and Walter
wanted to have done, cut through to the bone, have done with driving
her back home, facing the empty seat afterwards, the empty bed and the
funereal bedroom. Yes, her smell, the memory of her, her trace still
remained; they were not enough for him now. So this morning, no
question of losing a second of their allotted time. The rain hampered
them. Their feet sunk in the mud of the sodden path. The branches they
brushed as they passed showered them with water. The thread snapped
the previous day began to re-establish itself. From childhood resurfaced
the forbidden pleasure of paddling through muddy water, and the need
to hang on to one another.
'The men'll wonder what I've been up to. No question of you going
out in the rain tonight, it won't stop all day. Unless I come and fetch you
after work and you stay with me all night.'
'Impossible!'
They would talk about it again. They couldn't keep cutting life up
into such small slices.
'Soon when I come and see you, it'll be daylight. In a fortnight we'll
be able to see better.'
Back to school. Difficult to get them off. Paul's shoes are no good.
He comes back at 5 p.m. wet up to the knees. Milie was about to be
cross with him. But there, on the chair, still drying, were the trousers she
had worn that morning, covered in mud. She kissed Paul, who was
surprised to be let off.
A quiet evening. Yesterday's crisis forgotten. With Milie back at her
post, everyone was in a good mood. The money-order would get them
through three weeks. Fanch had finished his poem to the glory of Jeanne
Ia Flamme. Denis was occupied with the membership list of the Vietnam
committee, slowly expanding. Milie had the impression of a perfect
miraculous balance. Would it last? Vera was fascinated by Arlette in her
bookshop, and had been in to see her in the newspaper and magazine
department. The manager said that they would sell twice as many
newspapers during the Grenoble Olympics. Arlette had to hover, give
the right change, fold over the newspapers with a quick flick of the wrist.
There would be no escape from a daily account of Arlette's good fortune.
For a while at least. What did the dressmaker's daughter do? A girl who
'knew what she wanted'. Like her mother.
The children were getting home later in the evenings. They were
going to look at the River Oise, overflowing its banks. The bad weather
had not let up. Glacial rain, drowned landscapes, wet clothes drying
night and day in front of the stove, shoes soaked through. Who was it
who had written about the pleasure of walking in the countryside with
an old coat and old shoes? It could no longer be put off, they needed
boots, especially Paul who had to cut across fields.
Walter said, 'It'll be cold, you'll see, when the rain stops. I'll bring
you some wood. At least I'll know you've got a fire!' Despite the
squalls he was still coming every morning. They were short of a man at
the site: he came to work on a Solex and was put off by the storms.
Walter found it incredible. He was one of the men the most short of
money, who needed to work twelve hours a day all winter to make ends
meet. So Walter had to stay on later. But at 6.30 every morning, he
arrived at La Fourche. Milie, who had run all the way there, would jump
into the van; they drove towards the wood. It was true, the daylight was
advancing. Milie was unhappy and uneasy to see the dark retreating.
Perhaps because it was so short that moment was irreplaceable. Twice
more, she went to Walter's house. The second time, he offered her
cakes. Milie understood what an act of independence that purchase
represented. The stove was stuffed with wood, Walter was sweltering.
He pushed away the plate on which an eclair remained and sat down
by Milie. She would have to leave soon.
'Couldn't Fanch replace my workman? It's not difficult work, you
just need strong arms. I saw him close up once in Nesles, he's got just
the right build for carting stuff.'
Milie shook her head.
'He'd earn quite a bit in two weeks. I pay the men fortnightly.'
Walter was cross. Sighing and repeating 'but he must help you Milie!'
'He wants to finish his Legend first.'

What would be the use of his poems? Could you live off them?
Fanch's lifestyle bewildered Walter, it threatened his own in its most
solid foundations. Yes, there should be poems ... Let him write them
then! But Milie who carried everything on her own shoulders!
'Your eldest son came to ask me if he could work for me in the
Christmas holidays. I was touched you know. I looked at him ... he's so
like you! I promised him for July ... Tomorrow I'll bring you that
wood.'
*
For four days she had been saying, 'Why don't we go up to Paris!'
On the Sunday, Walter agreed. He had suggested driving Anna to
Chauny; she could make her own way on to Lens and Bruno could fetch
her. But Anna wanted to wait a bit before leaving the Paris area.
The boys had already gone off up there. 'We'll sleep at my mother's
house,' Denis had promised. 'If you're worried, Milie, give my mother a
ring. She'll know where we are.' They were all to meet up on Sunday.
Walter and Milie would drive them home.
'This is madness. I've hardly got any petrol, all the pumps I'm known
at are closed, I won't be able to get to Pontoise on Tuesday.'
Gingerly they made their way into the Sorbonne, listened, went out
down the main staircase, walked about in a daze from one stand to
another in the courtyard, went on up to the markets at Les Hailes where
the rotting leftovers and the plywood boxes were piled up in a nauseat-
ing wall, an image, Milie said several times over, of everything cur-
rently decaying in French society; they walked past the Stock Exchange
because Milie wanted to see the black scars of the fire, then proceeded
down the rue de La Fayette where strikers camping out in their work-
places waved gaily to the passers-by. They came to a halt at the Gare du
Nord, Milie could go no further. All the time they had been in Paris,
Walter had said nothing. He scrutinised everything and everyone consci-
entiously like a foreigner who had lost all hope of understanding
anything.
'I find all this very worrying, I can't see where they're heading. Do
you think they know themselves Milie? You can hardly stand up. Lets
go to the van and wait till 9 o'clock.'
By 10 o'clock no sign of Marc or Denis. They waited until midnight,
watching the spectacle all around them of people gathered in groups,
talking earnestly. A woman drunk passed by Milie; she was wearing a

blue satin bodice with lace puffs and was talking to herself in a tearful
voice. Milie nudged Walter. 'Marta says that the tramps from Buci
helped themselves to clothes from the wardrobes of the Odeon theatre.'
Walter seemed tired. Easy to see that he wanted to go. They went to the
rue du Commerce. They woke up the travelling salesman's wife, she
couldn't tell them anything. Yes, she had seen the boys that day. They
had come in, had grabbed something to eat then had disappeared off
without getting any sleep or a wash. The key was still under the mat; no
point in worrying, except because of the neighbours who had stared in
hostility.
'Let's go back to Chatelet,' Walter suggested, seeing that Milie was
disappointed.
One o'clock was striking. People were still talking, cross-legged on
the pavement.
'No, it's not worth it, they won't come now.'
The road at night. Headlights draining the tarmac of colour. But none
of the emotion that left them speechless on their brief morning walks.
Walter drove slowly. 'I'm no further forward than before we came.
What about you Milie?' They talked about everything they had seen
during the day. Walter wanted to know what was behind it all. He
hadn't understood half of what was being said, he explained. 'I didn't
understand either,' Milie assured him. 'And now?' he said, 'and now
what?' He stopped the van, left only the sidelights on. Thick blackness
of the night, the road deserted. In the darkness, Milie was saying, 'I
don't know. I can only feel it. Something I can't describe.' She didn't
know the exact terms to express it. 'Everything that's happening it
setting me free,' she began again. That was it. People like themselves,
what were they? They were what had been made of them, what they
had not been allowed to become. They had to be productive or not exist
at all. Work, recover, work. Now the mechanism was breaking down.
Walter shook his head. This business which kept coming up of refusing
to work, no, no, it couldn't make any sense. Anyone who refused to
work put a double load on someone else's shoulders.
She felt weary and sad, overcome by the desire to doze off for a few
seconds first. Milie leant her cheek against the window, talking quietly
with her eyes closed, protesting that that was not what she had meant.
No hope of sharing it with Walter. He had not felt anything. No shudder
of joy or anger. The torrents of verbiage, the sensationalist declarations
had soon bored him: the spectacle of the streets, of the walls, of the
feverish activity that reigned in the classrooms turned into workshops

was not enough to pierce his armour of anxiety. With great care he had
spelled out every piece of graffiti as though it contained some secret
message. He had relaxed only once when Milie, pulling his arm, had
pointed out to him the facade of the LE NET works on which a hand,
trembling with its own audacity, had painted in huge white letters the
word OCCUPPIED. With a double P. Perhaps to prolong the pleasure of
writing it? Milie suggested. He smiled then, a private joke, because he
himself had worked hard at LE NET when he was in Paris (sanding
down, bleaching, varnishing, waxing parquet floors in shame and rage
because he knew he could get on with his brain and his hands) and
because, he thought, he wouldn't have been able to write that word any
other way.
'More alienated than me. Cut off. Closed in.' The image of the Isba
bar came back to Milie like a symbol. The historic mutilations of the
working class - who took them into account in this verbal deluge?
Walter, Milie and their like bore the mark in their memory of the
humiliations which were their inheritance, the mark of a branding iron
stamped on the desires, the spirit, the spontaneity of generation after
generation. Life had been transmitted to them with this fruit, the hard
and sombre kernal of hope and revolt hidden beneath the bruised and
overripe pulp of resignation and silence.
'Being erotic Milie, what does it mean exactly? I've read that word
four times on walls. The eroticisation of society. Be erotic. Fancy not
knowing what it means at the age of nearly 43!'
She couldn't explain it to him, she didn't know what its definition
was. Perhaps it wasn't essential to know.
'Well it seemed pretty important to those people I was listening to
just now. It seemed highly essential. Do you realise, its nearly 2 a.m!'
He started up the engine.
'Shall I take the Nesles road or, like the other night. ..'
The emotion of that night had stayed with him.
'Yes, come home with me. I'll put the alarm on for 6 o'clock.'
He stopped the van. He wanted to take Milie in his arms. More. Make
love to her straight away. Echo of the first times. The narrowness of the
car seat, the windows fogged-up and beyond them nothing but darkness.
6
Jeanne Hyvrard
Introduction
The reception problems which the first texts of Jeanne

Hyvrard encountered have already been described in the first
chapter. Les Prunes de Cythere ('Plums of Cythera') pub-
lished in 1975 had drawn an enthusiastic critical response,
partly based on the assumption that the author was a black
woman from the French Caribbean who had spent part of her
life locked up in a psychiatric hospital. This illusion was
largely maintained for the publication of her next two texts,
Mere Ia mort (Mother Death, 1976) and La Meurtritude
('Murderation', 1977), both published like the first with
Editions de Minuit, a publishing house whose literary reputa-
tion was second to none. Jeanne Hyvrard, however, was not
black, had not been born in the Caribbean, and had never
intended to write a book about madness. Born in Paris of
white parents, Jeanne Hyvrard is an economist by training
who went to the Caribbean to take up a teaching post for two
years between 1969 and 1971. The discovery of the extreme
poverty of many of the pupils that she taught, and of the
colonial situation still operating in the islands, shocked her
profoundly. On her return to France she wrote what she saw
as an economic and social report on the Antilles, which she
believed (naively, as she points out today) would open up
her compatriots' eyes to the situation and bring about
change. 1 That economic and social report was Les Prunes de
Cythere.
One of the reasons behind the general misconception was
the fact that Jeanne Hyvrard had wanted to protect her family
109
life from any literary notoriety. She had therefore not issued
any biographical statement nor had she had any photographs
taken. Instead of signing the text with her own or her
husband's name, she had taken the name of her maternal
great-aunt, known in the family as 'Jeanne Ia Folie'. Hyvrard
says of her:
She was a woman I liked very much, who had never capitu-
lated in her life, who had always resisted, who had kept the
fires of memory burning in a family which had no desire to
remember. She played a witch-like role, an excluded role,
the family kept her at arm's length. I took her name in so far
as she was a woman whom I very much admired ... The
name Jeanne appealed to me, but on the conscious level, I
clearly took the name because I myself am carrying on the
battle for memory that my great-aunt fought, and the
refusal to capitulate to an order which kills. 2
The name 'Jeanne Ia Folie' is used in Les Prunes de Cythere,

another reason why critics concluded that the speaking voice
of the text (and therefore the author) was that of a mad-
woman. In fact the narrative voice is multiple - a phenom-
enon interpreted by some readers as a sign of a fragmented
personality which can be labelled as mad. Hyvrard herself,
however, sees the fragmented speaking voices of her texts as
the elements of a transnational and transhistorical identity
which she finds far easier to identify with than the notion of a
single unified speaking subject. She says: 'It is impossible to
understand my determination to seek out the meaning of the
world without understanding that I have the permanent
sensation of being not only the link in a chain, but the
particle of an entity which is being constituted, the Body of
the Species'. 3
To the extent, then, that her texts are presented from the
point of view of a collective identity, Hyvrard was not at first
particularly upset to be identified as black and as a psychiatric
patient. Indeed, given her view that society deliberately
explodes girls' identity in an attempt to force them into pre-
determined moulds, she felt that she was in a strong position
to incarnate someone from a colonised land: 'I would say that
Jeanne Hyvrard 111
as a woman I am a native of the Caribbean. That is to say that

I saw in the Caribbean what was happening to me, and that it
was on my return that I began to write. I saw in the loss of
identity that the natives of the Caribbean experience what had
happened to me as a woman.' 4 However, the silencing of
Hyvrard's identity as a white Frenchwoman was only part of
the silencing of her texts. She felt that the grid of the black
female psychiatric patient which had been applied to them
only enabled them to be read in certain ways. The political
and economic content, in particular, could not be fitted to this
reading stance. When, after her first four highly literary texts,
she began to produce a more and more overtly philosophical
discourse, she found her publishers' doors closed to her. Le
Corps defunt de Ia comedie ('The defunct body of comedy'),
subtitled 'an economic and political treatise', was refused by
Minuit but published by Seuil in 1982. The same year she
became passionately involved in events in Poland and wrote
a highly political essay on Poland which was refused by Seuil
in its turn. Montalba eventually stepped in.
The year 1982 was a crucial one for Hyvrard. In the same
year as her abandonment by her first publishers, she was
invited to speak about her work at a conference in French
Canada; the direction her work was taking towards an ever
more intellectualised and less fictionalised approach was
given greater impetus by the need to analyse her work for
an audience. Canada was the source of other revelations for
her as well. For the first time, she came into direct contact
with a sympathetic readership for her work who understood
what she was trying to do. Instead of being treated as an
aberration, she felt accepted and encouraged: 'It gave me
wings.' 5 It also gave her a new perspective on the situation of
women in France: 'From Canada, I saw how French society
functions. And I was stupified. I discovered in Canada that
the situation of women in France, seen from the Canadian
perspective, is not so different from the situation of women
in lran.' 6 Women writers in France, she felt, were only toler-
ated if they took up literature as they might take up knitting.
They could not be tolerated if they spoke as intellectuals.
On her return to France, Hyvrard resolutely took the philo-
sophical path, although she also continues to write fiction
and her essays are themselves densely poetic. She also took
what now seems to her the logical step of publishing with
the 'feminist' Editions des femmes, whose own practice of
trying to open up strictly defined genres and of adopting an
internationalist stance was close to her own. With des
femmes, she has published a collection of short stories,
Auditions musicales certains soirs d'ete ('Musical recitals on
summer evenings'), three essays, La Baisure, Canal de Ia
Toussaint ('All Saints Channel') and La Pensee Corps ('Body
Thought'), a collective text entitled Le Cercan ('The Circular
Shackles') which arose from a cancer support group which
Hyvrard set up after herself being diagnosed as having
cancer in 1982, and, most recently, a biographically based
text entitled La Jeune Morte en robe de dentelle ('The dead
young woman in a lace dress', 1990).
Despite the variety of forms which her work takes, Hyvrard
stresses its unity. The change of form simply corresponds to
the gradual process of intellectualisation of feelings which
had initially been purely instinctive. The early, more fiction-
alised texts from which the extracts translated here are taken,
are described by Hyvrard as completely inspirational texts.
Writing is less a choice for her than a lifeline: 'I would die if I
didn't write.' 7 She in no way set out consciously to plan and
create these works. With a small child and a teaching job
(which she still has), Hyvrard wrote every morning between 5
and 7 a.m. As she describes it: 'The writing just came. It
created itself automatically at night in the womblike recycling
of sleep and in the morning I developed it as you might
develop a photograph taken at night. It was totally subcon-
scious.'8 The highly personal style and language of her texts
reinforce the impression of an inspirational writing. Hyvrard's
texts tend to spiral, rather than to proceed in a linear
progression. At the level of the sentence she writes largely
outside the standard pattern of subject-verb-predicate, and
her vocabulary (as is already evident from some of her titles)
includes invented words. She makes no apology for either of
these features: the formal rules of French grammar represent
a constraint on thinking with which Hyvrard has no desire to
conform - indeed she claims that she is virtually incapable of
it. As for the invention of words, the manipulation of new
Jeanne Hyvrard 113
concepts necessarily requires new terms, she argues, and,

since her words are always constructed on existing models,
they are always comprehensible. At the level of the paragraph
and of the text as a whole, ideas, images and themes are con-
stantly returned to, with each return offering more con-
nections, more variations, more developments. 9 The style of
her writing is in fact in itself a way of trying to reach the
'fusionality' of which Hyvrard writes, a way of going back to a
time before what she calls 'separance'. She stresses the role
of memory because memory is the key to the time before
separation and the suppression of the feminine.
Hyvrard develops in her essays the notion of a 'pensee
femme' (female thought) which is radically different from
male systems of thinking, but, at the same time she is
searching for a new way forward which would be totalising
instead of separating. Hyvrard emphasises again and again
in the extracts given below that the concept of being
opposite to something must not be confused with being its
negation. She has a positive vision of a future in which men
and women could rediscover the masculinity and the femi-
ninity which both carry within them -the idea of an ecriture
feminine (feminine writing), meanwhile, is described by her
below as nothing more than a male device to exclude
women's writing from serious consideration.
However, the extracts given below bitterly denounce the
state of relations between men and women which has
resulted from patriarchy and from current systems of
thought. Women, Hyvrard argues, are made into 'zombies'
from an early age, their sense of themselves ferociously
massacred by a society which largely operates through the
good offices of the mother. The very title of Mere Ia mort
(Mother Death), the first text from which extracts appear
below, draws attention to the text's central image of the
smothering womb and evokes the 'chain of horror' which
mothers pass on down the generations. 10 Her own experience
of having her identity systematically crushed by her mother
is described in La Jeune Morte en robe de dentelle ('The
Dead Young Woman in the Lace Dress') (1990); her mother's
love for her is compared here by Hyvrard to the love of ivy
for the fruit-tree which it smothers before killing. 11 In Mother
Death, however, the image of the smothering matrix does

not simply evoke the constraints imposed on the individual
by the mother, but also the constraints of society's models
for women, the constraints of particular systems of language
and of binary systems of thinking in general. Dedicated to
'les enfolh~es' (women who have been made mad), the text
urges women to cling to their own truth and not to accept a
'cure'.
The images of illness and imprisonment are again central
to the extracts from La Meurtritude ('Murderation'), where
the narrator embraces her difference in order to break
through divides and separation. The second text also uses
the symbol of the tarot cards, in which the narrator takes on
the role of the card called 'le fou' (madman), which only has
meaning in relation to the other cards. She thus becomes a
wild card (in French literally a 'dead' card). In both texts there
is a preoccupation with the role of the woman writer. In the
first the narrator scorns the woman who plays the game,
accepts the cure and declares herself to be a writer ('They
throw the ball to her. She throws it back into the basket they
hold out for her'). In the second text the narrator defines
herself as a public scribe(ress), the 'voice of those who have
no voice', whose role is akin to that of the prostitute -the
wordplay is insistent in the parallelism between the French
expressions ecrivain publique and fille publique. The public
scribe(ress) has the same relation to writing that prostitutes
have to love - she is the 'dregs of society ... the dregs of
literature'. She is the expression of everything that has gone
wrong, the 'expression of a collective disaster'.
Much of Hyvrard's writing is both difficult and disturbing.12
It is amongst the most original and most poetic of women's
writing in France today, expressing a powerful and passion-
ate voice.
Notes
1. See Euridice Figueiredo's interview with Jeanne Hyvrard in

Revue Hispano-Haitienne (1986), pp. 119-34 (p. 119). In 1988 she
remarked, 'I laugh today at my naivety, but I stand by my
Jeanne Hyvrard 115
innocence' (interview with Elizabeth Fallaize, 1988).

2. Interview with Euridice Figueiredo, p. 120. Hyvrard's most recent
text, La Jeune Marte en robe de dentelle, also suggests that her
desire not to use her 'own' name for her writing corresponds to
a desire to rebel against her childhood identity imposed on her
by her mother. On the last page of this text, evoking her early
life, she writes: 'I remember Annie Fontaine' (p. 176).
3. 'A bord de l'innommable' ('On board the Unnameable'). text
delivered to a literary conference in French Canada and kindly
communicated to me by the author.
4. Interview with Euridice Figueiredo, p. 125.
5. Interview with Elizabeth Fallaize, 1988.
8. Interview with Elizabeth Fallaize, 1988. Hyvrard also stressed the
connection of her need to write with her final acceptance of the
fact that, after a string of miscarriages, she would never be able
to have another child. On the phantasmagoric level, she
describes herself as being someone who would like to be a sow
with a full litter of piglets.
9. Laurie Edson sees Hyvrard's writing style as an example of what
Julia Kristeva calls the semiotic ('the pulsational energy
contained in language, as well as its de-structuring and explo-
sive qualities') erupting into the symbolic ('codified discourse,
the mechanisms of language that serve to constrain, regulate
and normalise, such as grammar and semantics'). See Edson's
'Afterword' to her translation of Mother Death (Lincoln and
London: University of Nebraska Press), pp. 115-16.
10. Interview with Euridice Figueiredo, p. 131.
11. It is very tempting to identify the source of Hyvrard's sense of a
fragmented identity in this account of the mother's attempt to
break down her daughter's sense of identity and to substitute
for it her own view of her daughter. In the text Hyvrard speaks of
her desire to pulverise the object that her mother has tried to
fashion her into and her hope that she will thus be able to
survive her mother's domination: 'If I could fracture this object
so that she stops looking at herself in it. Shatter it into a
thousand pieces so that it no longer reflects the abominable
light of totality. If this multitude of fragmented fragments could
be integrated by living nature into the seaweed, into the trees
and the batraciens? If I could survive in their midst in the
divisions of myself. There is no eternal domination' (La Jeune
Marte en robe de dentelle, pp. 130-1). Despite this, it is worth
stressing that Hyvrard believes that it is possible to break this
chain and give our daughters their freedom. She describes her
own childhood as a 'convict's existence' (existence de taularde)
but is extremely happy in her relationship with her own
daughter (interview with Elizabeth Fallaize, 1988).
12. Her most recent text, La Jeune Morte en robe de dentelle (1990),
is however, considerably more accessible than some of her
earlier writing and may point the way to future developments.
Jeanne Hyvrard bibliography
Books and articles by Hyvrard
Les Prunes de Cythere (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1975).

Mere Ia mort (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1976); Mother Death, trans.
by Laurie Edson (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska
Press, 1988).
La Meurtritude (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1977).
Les Doigts du figuier (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1977).
Le Corps defunt de Ia comedie: traite d'economie politique (Paris:
Editions du Seuil, 1982).
Le Silence et 1'obscurite: requiem littoral pour corps polonais (Paris:
Montalba, 1982).
Auditions musicales certains soirs d'ete (Paris: des femmes, 1984).
La Baisure suivie de Que se partagent encore les eaux (Paris: des
femmes, 1984).
Canal de Ia Toussaint (Paris: des femmes, 1986).
Le Cercan (Paris: des femmes, 1987).
La Pensee Corps (Paris: des femmes, 1989).
La Jeune morte en robe de dentelle (Paris: des femmes, 1990).
'La Contrelangue', La Quinzaine litteraire, 16 March 1985, pp. 37-8.
'Geonomy', Copyright 1 (Fall1987), pp. 45-63.
Books and articles on Hyvrard and selected reviews
For a full bibliography see Verthuy-Williams and Waelti-Walters

(below).
Bonnefoy, Claude, 'Le mystere Jeanne Hyvrard', Les Nouvelles
litteraires, vols 17-23, November 1977, p. 7.
Cartano, Tony, 'Une theorie generale du chagrin, Jeanne Hyvrard:
Le corps defunt de Ia comedie', Magazine litteraire, no. 182
(March 1982), pp. 48-9.
Edson, Laurie, 'Jeanne Hyvrard's Mother Death and the colonization
of language', in Mother Death, trans. by Laurie Edson (Lincoln
and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1988), pp. 111-23.
a
Figueiredo, Euridice, 'Interview avec Jeanne Hyvrard realisee Paris
le 20 Juillet 1985', Conjonctions (1986), pp. 119-34.
Henkels, R.M., 'Jeanne Hyvrard Les Prunes de Cythere', French
Review, vol. 50 (1976), pp. 371-2.
Le Clezio, Marguerite, 'Jeanne Hyvrard: The Writing of the Night',
Jeanne Hyvrard 117
Revue de 1'Universite d'Ottawa, vol. 54 (1984), pp. 117-23.

Petillon, Monique, 'La Parole convulsee de Jeanne Hyvrard', Le
Monde, 30 December 1977, pp. 14-15.
Silenieks, Juris, 'Jeanne Hyvrard: Mere Ia mort, French Review, vol.
51 (1977) pp. 329-30.
Verthuy-Williams, Mair and Jennifer Waelti-Walters, Jeanne
Hyvrard (Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi, 1988).
Mere Ia mort (Mother Death)*
Mother death, I seek your name. I know it. I knew it before I went to the
French school. They told me it wasn't true. They told me they sacrificed
themselves for me. They told me I'd never amount to anything. They
dictated traps to me so I'd fall in. They sealed my belly with an inkwell.
They lacerated my body with steel pens. They said it was for my own
good. They've succeeded so well that I've lost your name. It's your name
I seek in my howling. It's your name I hear when you open your arms to
me in the night.
Mother death, how do I talk to them now that they've killed words?
What were they afraid I'd say to them? And yet, the mountain. The
river's single-stringed discourse. The echo of a tiny beating. When I
ran barefoot in the forest. But the invaders came. They took our lands.
They multiplied words. They added tenses so they'd be sure not to
remember. They added tenses so they could say it happened in the past.
They added tenses so they wouldn't be held accountable. Help me
relearn the language without past or future. Help me relearn the
language of swamps. Help me relearn the language between earth and
water. They've snapped word-branches. They've cut themselves off
from the roots. They've multiplied meanings. They've lost the stem.
And yet. The intersection of paths in the world's forest. The junction of
rivers in the sea. Meeting-places in stairwells. No. They were afraid of
the tiny beating in women's bellies. Words don't have meaning
anymore. Words in their shoddy hands. Words in their mechanical
mouths. They've cut trees to make crosses from them. They've
banished the old in deathplaces. They've expelled the deceased from
villages. They've invented legends to ward off their fears. They've
parodied the myths of our common memory. They thought they were
the world's masters. They thought they possessed. They lost love. They
thought they were conjugating verbs. They lost the 'one'. But words
have only one meaning. They lost your name. But they weren't able to
kill death. So they locked her up.
They're over there on the other side of the valley. Not very far. A few
hours' walk away. Barely. But I can't return among them. Their glass
trinkets unearthed like trophies. Their certitudes mistaken for reasoned
thought. Their rage to file down, normalize, regiment. Their ostentation
concealing their failures. Their manoeuvering. Their flight. Their delu-
*Reprinted from Mother Death, translated by Laurie Edson, by permission of
University of Nebraska Press.
Jeanne Hyvrard 119
sion. They make such noise, those boastful men. Not speech. Not even
rage. Not even a scream. Words, nothing but words. Made of cement.
So they can cover their emptiness. Made of cement. So they can recog-
nize each other as belonging to the same clan. Made of cement. So they
can take possession of us.
Mother death. Separance. Suffering, in winter and summer. I walk
toward you. I'm in such pain. I'll shut myself inside your skull. Days
will seem like the eternity of your hands. I'm so tired. I've been strug-
gling for such a long time. Madness has been sleeping in my arms for
such a long time. I've been resisting for such a long time. I've been
turning into the walls of my own house for such a long time. Water has
been accumulating inside the walls for such a long time. I've been
walking toward the great resting-place for such a long time. I can't
anymore. Why pretend?
I open my arteries. They spurt onto the walls of the room. They talk
about technique. Composition. Inspiration.Filiation. They talk about my
exposed chest without seeing the blood flowing on my hands. I'm worn
out from being in front of this window where ravens soar. I try in vain
to invent sentences. But mauve trees wander about the roads to meet
with the words flowing from my crushed body. No. They want to know
the why and the how. They don't hear the pain. They give cures. They
don't want to listen. They block their ears with the imperfect. They say:
that's in the past. They say: that will pass. I still can't manage to
conjugate space. Even less to decline time.
Acids drift through my skull and no one can say how or why. Red
acids continue quietly eroding the cliff of my reason. They say they're
going to send me back to the hospital. I won't find the impossible
language that would cause the sentences they've mutilated to explode in
their hands. Conjugations of the imaginary as oats turn into sirens
beyond reason. I don't need anything anymore. I have enough supplies
to last for months. Years, maybe. I just want to keep on sitting in a
corner of the room. Agony in my shoulders, unknotted as the house is
swallowed up. In your belly I become very small again. We stop
fighting at last. For so long you've wanted to smother me. For so many
years I've been inside you. For so many years your womb has been
contracting, drying the waters around me. For so many years we've
been fighting each other, secreting poisons that will make us the
strongest. For so many years you've been smothering me inside you.
For so many years you've rejected me like a cancer. For so many years
I've survived by nestling in your depths.
Mother death, let's end this frantic struggle. I give up. Take me com-
pletely. Finish what you started so long ago. It's summer. The river has
been getting lower, forever. I hear nothing anymore but its single-
stringed discourse. The birds' song when they perch on the terrace. The
lizard-eating insects along the stones. Dragonflies gone astray between
double windows. Red pebbles on the bottom of the river. She's on the
balcony. She unwinds her skein of wool. From it she makes balls that
she puts in her wicker basket.
*
They claim I make mistakes and I must distinguish between the future
tense and the conditional. They put blood all over my exercise papers.
They belch that I don't leave a margin. Every day they give me a zero
for grammar. Dictation. Dictation. Dictation. Writing. Dissertation.
Composition. Logical analysis. In what language does the same tense
say the future and the past? In what language is there a sacred tense, a
profane tense? In what language a lasting form and one that doesn't
last? They say I'm mad, but I speak the same language they do. Who are
those men who put red on my exercise papers? Who are those men who
correct? Who are those men who claw my flesh while underlining my
verbs? Who are those men who scratch us out? Do they know how to
conjugate the imaginary as hands of trees seize my ankles? Who are
those men who annotate us? Do they know how to conjugate the fusion-
al tense as I dissolve myself into the world?
Mother death, in what language do words also mean their opposites?
In what language is there an absence of conjunction? In what language
can one read sentences only if one knows their meaning? No. They say
I'm mad and they think I don't hear them. They use language to lie and
spelling to make us comply. They've killed words and they say I'm sick
because I remember them. They've chosen forms that set us off course
and they say we don't know how to speak. They put bells around our
necks and say look at the mad passing by. They want me to use 35 auxi-
liary verbs. To be and to have, they say. But auxiliaries of what? They
don't know anymore.
Power and identity. To be and to have. Verbs conjugated with to be
and those with to have. Tenses with to be. Tenses with to have. Why
not both forms? Why not choose? Conjugations of power.
Conjugations of identity. Run and get the grammar book. What for? It
seems impassive. It knits the skein of my pain. It crochets irregularities.
Jeanne Hyvrard 121
It slyly eliminates invariable words. Raw, re-dyed, grayed, homespun.

The colors of my pain. She seems impassive. She pretends not to
understand what I say. She looks in her wicker basket. She proposes
balls of compound tenses to me. I'll have to make index cards. But the
nurse doesn't want to help me. She says I mustn't work. She says I
have to rest if I want to get well. I'll die from this. I've told her I'm not
sick. She says we all say that. It's not true because there are some who
give thanks for having been cured. The river keeps getting lower. It's
evening. Evening, when the river's taken by the throat and strangled for
still more love. The woman in mauve now moves across vineyards and
low walls. Maybe almond trees too or walnut trees. The same square of
window that will never swivel. All time and all space come together
there. I hear her. I know her. I recognize her. She says we all say that.
But it's not true.
That woman recounts how she was mad. That woman recounts how
she got well. That woman recounts how she wrote a book. That woman
recounts how she became normal again. She says now she's not afraid
anymore. She says the looks she encounters don't upset her anymore.
She says she analyzes now. She says she's cured. She says her husband
was right to leave her. That she was impossible. That they've remained
the best friends in the world. That there's a hyphen of children between
them. She's pleased to have three of them. She says life is wonderful.
She recounts how she was mad. She recounts how she isn't anymore.
She thanks the doctor who cured her. She says treatment has to be
expensive to be effective. She says she has no more anguish. They
throw the ball to her. She throws it back into the basket they hold out for
her. I'm ashamed. She talks about her profession as a writer. About her
oh-so-talented friend. I'm ashamed. Maybe I'll have finished writing
before the river dries up completely. But this shame. This shame falling
on all of us. She relates how she was mad. She thanks the doctors who
returned her to normalcy. She says life is wonderful. She says the looks
she encounters don't upset her anymore. They've had her. They've
turned her into a non-living person.
Mother death, do you hear her? She talks about her profession as a
writer. And we shut ourselves up in your belly. My sleeping beauties
walled up in deathplaces. My Cinderellas, lights of the hearth. My Snow
Whites keeping house. How much time left to reach them? To tug them
by their tom sleeves and say to them: come on, come on, maddened-
women who think you're cured when they've killed you. Come on,
maddenedwomen who think you're sick when you've been broken.
Come on, maddenedwomen. We can't get well because we're not sick.
They lock us up because we refuse to give in. They flush out our guts
because we want to live. They tie us up because we hold our hands out
to them. Let's listen. Do we hear her saying: I was mad and I've been
cured? Do we hear her betraying us? Do we hear her suggesting we
capitulate? Let's stand fast, maddenedwomen. We're looking for the
other language that will give us back speech. Let's stand fast. Let's let
our deserters rejoin the non-living ones they burn incense to. Do we
hear her saying: my profession as a writer? My life as mother of a
family? My books? They cue her. They ask: how was it? How was hell?
And she recounts. She recounts. They ask for advice to keep from going
mad. And she gives it. Profession as a writer, they say. My profession as
a writer, she says. Life as mother of a family. My life as mother of a
family. How do you reconcile them? As if there were anything to
reconcile.
*
I'm not cured. I escape them all the same. I don't even need to spill my
pots of words on them anymore. When I lie in ambush on roofs, I don't
even need to throw stones at them anymore. I don't even need to set
traps anymore for those who climb the ladder. I have morning's
exactingness, day's austerity, evening's gratitude. I am morning's
exactingness, day's austerity, evening's gratitude. I have the ocher stone
of the house and I am the earth-dust it's becoming. I'm the auxiliary 'to
be' and 'to have' reconciled into the great whole. The suppression of the
verb. The death of the subject. The absence of complement. Morning's
exactingness. Day's austerity. Evening's gratitude. An ocher stone.
Earth-dust. But there they are, claiming to cure me. They say they'll let
me leave when I've combed my hair. Made up my face. Painted my
lips. But I love only trees, moss, and raspberries. They come looking for
me every day to take me in for questioning. They go through their index
cards, their files, their theories. The school of. Given that. Considering
the fact that. They say I'm not a real woman. But what about my body
stretched toward you? Maternal instinct. But what about the smothering
of the fetus in the womb? Symbol of life. But what about the cliff
swallowing up the house? Women, witnesses of love. But what about
the child digested by my body? They say I'm not a real woman. But
what about this strength rumbling inside me? They say women are made
for maternity. But what about the creation of the world in my head?
Jeanne Hyvrard 123
They say I must smile. But what about my body's volcanoes? They say
I must speak softly. But what about the lava between my lips? They say
I must be nice. But what about the tidal wave in my flesh? They say I
have everything it takes to be happy. But what about my body tied up?
They say I'm young. But they're burying me alive. They say I'm pretty.
But they force me to sell myself. They say I shouldn't kill myself since I
have everything it takes.
But what have they left us? Excellence in housework. Self-denial in
children's care. Sacrifice in women's work. They claim to cure us from
the death they've put inside us. They've killed all our life impulses one
by one. They told us to get married, be happy, have children. But look.
We don't want to sell ourselves to one man to escape from others any-
more. We don't want this happiness they plan for us anymore. We don't
want to be big-bellied jars bearing heirs to our secluded existence
anymore. We don't want this slow death as our revolts slip away any-
more. We want to live with men. We want to laugh with them and run
together on riverbanks.
They've confined the mountain and the sea. We're volcanoes they've
put in cages. We're the ones they wanted to appropriate. We're the sea
without a shore. The sea they think they possess when they're boats
without compasses and oars. What do they say? What do they want?
For us to have orgasms like them? What do they want? For us to be
satisfied with being able to say: she belongs to me? They want our
desire to come to an end so they can be more secure in knowing no one
else will come along after them.
So they make things up. They speak in our place. They teach us the
discourses we recite to please them. They think they're able to
converse with us. They talk to their shadows. Because the sea's
voracious mouth is never satisfied. The more they make love to us. The
more they fill us. The more they empty us. The more they make love to
us. The more desire we have. The more we become the world. The
freer we are.
But they cover their ears so they can appropriate us. They have their
own words for naming, driving mad, walling-in. They have their words
ready so that no woman dares open her legs wide enough for mountains
and flowers, ravines and volcanoes, ferns and houses, music and colors
to enter her. Everything's prepared so that no women dares affront the
traps they've set for escapees by saying: we love men. We love love.
We love love so much that we want it to be uninhibited and endless. The
more we have. The more we want. They've set their traps so that not
one woman dares say: they're inside my joy like ships on the sea.
Because, then, who do women belong to if no one can satisfy them?
So they made death out of us. They invented marriage counselors.
Sex clinics. Sex educators. Psychoanalysts. Psychotherapists. Priests in
ready-to-wear and haute couture. Leaders in group dynamics.
Inseminators of creativity. Initiators of free expression. Closed clubs.
Open places. All these charlatans of our shared misery. These predators
of our confinement. These fungi of our despair. And those women.
Instead of screaming 'liars.' They screamed 'thank you.' Instead of
screaming 'enough.' They screamed 'I'm cured.'
Those men turned us into dead women. And they're alone. They said
we were like them. And we believed them. They're the clients of pros-
titutes, the ones who leaf through porn images, the voyeurs of orgasms
on film. They wanted to appropriate us. They have no one to talk to
anymore but dead wood. They have nothing left in their arms. They're
alone.
But they say they're going to cure me. That I have to become a real
woman. Coquettish, lying, intuitive. Scantily dressed. Showing off my
legs to sell myself. Giving the eye to seduce. A real woman, soft and
maternal. In my report they wrote: making progress. All that's left is
for them to put the 'ready for consumption' meat seal on my thigh.
They say they'll let me leave when I dress like a woman. But I like
only my rags. I recognize my smell in them. They say I smell like blood.
They'll let me leave when I don't smell like anything anymore. But I
like the smell of the red flow along my thigh. I like the blood from my
belly. I hear the deep throbbing of our buried memory there. I like the
smell of my blood like the smell of hay in the village bam. I like its long
advance in the abysses of my flesh. I like this gushing resurgence in
summer's return. Bursting. Joyous. Frenetic. They say I have to comb
my hair but they've shaved me. They say I have to smile but they've
turned me into the gargoyle on the portals of cathedrals where I have no
place.
They say they want to cure me. They uproot trees and are surprised at
the desiccated branches. They poison the earth and cry hunger. They
shut our mouths and complain about what, exactly? They're completely
alone. They scream. It's their voice the mountain sends back. They lean
over, and it's their face the water reflects. They kiss us, and it's them-
selves they touch. We've become whatever they've decided for us. We
recite what they've taught us. We paint flowers. We write love stories.
We sing lullabies. We make ourselves fragile so we'll be protected. We
Jeanne Hyvrard 125
sacrifice ourselves so we'll be tolerated. We renounce so we'll be

accepted. We're dying from it.
They have nothing left in their arms but dead women. They've turned
swamps into artificial lakes, mountains into enclosures. Streams into
pipelines. We don't even go to the washhouses anymore. Algae of our
despair grow there. We're dying alone behind our machines. We're
dying of sadness in our walled-up bodies, our tom-away words, our
exfoliated lives. We don't run in brooks anymore. We don't jump over
mountain streams anymore. We don't climb trees anymore.
Mother death, look what they've done to us. We hate our bodies
when they don't fit into the clothes they've made for us. We put makeup
on our faces to please them. But our skin grows dry under the masks.
We move according to the strings they hold in their hands. We walk
through their inspections. They teach us to hate our sisters so they can
rule over us more effectively. They teach us to yoke our daughters for
fear they'll escape. They teach us. But what, exactly?
I don't know anymore. I forget more and more. Little by little I
unlearn everything they've taught me. All I know is that they say I have
a sickness and they want to cure me. They've set their traps so no
woman will say: they're inside my joy like boats on the sea. They've
drawn up names so we don't dare say: we want to know our fathers, our
brothers, our husbands, our friends. They've drawn up names. They say
exogamy. Exogamy. What are they afraid of? Our limbs open wide
enough to contain whole tribes. Nothing can fill us. Not our fathers, nor
our brothers, nor our husbands, nor our friends. They say I have a
sickness. What is it, again? They say they want to cure me. We're going
to cure you, say the boats at sea. We're going to make a woman out of
you, they say to the unfettered waves. We'll bring you back to your
senses, they say to the water that's about to sink them.
They want to cure me. Of what? Of the death they've put inside us?
Of the enclosures where they keep us? Of the madness they throw us
into when we revolt? They say they want to cure me. Of what? Of
words they've placed on my belly? Of words they've said in my place?
Of sentences they've uttered to make me shut up? They say they want to
cure me. Of what, finally? They want me to be in their image. So they
can be certain of being on good terms. They want to satisfy my belly so
they can be certain of appropriating it. They want me to have an identity
so they can be certain of controlling it.
*
La Meurtritude ('Murderation')*
They say that it's an illness. It's only inexistence. The brain asleep. The
brain dying. The brain coming back to life. The sea goes out. The sea-
weed stays on the beach. The seaweed doesn't die. The seaweed holds on
to life. The seaweed doesn't die because it holds on to death. It's night's
forests. Water's dreams. The memory of before the separation. They say
that I have an illness. But it's only intermittence. The refusal of separa-
tion. Fusion. Confusion. The acceptance of death. But they mix up oppo-
site and negation. Ever since the second day of the creation of the world.
Ever since they separated water from water. They mix up death and non-
life. They call me by a name but I can't be named. I'm from before the
first day. Before the first name. Before the first naming. I'm what can't
be separated. The wind and the stars. Storms and lightening. The earth
trembling and the blood of volcanoes.
They say that I have an illness. The refusal of separation. The alterna-
tion of death and suffering. An endless death. A rebirth followed by
another death another time. An alternation which has no end. So many
times. So many days. So many days so many times. So many times every
day. That this descent marks out the hours. Two by two. Until distress.
Until death. Until rebirth. A death which has no end. A mortal agony. A
wheel with an immobile centre. A wheel endlessly returning to its point
of equilibrium. A never-endingly immobile wheel. A washplace between
two streams of running water. The sleep of the mind. Dead to all that sur-
rounds. Death traversed so many times that she has become my own
body.
Death and suffering. How is it that the crows soar upwards above all
this? How is it that the poppies still grow between the two? How is it
that suffering and death still manage to give birth to the light? How is it
that there is enough night for the dawns to keep coming back? Every
day. Every time. So many times every day. The alternation of suffering
and murder. Of death and acceptance. Of murder and death. Of day and
night. Of separation and fusion. Of creation of the world and chaos.
How is it that I don't die? Because they mix up opposite and negation.
They mix up death and non-life. They mix up the sky and the water.
And yet, they're the ones who separated them. How is it that I don't
die? Because I run through the vines. I'm the body of the cherry tree.
The trunk of the walnut tree. The hand of the fig tree. How is it that I
*Copyright, Editions de Minuit 1977, for La Meurtritude by Jeanne Hyvrard.

Jeanne Hyvrard 127
don't die? Because I'm already dead.

The words are back again. My suitors. My companions. The words
wearing out the night. The stones of the wine-press. The blood of the
hour-glass. The words are back again. Companions in everything. Except
hope. The words that I can no longer silence. The words that bear the
mark of their own necessity. The words that cross the bridge of my
hands. That I had been keeping in memory for so many centuries. That I
had been keeping back for so many centuries.
They say that I must give birth again. They don't hear what the crows
in the fields say. They don't hear the crows in the holes in the rocks.
They don't hear the crows dropping nuts. They talk about feminine
writing. To shut us out. To keep the words for themselves. To keep
speaking for themselves. To separate us again. As though the lover and I
didn't have the same words in which to express our love. As though he
and I and the trees and the stones. The earth and the sea. The reptiles
and the birds. As though he and I, the conversation of the day and the
night. But no, they talk about feminine writing. To be quite sure of
establishing the difference. To be quite sure of separating us again. To
be quite sure of re-establishing their order. To dominate through their
order. Through the power that they have to separate. Through the power
to name that they claim for themselves. They talk about writing and
feminine writing. Logic and feminine logic. Intuition and feminine
intuition. They talk about feminine writing. As though we didn't speak
the same language, he and I. As though we were not walking together
along the same path. As though we were not picking the same grasses.
As though we were not collecting the same stones. As though the world
were not our common abode. As though our voices were not joined in
song. But no. They have to shut out in order to exist. They have to
imprison to be able to believe in their own freedom. They have to name
to believe in their own erudition. They have to separate to believe them-
selves to be alive. They name in order to appropriate. They name to
separate. They name to dominate. But they won't be able to. For I am
going off down the path. I am in their hands. I am the wildest card in
their game. The one with a place but no name. I am the card in their
hands that they can't name. The one that upsets the game. The one that
doesn't play. The one who misses her tum. The one who says only:
Pass. I recognised the Emperor in the clearing. He has a blue suit and a
red coat. He's sitting on a golden cube. He has a helmet. A sceptre or a
globe, I'm not sure. He has a white beard. He invites me to the chateau
with the courtiers. He owns the wood. But the path is where I walk. He
owns the countryside. But I run in the ravine.
They can't get me now. The bridges they built have collapsed. The
fences they erected have fallen over. The horses they captured have
escaped. They think I'll forget that I'm their serving-woman's daughter
because one day they interrupted their meal and turned towards me.
Because one day, they said to me: come here, child. Don't be
frightened. What's your name? I am the land of those who have no land.
The hand of those who have no hands. The voice of those who have no
voice. They won't be able to buy me. They own the world. But they're
not rich enough. I'm too expensive for them. My grandmother's three
fingers lopped off in machines. My grandfather's departures for work on
an empty stomach. They won't be able to pay. I cost three pebbles and a
blade of grass to make up the balance. A pine cone found on the path. A
button that comes off one day of desire in the pinky clover. They won't
be able to redeem me. I am their memory. They invite me to the
chateau. They want to teach me to dance the pavan. They offer me a
mask for their fancy-dress ball. But there are millions of us. We have
woven so many costumes for them that they have none left to offer us.
Only the golden buttons of the meadow's coat are left for us. They want
to teach me to dance the pavan, but there are millions of us. The doors
of their chateaux aren't wide enough. They want me to tell them a story,
but our own story is all we need. They want characters. But we are the
living and the dead. They want a progression. But we are walking
through darkness. They want characters, people, events, as they say, a
subject, a verb, a complement. Because they have to give orders. To
dominate. To say what. They want action. So that they can measure. So
that they can contain. So that they can separate. They absolutely must
have action. But I am a state. Writing is not a game or a commodity.
Writing is writing what has to be written. Writing is memory. A mem-
oir. A memory. Writing is memory. So that knowledge accumulates.
They invite me to the chateau. They ask who I am. I am the public
scriberess. The invariable word which finally agrees. I am to writing
what prostitutes are to love. The expression of a collective disaster. The
evidence of a communal misery. The dregs of society. I am the dregs of
literature. The sediment that can't be drunk. The residue after decanta-
tion. What they don't want to swallow. The mother of the buried
deposit. The bitterness of our communal memory.
They invite me to the chateau. But I shan't go. The path is where I go.
I met the Pope. He has a blue suit and a red coat. He has gloves. A triple
crown. The first for matter. The second for separation. The third for
fusion. I met the Pope. He told me: you have to have a name to be
Jeanne Hyvrard 129
called. He told me that to be called, you must name yourself. But I have
no name any more. I had one when I was alive. They took it away from
me. They said I didn't need it any more. They said that the man's name
was enough. The Pope asks me my name. I haven't got one any more. I
had one. Then two. Then none at all. Nothing left but a wound. The
unnameable. The Pope says you must name yourself to be called. I don't
have a name or a first name any more. Or rather, I have a thousand
names. My name is death. Memory. Destruction. Acceptance. My name
is fusion and confusion. Chaos and magma. They took my name from
me. I only have a gaping hole left instead of a heart. I only have a leaf
left instead of a hand. I only have a mark left on my forehead.
*
They say that they have remedies. Medecines. Drugs. They say I can be
cured. They imagine that they know, but they refuse to find out. They
only want to make us like them, confusing the opposite with negation.
They want to cure us. Of what? They invent our illnesses to get us for-
gotten about. They invent our symptoms to cool our ardour. They invent
remedies to keep us quiet. What is it that they want to cure us of, in the
end? Of our obstination? Our refusal? Our fidelity?
They want to know so that they can act. So that they can correct. So
that they can regulate. They want to know so that they can take power.
They say that they have drugs, medecines, remedies. But they've never
found out about the red acids. Liquid of mercury. Cinnabar. The blood-
red sign on the murderer's forehead. The sign which unites the murderer
and the murdered. They say that they have remedies. We don't want
them. We have the sign of eternity on our foreheads. The red acids of
death and of rebirth. The alchemists' gold. The philosophers' stone.
Memory.
They say that they have remedies. But they haven't discovered the
red acids. One day, they'll identify them. They'll name them. They'll
manufacture them. One day, they'll possess them. They'll know the uni-
verse that you inhabit. The cause of acceptance. The chemistry behind
the drama. They will work out the formula of red death. The substance
of madness's touchstone: the molecules of remembrance. They will
know the why behind love. There will be no more returns to the heart of
opposites. No more returns to the time before. No more death. No more
rebirth. They will be completely separated. Their power will be total.
They will be alone.
I know five brain deaths. The lead one. The tin one. The iron one. The
copper one. I know five brain deaths. The fifth is by far the worst. The
one you can be cured of. The mercury one. The red acids one:
acceptance. The Devil says that I can be cured. But how will I find what
I'm looking for? Without the red acids, how will I find the thirty
thousand year old little girl? How will I find the three year old woman?
How will I recognise you, sitting waiting for me in your wicker chair?
How will I reunite what they have separated?
How will I find the lost language? The lost words. The words which
have dissolved. The words transmuted in the great melting-pot. The
cradle of language. The opposite, not negation. They have given so
many names to this illness. Except its own. The memory of life.
Divide. Separate. Analyse. Oppose. Or. Or. Or. Never and. Life or
death. Love or hatred. You or me. Or. Or. Or. The real or the imaginary.
Action or state. The sacred or the profane. The body or the mind. The
wet or the dry. Or. Or. Or. Never and. Imprisoned reason can no longer
bear it. She rebels in the corridor of the condemned cells. Or. Or. Or.
Never and. Reason revolts. She doesn't want separation any more. She
doesn't want what she's been taught any more. She wants to leap over
the fences and run in the fields. She wants pebbles to help her cross over
rivers. She wants raspberries to help her find her way. Learned thought
rebels. Reason hammers on the wall. Thought is no longer functioning.
Reason is transmitting information. Thought is no longer operating.
Reason is communicating across the separations. The staff lose their
head. They call security. They give the alarm. Divide. Separate. Order.
Or. Or. Or. Or. The constant cry of the warders in the corridor of the
condemned cells. But they can no longer manage to keep order.
Imprisoned reason is communicating by banging on the walls. And.
And. And. And. And. Life and death. Love and hatred. You and me.
Power and identity. The real and the imaginary. Action and state. The
red acids are crossing the walls of reasoning. Fracturing the mirror of
reflection. Going out through the doors of the cells. Seeping out of all
the pores of the brain. The guards can't stop reunification now.
Obstructed opposites are reuniting through the walls. Obstructed
opposites are meeting in the red acids. Discomposed opposites are
reinscribing themselves in the order of things. The order of reunifica-
tion. The order of oppositeness. The order of death.
7
Annie Leclerc
Introduction
Annie Leclerc's Parole de femme, published in 1974, was one

of the first texts to emerge from the feminist consciousness
of the 1970s, and immediately became both a best-seller and
the subject of some controversy., Its title, usually translated
as 'Woman's Word', appeared to be a manifesto laying claim
to the specificity of women's language, although Leclerc
herself primarily intended the title to be read as a humorous
subversion of the expression 'parole d'homme', which has
the meaning of 'on my word/honour as a man. 2 As this sec-
ond sense of the title suggests, one of the main thrusts of
the text is a critique of a certain kind of virility which Leclerc
identifies as embodied in screen heroes of the Orson Wells
type or in the Malraux adventurer model in literature, and
which, she argues, does as great a disservice to men as it
does to women. Masculinity is presented in the text as an
inherently unstable state which feeds on reinforcements of
this type. 3
However, the driving force behind the text is not so much a
view of masculinity, or even an exploration of feminine
specificity, as the author's conviction that everything to do
with women and with their experience has historically been
devalued. Leclerc argues that the first step in any liberation
of women has to be for women to reject this negative view of
themselves and to revalue the feminine. The text begins on
this task by concentrating on two main areas of experience:
the domestic tasks which women have traditionally per-
formed, and the experience of the female body.
131
Leclerc's attempt to argue that tasks such as the prepara-

tion of food and the care of small children are not in them-
selves subaltern activities, but have come to be viewed in
this way because they are valued lowly by men and because
they have been imposed on women rather than being freely
chosen by them, led to charges by other feminists that she
wanted to put women back in their kitchens. 4 Leclerc denies-
and Parole de femme makes this explicit- that this was her
intention, though there may well be thought to be political
dangers in attempting to revalue women principally in their
domestic and child-rearing functions.
The descriptions of women's bodily experiences such as
menstruation, pregnancy and breastfeeding constitute the
most striking and certainly the most lyrical and innovative
parts of the text. By focusing on each in turn, the text follows
the cycle of the female body. The account of childbirth -
which I have translated here- is at the centre of the text, and
is described by Leclerc as its touchstone, dealing as it does
with one of the most radical and intense of female experi-
ences. In the 'fable' which appears later in the text and which
is essentially an attempt to imagine the original circum-
stances in which men began to oppress women, Leclerc
locates men's jealousy of women's childbearing status as
being at the origins of male desire to take revenge on
women. The experience of childbirth epitomises the way in
which Leclerc sees bodily experience as opening the door to
a particular kind of knowledge: 'In childbirth the woman
undergoes an experience of life, of death, which goes far
beyond the actual fact of giving birth, beyond the trans-
mission and fiux of generations. There is a knowledge there
which a woman might want to transmit to the whole of
humanity.' 5 But Leclerc also writes about the body because,
as she writes in an essay published the following year enti-
tled 'La Lettre d'amour' ('The love letter'), she believes that
women are closer to their bodies than men are, and that, his-
torically speaking, women have been to such a degree kept
from the public sphere and locked in their physical existence
that it is from their bodies that women can begin to speak.
Indeed, if they speak from elsewhere, they risk adopting
an alienating and masculinised stance. This argument is
Annie Leclerc 133
developed through a reading of the Vermeer painting 'Lady

Writing a Letter with Her Maid' which shows a maid standing
by as her mistress writes a letter. Leclerc takes the serving
woman ('Ia femme servante') as a symbol of the silenced
woman within male culture and contrasts the way in which
she simply looks on, apparently caught up completely in her
own corporeality, with the activity of the Lady at the centre of
the painting, who holds a pen at some distance from her
body to write a letter. When women begin to write, Leclerc
argues, it must not be in the masculinised style of the Lady,
distanced from the body; women must find the serving
woman within them and put into words the unspoken lan-
guage of the body. 6
Hommes et femmes ('Men and Women'), written ten years
after Parole de femme, is in many ways a development of the
earlier book, focusing on the relationship between men and
women which Leclerc felt she had not included in the earlier
texe Sexual difference is still strongly expressed; in fact the
text defines sexism as 'the tendency to integrate one sex into
the other, threatening both with dissolution. The desire to
mutate women into men, to reduce women to men, or,
worse still, to sub-men, is sexist' (Hommes et femmes p. 48).
However, as Leclerc continues to reflect on the question of
sexual difference, she is more and more inclined to see dif-
ference as originating in culture, in mythology and in lan-
guage rather than in the body itself. In interview in 1988 she
said: 'I think it is through the sexual differentiation which is
given in language that we are led to experience the body in a
particular way.' 8 She speaks of a progression in her thought
between Parole de femme and Hommes et femmes rather
than a self-critique of her earlier thinking, as some reviews of
her work at the time claimed. 9 Sexual difference becomes a
dialectic rather than a self-defining absolute: 'Sexual differ-
ence only has meaning in relation to the other, it is not an
identity but the relation with the other. It is meaningless to
say what a woman is by itself. Woman is the other of man,
and man is the other of woman, and neither have any mean-
ing except in a language which is common to them and
which both includes and gives meaning to their difference'. 10
This language is that of love. Hommes et femmes depends,
as does much of Leclerc's writing, on an absolute valuing of

love (taken both in its most general sense and in the particu-
lar sense of sexual love between a man and a woman). The
extract included here discusses how Leclerc saw Parole de
femme ten years on.
Origines ('Origins'), published in 1988, is at first sight a
very different kind of text, recounting Annie Leclerc's lifetime
passion for the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. But it is
also the account of her own relationship with writing, and the
book's episodic structure and strongly autobiographical tone
recall her earlier texts. The style is perhaps more controlled,
more sober, but there is a highly poetic and lyrical impulse in
Leclerc's writing which is never far from the surface.
Addressed directly to Rousseau, the text is a kind of love
letter of the sort that Leclerc had said in her earlier essay that
writing should be, and the use of the familiar 'tu' form lends it
an intimate tone. Both the form and the subject of the book
thus constantly position Leclerc the writer as first and fore-
most a reader: 'the act of writing is for me nothing other than
the desire for a transfer of grace. Giving birth after having
been given birth to' (Origines, p. 43). Leclerc's choice of a
maternal image here to describe how she, as a woman writer,
is inspired - created even - by her reading of a male author,
draws attention to the way in which women's writing can only
be separated in an artificial sense from men's writing. 11
'There are two levels on which Rousseau has moulded me:
firstly, on the level of thought, and secondly from the point of
view of style'. 12 Leclerc taught philosophy after graduating
from the Sorbonne, and the infiuence of Rousseau's thought
on her conviction that it is the most simple and most com-
mon of human experiences that give access to ideas is evi-
dent as far back as Parole de femme. In Origines, the auto-
biographical episodes which she recounts are layered in with
episodes from Rousseau's autobiographical writing, as can
be seen in the first episode translated here, 'Shame and
Glory', where she draws on two episodes from Rousseau's
Confessions. Her own desire to write and her pleasure in
reading are stimulated by a series of encounters with
Rousseau's texts which she eventually traces back to an early
dictation test taken when she was 10. A slightly later
Annie Leclerc 135
encounter- which for a long time she assumes to be the first

- is given here in the second extract, a key episode in her
account of her desire to write. The episode emerges directly
from a reading experience - of an extract from Rousseau's
novel La Nouvelle Heloise- and, in its liquid imagery, in its
insistence on the maternal body as a place of joy and securi-
ty, ultimately connected to the profound pleasures of read-
ing, writing and sexuality, is highly characteristic of the text's
themes and style.
All of Leclerc's writing is closely bound up with her own
experience - and she makes no apology for this. For Leclerc
writing is
tied to the writer's voice, to the experience which has

formed the self. For me, the greatest role towards which
literature can strive in the twentieth century is to try to
formulate as precisely, as accurately as possible what is
elaborated through a life, through an experience. Kafka,
Joyce, Proust are for me the greatest writers of the twen-
tieth century and this is what they have done. 13
Annie Leclerc lives in Paris, with her daughter, and, in

addition to writing, works as a reader for her own publishers,
Grasset. Her latest published work, Cles (1989), is a short text
which sets out to explore the magical power of words
through a reading of the Bluebeard story and an exploration
of the word cle (key).
Notes
1. See, for example, Claude Alzon, 'Le feminisme d'Annie Leclerc:

"Parole de femme" ou "Propos d'homme"?', in Femme
mythifiee, femme mystifiee (Paris: PUF, 1978), pp. 93-101 and
Christine Delphy, 'Protofeminisme et anti-feminisme', Les
Temps Modernes, vol. 30 (1976), pp. 1469-1500. Reviews
published include: Le Nouvel Observateur, 21 May 1974, pp.
64-50; Le Figaro Litteraire, 11 May 1974, p. 4; L'Express, 10 June
1974, pp. 56-7.
2. Interview with Elizabeth Fallaize, 9 May 1988.
3. See Parole de femme pp. 108-29 in particular. Leclerc's
inversion of the Freudian scenario in which femininity is
considered to be more difficult to acquire and identify with than

masculinity has much in common with the analyses of Nancy
Chodorow in The Reproduction of Mothering (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1978).
4. Thus Christine Delphy in her 'Protofeminism and anti-feminism',
mentioned above, argues the materialist position that the
devaluation of women's work is not a cause but an effect of the
exploitation of women's work. She also finds Leclerc guilty of
idealism in her assumption of an absolute system of values
existing outside the social order. Toril Moi accompanies her
choice of extracts from Parole de femme in French Feminist
Thought by the full translated text of Delphy's article (more than
twice as long as the extract from Leclerc herself). The balance of
Leclerc's text does not clearly emerge. See Toril Moi French
Feminist Thought, pp. 73-109.
5. Interview of 9 May 1988.
6. a
'La lettre d'amour' in La Venue l'ecriture (Paris: Union generale
d'editions, 1977), pp. 117-52. Jane Gallop reads this essay as a
lesbian love-letter, addressed to 'a woman with whom she
[Leclerc] has just spent a night of love-making' and speaks of
Leclerc's 'desire for the maid' - see Jane Gallop Thinking
Through the Body (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988),
pp. 165-78 (166 and 169). I think this is to misunderstand the
way in which Leclerc uses the term 'love' throughout her work in
a way which is often not coterminous with sexual desire. I
understand the letter as being addressed to Leclerc's mother, a
figure who then merges both with the serving-woman and with
a more generalised notion of woman.
7. Leclerc views Hommes et femmes as the third book of a trilogy,
of which Parole de femme forms the first book and Epousailles,
a text published in 1976 stressing the power of pleasure and
love to transform the world, forms the second. Interview of 9
May 1988.
8. 9 May 1988.
9. Franl(oise Xenakis, for example, refers to the book as Annie
Leclerc's 'mea culpa' (Le Matin des Livres, 26 February 1985, p.
23); Le Ouotidien de Paris (14 May 1985) describes it as a 'road
to Damascus', whilst Anne-Marie de Vilaine entitles her review
'Self-Critique of Feminism' (Magazine litteraire, March 1985, p.
131 ).
11. See introductory chapter for a discussion of this issue. Origines
can be read as a charter of intertextuality. Leclerc writes: 'I will
never be able to invent anything. Just copy out...the traces left in
me by everything that has been said and written elsewhere and
before me' (Origines, p. 43).
Annie Leclerc 137
Annie Leclerc Bibliography
Books and articles by Leclerc
Le Pont du Nord (Paris: Gallimard, 1967).

Parole de femme (Paris; Grasset, 1974). Translated extracts from
Parole de femme appear in French Connections: Voices from the
Women's Movement in France, ed. by Claire Duchen (london:
Hutchinson, 1987), pp. 58-63; and in French Feminist Thought, ed.
by Toril Moi (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987), pp. 73-9.
Epousailles (Paris: Grasset, 1976).
Au feu du jour (Paris: Grasset, 1979).
Hommes et femmes (Paris: Grasset, 1985).
Le Mal de mere (Paris: Grasset, 1986).
Origines (Paris: Grasset, 1988).
Cle (Paris: Grasset, 1989).
'Etoile-Nation', Les Temps Modernes, val. 23 (1967), pp. 44-64.
'Je vais te manger', Sorcieres, val. 1 (1976), pp. 28-30.
'Communication', Liberte, vols. 106/7 (1976), pp. 15-19.
'Man ecriture d'amour', Les Nouvelles Litteraires, 26 May 1976,
p. 19.
'La lettre d'amour', in La Venue a l'ecriture, by Madeleine Gagnon,
HeiEme Cixous and Annie Leclerc (Paris: Union generale
d'editions, 1977), pp. 117-52.
'Postface', in Autrement dit, by Marie Cardinal (Paris: Grasset, 1977),
pp. 211-22.
'Si, pour changer, on laissait faire les femmes', Le Sauvage, January
1977, pp. 10-18.
Articles on Leclerc's work and selected reviews
Alzon, Claude, 'Le feminisme d'Annie Leclerc: "Parole de femme"

ou "Propos d'homme"?, in Femme mythifiee, femme mystifiee
(Paris: PUF, 1978), pp. 93-101.
Anderson, Margaret 'La jouissance - principe d'ecriture', L'Esprit
Createur, val. 19 (summer 1979), pp. 3-12.
Brochier, Jean-Jacques 'Aimer Rousseau', Le Magazine litteraire,
March 1988, p. 8.
Cesbron, Georges, 'Ecritures au feminin. Propositions de lecture
pour quatre livres de femme', Degre Second, val. 4 (1980), pp.
95-119.
Delphy, Christine, 'Protofeminisme et anti-feminisme', Les Temps
Modernes, val. 30 (1976), pp. 1469-1500. Trans. by Diana Leonard
in Close to Home: A Materialist Analysis of Women's Oppression
(london: Hutchinson, 1984), pp. 182-210.
Gallop, Jane, 'Annie Leclerc: Writing a letter with Vermeer',
October, no. 33 (1985), pp. 103-18. Reprinted and re-titled as part

of 'Carnal Knowledge' in Jane Gallop Thinking Through the Body
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), pp. 165-78.
Gelfand, Elissa and Virginia Thorndike Hules (eds), French Feminist
Criticism: Women, Language and Literature. An Annotated
Bibliography (New York: Garland Publishing, 1985), pp. 23Q-6.
Granjon, Marie-Christine, 'Les femmes, le langage et "l'ecriture"',
Raison Presente, no. 39 (1976), pp. 25-32.
Savigneau, Josyane 'Annie Leclerc et Ia passion de Jean-Jacques',
Le Monde des livres, 4 March 1988, p. 4.
Vilaine, Anne-Marie de, 'Le corps de Ia theorie', Magazine litteraire,
January 1982, pp. 25-8.
Annie Leclerc 139
Parole de femme ('A Woman's Word')*
It was a summer's evening. The window was open. I was lying in bed
reading, my book propped open on the uphill slope of my belly.
The day had been oppressive. I had dragged my belly through it, and
had said, several times, I remember, that I was fed up with it now, that
enough was enough (as though we choose, perhaps with the consent of
the child, the moment of our separation).
Suddenly the baby gave me a violent shove and I felt an irresistible
need to pee. I said to N., lying beside me, that this baby was really
beginning to get on my nerves. And I went off to sit myself heavily
down on the toilet seat, my mind on other things. The flow started. I
suppose I was gazing dreamily, as I had got into the habit of doing over
a period of time, at the distant extremes of my thighs. My knees, like
shiny little rocks, looked as though they came straight out of my belly. It
was a long time since I had been able to see my thighs; as for the crotch,
that was a non-starter. It was hard to imagine that those parts of myself
would ever become familiar to me again, just there.
So I suppose I was sitting there vacuously, looking into the distance
while the flow continued. Eventually, it struck me that something funny
was going on; it was still flowing gently, continuously, and almost of its
own accord, independently of the muscles. What if ... I stood up, I
looked down. My heart started pounding; no question about it, it was.
That milky liquid seeping out of me was the waters, as they call it. I
dipped my fingers in it to see; it reminded me of sperm.
And then I went to tell N. that this was it, that the big moment had
arrived. I told him very gently, though, with a big smile to reassure him
... It did no good. The event could only strike him in a terrifying light.
Given what men know, or rather don't know, about childbirth, barely
where the baby comes out of, and how it comes out, I find their state of
terror and alarm perfectly logical, understandable and pretty much on a
par with the way they look at life.
So, no point in describing how he took it; he took it just like the
father always does in all the funny stories (which are not that funny),
in all the joke books, cartoon-strips and other little tricks that life likes
to play on us, endlessly recounted to general amusement at family
reunions. The cigarettes lit up and stubbed out one after the other, the
*Annie Leclerc, Parole de femme, copyright Grasset & Fasquelle, 1974.

blathering, the collapsing, the leaping into feverish activity, the pointless
and repeated telephone calls to the midwife, the tearing out of hair, the
biting of nails, the downing of brandies, the backwards way round of
doing things (when he drove me off later he brought the car to a halt
systematically at all the green lights and started up at every red one),
everything, in other words, that one might imagine a man doing in those
circumstances, a straightforward sort of man, a man, I mean, without
any particular skill at 'pulling through' this kind of ordeal ...
I tried to calm him down as best I could: it was nothing to worry
about, it would be just like shelling peas, etc. I advised him to phone his
friends so that he wouldn't be on his own. That was a good idea. The
friends turned up at the double. A bit the worse for wear, but with a
hangdog air and another bottle of brandy, if I recall correctly. The
midwife had said to wait till the pains started, then to phone her back
and she would meet us at the clinic. She was probably hoping to get a
bit more sleep.
The men went off to the next room; how many there were of them,
three, four, I'm not sure now. The only woman there, my friend, came
and lay down beside me on my bed. She asked me how I felt, I said fine,
that I could feel a sort of tugging inside, but it couldn't be it yet. Then I
remembered that, as things were happening a bit earlier than expected, I
hadn't yet learned how to do the sniff-sniff that you have to do in the
pushing stage. Do you think it matters? I said to my friend. Wait a
minute, she replied, have you got your book? Right, well let's look it up
now ... She brought the book over to the bed and lay down again. It was
the book that supplies every proud mother-to-be with her lines (shoots
her a line), the book that tells you everything, why it's a good thing to
have children, that it's good for the father and good for the mother, that
it's good for the couple and for their relationship, that it's a wonderful
thing to be self-sacrificing and to put up with hardships for the benefit of
those. you love, the book that reveals, as a discovery of our modem
times, that childbirth is a natural act, and so we must not, absolutely
not, be frightened of it, the book totally indispensable for preparing the
baby's arrival properly, that tells you everything about it, that keeps no
detail from you, how many lace bibs you need, how many twill, how
many cotton, how many cotton shawls, wool shawls, synthetic shawls
(sign of the times), how many round nappies, square nappies, angle-fold
nappies, triangular fold nappies, diagonal fold nappies. A carefully
considered book which tells you how the proud mother-to-be should
address the proud father-to-be, how the proud father-to-be should
address the proud mother-to-be.
Annie Leclerc 141
He has a whole chapter to himself, the father-to-be. All about how he

must be patient, attentive, considerate, besotted, or no, not besotted at
all, not too much anyway, how he must be gentle, sweet, a sweetie-pie,
but at the same time strong, dependable, protective. A particularly
difficult and densely written chapter. Obviously, a textbook preparing a
man for such an awesome test of his moral fibre could not be expected
to be an easy read. In all humility N. had told himself that he would
need to learn and revise this all-important part of the syllabus. He had
made an effort and got down to it, but he had been forced to give up; it
was too difficult, he just couldn't follow it ...
Well anyway, we opened the book. We looked down the list of con-
tents. We couldn't find it; of course there was nothing under sniff-sniff.
We had a fit of giggles. In the end we found it. She started reading it out
to me. We couldn't work it out properly, it was hard going. She kept
saying, come on now, you have a go, open your mouth ... She opened
her mouth. We started giggling. And N. shouted through the wall that
this was no laughing matter, that I would be well advised to calm down.
We gave up on the book, I said I'd see when the time came. My
friend told me about her sister's labour (the closest she had come to it
since she hadn't had any children herself) and how her sister had given
birth more or less in the taxi.
Then I started wriggling a bit; inside me something was knotting up,
tugging hard, then letting go again. I really didn't know what to think, I
could feel something, but did it hurt? I just didn't know. I said to my
friend, do you think it's the pains? Well, of course, she couldn't know
any more than I did, but, it occurred to her, she said with a giggle, that
we might as well treat it as though it was, because, after all, when you
thought about it, there was a good chance that's what it was. We rallied
the troops for the off. I felt in amazingly good spirits. I don't say that
my happiness and excitement didn't perhaps mask a certain amount of
anxiety, but I wasn't aware of it. What I remember about the time up to
our arrival at the clinic is that it was full of laughter.
In the car things got stronger. Three times it started rolling like a wave
in my hips, then it went up, up, started pulling, wrenching me apart,
threatening to suffocate me, and then it went down again, the wave rolled
back just as it had come. My friend kept saying, why don't you do your
sniff-sniff? I didn't like to. Because of the others, I didn't like to
concentrate on what I was doing, and I longed to be able to. All I did was
to say oh la la!, oh my god, and shake my right hand at the wrist and
giggle. I felt terribly, not ashamed, but embarrassed to be having such an
overwhelming and such an intimate experience in front of other people.
It was a sort of prudishness. It felt indecent to be going through it in front

of people because it's something so beyond the bounds of polite
behaviour, that it feels like an insult, a provocation of the most brazen
kind. That kind of outburst by the body, that kind of triumph of the
organism, the unmistakable display of the flesh in a frenzy, the volcanic
force of bones being pulled, forced apart, cannot be spoken about openly;
it goes against the grain, against everything that we have all agreed on,
the consignment of the body to discreet and silent oblivion.
So I longed to get to the clinic, to be left to get on with it by myself,
or with the help of someone quite used to dealing with this event.
When we got to the clinic, though, I was soon brought down to earth.
I thought, I suppose, that I would be welcomed, if not exactly with open
arms, at least with a smile. I thought I was the bearer of good tidings;
from the look on the nurses' face, it appeared that I was more of a
messenger of doom. Not only had I had the cheek to arrive earlier than
expected (and it appeared that other women had pulled the same trick,
and there weren't enough rooms to go round) but I had also turned up in
the middle of the night, which was hardly good manners.
From the reception laid on for me at a top-notch clinic, I could
imagine only too clearly what it must be like for women unlucky
enough to be turning up at a hospital, and perhaps not starting out in a
jovial mood to begin with.
However safe and hygienic hospitals and clinics may be, the
techniques of mass production reduce childbirth to the status of a tooth
extraction; everyone knows that a woman in labour is NOT EVEN ILL,
and that a great favour is being done her by allowing her into a place
reserved for others. The contempt and indifference accorded to an event
which, for the woman, represents one of the most testing and crucial
moments of her life, is quite simply a reflection of the contempt with
which women are regarded in general. Hardly surprising then that
women continue to have a negative experience of something that should
be, that could be, a joyful event. 'Just tell yourself you're having a
bowel movement, come on now, open your bowels, open your bowels',
the midwife kept shouting to me during the final stage, no doubt con-
vinced that she was helping and inspiring me in this way. I have nothing
against opening my bowels but, nevertheless, that wasn't what I was
actually engaged in doing. If she'd said to me, come on, you're pushing
out a child, that would have worked just as well ...
I was told to get undressed, and I got told off for the first time for not
wearing knickers when I should have been, or the other way round, I
can't remember. I lay down on the delivery table and then while I was
Annie Leclerc 143
spreading my legs apart as I had been asked, I heard myself being

upbraided for the second time from the other end of the room. Haven't
you got a dressing-gown with you? No, I replied, I'll get one brought in
if necessary. A sigh of exasperation: And is this all you've brought for
yourself and the baby? Well yes, I said. This time the sigh indicated a
person at the end of their tether. And yet, I had placed every item on the
list I had been given in the little tartan bag bought specially for the
occasion. It was only later, when I saw all the lace and frills of the other
babies, that I realised that I was a very negligent mother.
The midwife was wandering about the room, repeatedly telling me to
relax, relax, everything would go off fine, though she hadn't given me
even a glance, never mind shaken my hand. I hadn't been the least bit
nervous, but I began to feel that at this rate I might soon be. Eventually
she came over to the table. She proceeded to shave off my pubic hair
with a brutal and indifferent expertise. Then she examined me, said I
was doing a good job, and gave me a little slap of encouragement on the
thigh. I may well have been doing a good job, but at that moment I felt
that my labour was being disrupted, that everything was being ruined,
and that I was the lowest of the low. Fortunately my body soon took
over again, obliterating, casting out into shadowy ignominy the med-
dlers trying to interfere in the smooth operation that my body was run-
ning. For the midwife, it was perhaps the four hundred and ninety
second labour at which she had officiated. But for me, it was the first, it
was my own, it was birth, death, intoxication. Life. An extraordinary
adventure that I wanted to live to the full.
There were the strange lulls when my body was released, when it lay
motionless, contemplative in the silence like a lake at dusk. And I would
wait, religiously, eyes closed, for the rise of the next tide which would
sweep up my body. Unsuspected heights, dizzyness; a kind of sacred
terror growing in me, a sort of nakedness of celestial proportions.
I forgot about other people. Like lovers who, in the triumph of their
love, forget about decency, so I forgot about my legs strapped up wide
apart, forgot about my bald pubis, and my vagina, dilated and open to
the air. And again my body gathers itself together, draws itself in. It
seems to creep in through the thighs. I draw breath, I start panting, and
there it is beginning to go up, to open out, to spread itself, to push while
the confines of my body give way. A bronze door is creaking open on to
an immense darkness never seen before.
At first, in the shock of surprise, words rather than images come to
me, hammering in my throat with my hoarse breath, labyrinth,
inquisition, schismatic, and the whole time, the bizarre phrase ringing
with bitter triumph, like a knife-blade hurled at the sky, 'They won't
get me.' 'They' who? Get me for what? Thinking about it since I have
never understood it any better. They wouldn't get me, that was all, and I
knew it with the most burning, the most marvellous certainty. I had
escaped 'them'. I was escaping them.
As things grew more intense, and consciousness itself was dilating, so
I began losing all consciousness of myself, of my life. I began to lose bit
by bit all that had previously made me say 'me', limits, temporality,
separation. I acceeded to the stunning consciousness of brute existence,
of a unified and unique existence beyond the fragility of forms, belea-
guered then rejected, existence going beyond, crazily, careless of all
permanence, fundamental, drunk ...
I have lost the very words which were crashing in my head. I have
become immense, tentacular.
Vaster than the sea.
Emptier than the sky.
More deafening than thunder.
The earth has opened up. I am about to die, or be born. I have already
gone. The end of time. Chaos thunders and retracts. The mountain rears
up and pushes the night. It cannot be. It's too much.
Magnificent death. Violent desire, melting in the burning stuff of the
world. This cannot be. It's too much. Too much ...
Still open, spread out to the boundaries ...
This force, then, is me, the world, and the first birth of the world, and
the ecstatic dawn of the night, then, is me, this immensity, then, is me
... Once only the most absolute and the most rightful terror. And the
most religious terror. Reconciled to the Law, source and creator of the
Law which is destroying me, I tremble with fervour, with love.
Then came the moment when I knew that I wanted to burst forth from
myself. That was when the voice insinuated itself in my ear urging me
to 'push' as though I had a bowel movement. Push? Push what? You
push someone else, someone at a distance, separate, and on whom you
impress your strength. Push? I had one foot on the South Pole, another
on the North Pole, and the earth with which I was big was demanding its
unleashing with the most uncontrollable insistence ...
I recall that I held myself back from laughter then, a most extraordi-
nary, boundless laughter, which was taking hold of me. Nothing existed,
nothing of all that mankind took seriously had ever existed. All the multi-
ple and multicoloured facets of the universe, all the serious thoughts that
Annie Leclerc 145
men had, were nothing but the scattered fragments of a god's shattering
laughter. The world did not exist, not Descartes's mathematical proofs
nor his so incontrovertible God. I alone had fantasised it all.
But I had been too far, this could not be. I had gone beyond all limits.
It was impossible that what I had conceived could come into being. I
would stop there, at the extreme edge of the pregnant woman that I still
was, I would destroy myself there in this screaming desire for apoth-
eosis. Everything would disappear at the edge of this precipice. No one
and nothing would ever return ...
It was then that I was brought brutally back to myself, forced from
within by a precise and irrepressible force which became more than my
acquiescence, became my will, my very affirmation-cum-explosion. I
opened my eyes, I saw my body, my legs suspended in the air, I saw my
straining muscles, I saw my clenched fists that I recognised in a strange
way. I lifted up my head, and sweat poured down my forehead, down
the back of my neck. I realised that I had never stopped going forward,
never stopped reaching towards this shattering and supreme violence
that was being done me, that I was doing, that I desired.
I was caught up in a paroxysm of violence. Something hard, round,
enormous, the world itself broke out from my dilated cry. And then an
unforgettable, infinite delight. The exquisite caress of warm little arms,
creased up, of tiny damp fingers ... I felt this with such ecstacy that I
burst into tears. Then my body lurched in a dying shudder, and the
buttocks, the slender legs shot out in a glutinous liquid.
The child's cry ripped the silence like a piece of silk.
I closed my eyes, sinking down at last into the deep waters of happi-
ness, the thick secretions of my blood and my tears.
Hommes etjemmes ('Men and Women')*
Ten years ago I was writing Parole de femme. How distant that is
already! I sailed through it at full speed, I remember, sleek and
confident, still borne along on a wave of exhilaration inspired by giving
birth. More than anything, I was irrepressibly cheerful.
*Annie Leclerc, Hommes et femmes, copyright Grasset & Fasquelle, 1985.

By a stroke of good fortune I was able to penetrate with complete

confidence, to discover with unreserved delight, what appeared to me to
be the sumptuous treasure and inexhaustible fecundity of the feminine.
It seemed to me that I was drawing from the most intimate depths of my
body a knowledge so sweet and so supreme that the whole world was
yearning for it. And, as the glory of the feminine gradually revealed
itself to me, I gave voice to it.
I was less of a prophet than I thought. In the secret book of humanity,
whose text is nevertheless familiar to us all, there is a place for that
glory, a large place. Never mind. It was an inspiring task- especially as
I thought it was an original one - to devote my writing to it.
Quite deliberately, albeit with the joyous sense of irreverence which
occupied me then, I turned a blind eye to the sufferings, the unspoken
humiliations and struggles that are part of women's lives. I had to ride
roughshod over that messy silent misery. The word had to be pro-
claimed and spread, a word born of women's bodies, a word born of
pleasure and not of pain, a word innocent of all bitterness; a word which
would be power and light. The principle I followed was simple: it is
pleasure that must be heard. It is pleasure that opens up thought, that
permits the power of affirmation, the happiness of proof and, finally, the
generosity of knowledge. It can be put even more simply: Good is born
only of Good, and what is born of Good can only be good. This is the
fundamental, the instinctive premiss of all lyricism.
If the feminine were affirmed in light and certainty, then the mascu-
line would be, not destroyed, but dismantled, in those places where it
was hurting, where it was hurting itself, and hurting us.
And so, already situating myself in diametrical opposition to the
battle of the sexes, I imagined that my song of praise was justified by
the service it would undoubtedly do to the cause of women, and that it
was magnified by its ultimate and generous aim, the interests of the
human race.
Wasn't the violence that men turned against women the expression of
the constant and insidious violence that had been done to them as
children and adolescents, in the way they had been licked into shape,
spurred into rivalry and had the terrible threat of humiliation held over
them like a death sentence? Wasn't it the inevitable cycle of violence
that created this constantly uneasy and aggressive masculinity from
which women have had to bear so much?
Terrorised by the threat of shame, of ridicule, of loss of identity,
endlessly urged into battle, constantly pressured by new affronts, by
new goals to struggle for and conquer, as if it were a matter of life and
Annie Leclerc 147
death, were men not cut off from pleasure, and thereby from a certain
kind of intelligence, from fertile energy, from spontaneous kindness?
Women's oppression, the rape of women and the contempt in which
women are held were inseparable from the misfortune, never admitted
and which men themselves could not admit, of being a man.
Things had be taken beyond women's suffering then, into that part of
the feminine which the cruel misfortune of men had never been able to
reach, that happy and fertile part of the body where an intimate and
sovereign knowledge of the human lies dormant, whispered only from
mother to daughter. The truths hidden at the secret, and perhaps jealous,
heart of women, had to be brought forth for humanity. They had to be
spoken before it was too late. Before all of us, men and women, became
slaves to the mentality of warfare. Before we, the women, became men.
Before in the end no one was any longer anyone.
Parole de femme, though I had asked nothing of the sort of it, became
part of the vast women's movement, at that time still full of warmth and
openness, and took me with it.
I let myself go willingly. I took an immense pleasure, unlike any
other pleasure I had known before, in melting into that body of women
in movement, with no assignable limits and sufficient to itself.
The women, me, mothers, daughters, sisters, we were all one. We
were all woman. We were Everywoman.
Time and the years have passed. I am no longer in the throes of the
ultimately blinding joy of childbirth. I am no longer borne along, in
innocence and anonymity, by Everywoman. But what began so
rapturously has carried on nevertheless - more soberly, and probably
more rigorously.
I feel I have a better idea now of why I wanted the feminine to
become intoxicated with itself, to blossom with its own power to a point
where the whole world desired it.
Since women had been kept out of History, out of facticity, out of war,
power, death, had they not remained, as a consequence, close to life, to
permanence and to the Truth as it were, from which men had strayed?
I wanted there to be a being-as-a-woman which drew its strength and
its splendour from itself alone. A being-as-a-woman which, as soon as it
was joyously revealed, would tear down the wall of silence and con-
tempt which had surrounded it for so long. It would only have to affirm
itself to spread like a tide of love. It would bathe the elderly, men and
children in a rejuvenating stream, cool and miraculous ...
I wanted above all to draw my ideas, my desires, from no one but my-
self. A passionate, exhilarating but primitive withdrawal of the feminine
into itself.
Millions and millions of women have done what I did in thinking and
writing Parole de femme, and they are still doing it. Retreating into an
inner sanctum. But that sanctum is a stronghold, a fortified enclosure
where we can eat, sleep, suffer and dream, a space where children grow
up.
Tilling our patch, taking up our abode, establishing ourselves as
women and reigning in a dominion free from male power is what many
women in the family structure attempt to do, and sometimes succeed in
to a dangerous extent, especially mothers. When women do this they
build their being-as-a-woman, without reference to Eros, in so far as
Eros includes sexuality, the desire, the quest for and the attraction of
the other. And this is quite possible. I did it with perfect confidence, I
did it without a second thought, I did it with a natural and commanding
authority that went completely unchallenged at the time; no doubt
because it is the most familiar of positions that women adopt.
And so it was that I said nothing, or virtually nothing, in Parole de
femme about sexuality, about love, about the female body seeking the
other with her body. Nothing about our attachment to the other, or our
detachment, nothing about our relationships, our marriages, our divorces.
Although I had set out to put into words all the most blissfull
experiences of the female body, to express its consenting and affirmative
power, I had remained obstinately and insistently silent about my sexual
body, despite the fact that it had known ecstatic dawns (not many, not
many at all, not enough, but what of it?), it had known rebirth, it had
been through baptism, through irresistible immersion in the fount of love,
the promise of eternity ...
Why did I say nothing about it, when in fact I had never stopped
thinking about it? It was because I had entered into that extraordinary
phase of mothering when we can think exclusively of something other
than love (what a relief, and what a revenge as well!).
I had wanted to 'give body' to sexual difference. To convince myself
that the female body gave access to a different experience of life, of
death, of pleasure, that it led to a different way of thinking, not a way
that seeks mastery, but a way which dismantles it, a way which leads to
a more serious experience of pleasure, a deeper knowledge.
And so I had had to forget that we were all in this together, all bound
by a common language, a common history, a shared descendancy. I had
Annie Leclerc 149
neglected Eros because Eros is at the root of our communality and

creates our indissoluble bonds. I obstinately wanted us to be separate
and distinct. What I did not see then, and what I see so clearly now, is
that Eros is our common language. It is in this, in the promise of love,
that sexual difference has its basis and can be envisaged. It is Eros
which makes a woman of me as I had wanted to invent being a woman.
Hadn't it been out of total fidelity to the disposition for love which
Eros dictates to women that I had wanted to inscribe in letters of gold
the supreme desirability of being-as-a-woman?
I had sensed it, but I hadn't said it.
The thing which was the starting-point and the purpose of Parole de
femme is hardly mentioned in it. It's always the same story. The great
preoccupation.
The insatiable desire for love.
What is being a woman outside this insatiable desire?
Wasn't it the language of Eros that I used to imagine myself as a
woman? A woman all through desire, from its wondrous beginnings to
its unimaginable death? A woman: the first shores on which desire
awakens, then the opaque waters haunted by desire, then at last the
remote island, the Ithaca of ultimate sweetness where desire lingers until
death ...
What is difference without the language which gives it body, without
the fabric which supports it?
Eros is our common language, Eros teaches us what desire is about
and where desire goes, Eros demands that we be sexually differentiated,
men and women, in a particular disposition to love, Eros takes us on
board, together but distinct, to seek the paradise always promised to us,
always attainable (otherwise we would no longer be living) where we
shall be neither one nor the other, both one and the other.
It is Eros which founds the difference of the sexes.
Why do women dress themselves up? Why do men exert themselves?
Why do women make themselves so beautiful, so silent and so
faraway? Why do men want to be powerful, industrious and masterful?
They dream of a paradise which will be their garden of innocence.
And so this is the way I wanted to go back to what I had so strangely
forgotten in Parole de femme, and which, nevertheless, had never
ceased to be my inspiration.
I saw then that man and woman can only be understood through Eros,
through the desire for love, the disappointments of love, the revenges of
love. I asked myself what made men and women unhappy, unhappy
differently even if, in the end, the pain of a broken heart comes down in
its extreme form, in its essence, to the same thing for us all: you
abandoned me, even though you promised you wouldn't ...
I saw as well that there was no war. That neither side wanted to
destroy the other. That it was never a master-slave story. The blows, the
insults, the shackles could only be understood in the language of Eros. I
had to think through violence; and even violence could only be under-
stood via Eros. Beneath violence was always to be found the burning
rage of an earlier, primal, betrayal.
Eros binds us together even when it separates us in heartache, in
divorce or in death. And what is true of human beings is also true of the
sexes. There is no undoing this. We go with it, through embraces and
tirades, through hope and disappointment, through differences and
disputes, through replies and retorts.
It makes a love story and not just a plain story of the sort we read in
History books. This is no story of conquest, of victors and victims. It's
not the story of a male domination over enslaved and deprived females,
it's the story of a tortuous and interminably intimate relationship.
Of course, when a scene erupts they go as far as accusing each other
of the worst: you don't want me to be free, you want me to be your
slave, you don't want me alive, you want me dead ...
But who can take them seriously, who wants to take them seriously,
except those who revel in violence for their own revenge?
Behind the accusation or the insult it's always the same thing which
is being lamented and grieved over: love is missing. It's missing
terribly, do you hear me ...
It was Eros, I'm quite sure, who cried out through women's voices.
Origines ('Origins')*
'Shame and Glory'
I could not truthfully say, however, that I have no unhappy memories of

my early childhood; I do have one, just one (I'm not counting, of course,
falling off my bike, the time my porcelain doll broke, my fear of the
*Annie Leclerc, Origines, copyright Grasset & Fasquelle, 1988. (Translated by

Annie Leclerc 151
Germans, focused on their boots, my terror of the military aircraft -

probably American - which used to fly low over the house roof in tight
formation, and the cruel disappointment of discovering that my little
sister's name was not Marlene, as I had at first thought, but Madeleine).
No, this was an event I would rather have died than go through, a tiny
little event, apparently quite without consequence for the rest of my
existence, but which left in me a kind of void, an abyss of bitter
stupefaction, which nothing has ever been able to fill, as I know to my
cost. My nightmares, when I have them, head straight for that abyss. I'm
going to tell you what happened on that day which fell when I was in my
seventh year, class 10, with Madame Binet. The day of my shame.
But first, so that you don't take the little details of my life history too
much to heart, I want you to know that the scales were miraculously
tipped back into balance by a luminous counter-weight three years later
when I was in my tenth year, class 7 (you see how everything is
reversed?), with Madame Fabre. I think I would have to call that day the
day of my glory. No, I mustn't tell you about one of them without the
other. If one of them makes me want to sink through the floor, the other
makes me walk on air. If one makes me a criminal, the other makes me
an angel. If one makes me want to die (don't we say die of shame?) the
other makes me grasp hold of life with both hands.
Here then is the story of my day of shame. The class is doing a
dictation, taken from our book which we had taken home to prepare. I
must have hesitated over the spelling of a word. I am positive that I was
more concerned about whether I might make a mistake than about
whether I might lose a mark. The fact remains that I bent down, tried to
open the book in my satchel on the fioor (I remember I had difficulty in
turning the pages to find the right one) and at that very moment the
teacher caught me. She sprang towards me. My heart was in my mouth.
She pounced on my exercise book, scored two thick red lines across it,
crucifying the two open pages, and wrote in large letters - again in red -
the following words: 'I AM A CHEAT.' The she pinned the book to my
back and sent nie outside. When the time came for recreation, she
ordered me to walk round and round the playground without stopping
for the whole of the break, so that the entire school, teachers and
children alike, could witness for themselves the depths of disgrace into
which my wickedness had plunged me.
Oh yes, I did reach the depths, and my suffering must have shown on
my face or in my demeanour to such terrible effect that all eyes turned
away from me; despite my teacher's efforts to draw her colleagues'
attention to me, I don't remember hearing a single laugh, a single gibe.

Instead, I remember a dreadful silence. Cast out into an isolation more
sinister than death itself, I believed my destiny to have met a violent
end. I believed that fate had struck an irreparable blow.
That day, my childhood horizon was darkened by a baleful convic-
tion: my doom or my salvation depend on what I am in the eyes of other
people. I bow to others. Their rule has a servile and abject taskmaster
forever fastened on to my fiesh: its name is shame .
. . . Do you remember the ribbon? An old ribbon, pink and silver
coloured ... You took it without a second's shame and you would have
given it to Marion without a second's shame; she might have given you
a kiss, and no crime would ever have existed ... But once you were
caught, accused in front of everyone, appalled by the shame, you threw
the accusation off on to the innocent Marion.
I was not afraid of being punished, I was only afraid of the shame;
but I feared that shame more than death, more than committing a crime,
more than anything in the world. I wanted to sink into the ground, to
bury myself in the centre of the earth: that unbearable fear of shame
dominated everything, turned me into a barefaced liar, and the more
dishonest I became, the more my fear of admitting to it made me brazen.
I was conscious only of the horror of being found out, of being publicly
declared in my own presence a thief, a liar, a slanderer. An over-
whelming sense of turmoil blotted out all other feelings.
The punishment which was inflicted on me was not just brutal, it was
the reverse of what was required. If the feeble sense of shame I had felt
at making a spelling mistake had led me into cheating, would not the
depths of shame into which I was now plunged be likely to lead me into
far blacker crimes? If I felt remorse, it could not possibly be for having
cheated but for having cheated so ineptly that I was caught out. It was a
cruel punishment indeed that used the fear of shame to teach me not to
be truthful but to lie and deceive.
If the worst possible fate, the one I had experienced to the depths of
my being, was to see all faces recoil from me, as if from a vile serpent,
then wasn't it better to do anything in my power rather than ever put
myself in that position again? Anything. Cheating, lying, slandering, for
which I would have to endure the pangs of a guilty conscience, any-
thing, rather than risk being abandoned like that, as if for ever. Any
crime was preferable to the hell of indignity.
That was the lesson I was taught that day, and no other. The lesson
that I took in and repeated over to myself, my heart frozen with rage.
Annie Leclerc 153
Fortunately, I did not really learn it by heart.

Because in point of fact I wanted to be loved. For myself. And not for
someone else.
What would be the point of being loved if it was not to be with all my
faults and my weaknesses, if I was not to be loved completely?
Beside a well you once exposed your buttocks to some girls who had
come to draw water. Some of them looked away, some laughed and the
others were angry. If I had been one of their number I expect I would
have fled. But now that I am so far away and no longer afraid, I can hear
a little voice inside you pleading.
Take me, love me; take my shame as well.
As for glory, that always comes in two stages, or rather it is heralded

by a marvellous sign, a prefiguration of glory, as it were, an incredible
manifestation both of the possibility of glory and of the frantic desire
that its revelation should come about. Like the star of Bethlehem. Wise
men and shepherds alike, those who seize on the sign, clinging hold to it
with all their wits, straining towards it, leaving all else aside to answer
the call - they will be quickly rewarded for their efforts and will
experience the epiphany.
Remember the day beforehand. The charming Madame de Breil, who
had never before singled you out from amongst the other household staff,
had deigned- oh! miracle! -to cast a glance at you, Jean-Jacques, at the
obscure little valet who had made a particularly elegant and clever reply
to a remark of her brother's. It was that first glance that pierced you,
enthralled you, 'transported' you. And the ambition to be singled out like
that again, to be uniquely successful, outshining your masters with your
brilliance, the desire to be glorified, loved even perhaps, gripped you like
a fever. The very next day your opportunity presented itself.
Telfiert qui ne tue pas. You, the sixteen-year-old lackey, were to be
the only one who could interpret correctly the motto of the Solar family
embroidered on a tapestry. Solar. He strikes who does not kill. Solar,
like the sun. Like a glance from a young lady. Like glory striking, as if
for once and for all, the young Jean-Jacques who until then had been
kept in the shadow of his elders. They had not properly understood the
meaning of fiert. You had, and you said nothing. You had smiled, your
cheeks must have been pink, your lips slightly open, in the dawn of your
pride in knowing the answer ... You were asked your opinion. And you
were the one able to explain it, you, Jean-Jacques ... And then you felt
her looking at you again, and that gaze which you had so desired
signalled your celebration to the skies so clearly that all those present
heard, you heard, she heard; and the whole table chorused their
approval.
My heart is racing as if I were there myself. One does not have to be
Alexander or Napoleon to achieve glory. In that moment of total
splendour, in that burst of ultimate brilliance in which it yields itself up,
glory is always glory, entire and absolute. Success, reputation, even
celebrity may follow in its wake; they will never be more than a mock
charade, a cracked and disappointing echo of glory to those who from
slaves to emperors have tasted its epiphany.
You'll see that my moment of glory was even more miniscule than
yours. And the exploit which won it for me was so derisory that it shows
what a dim awareness of myself I must have had for this episode to
appear so brilliant. One day we were asked in what was probably a
vocabulary lesson to find words in the same family as the adjective
clair, light. Eclairer, to light, eclairage, lighting ... Any others?
Eclaircir, to clarify, eclaircissement, clarification ... Any others? We
seemed to have exhausted the list. The teacher was waiting, her index
finger arched towards us, ready to seek out the girl who would come up
with the final answer. It was like a game. And I wanted to win it. I
concentrated hard. Suddenly a word spurted out of me as I raised my
hand: eclair, lightning! Yes, very good, said the teacher, smiling, but I
want one more, just one ... I was already bursting with pride. It just had
to be me who found the last word. I couldn't rest on my laurels with
eclair. Nothing came. The silence grew longer, and more threatening -
someone else might get there first. I pressed my desire so strongly that
at last it gave up its secret, its juices of light. I must have gone red with
emotion and it was in a trembling voice that I delivered the word clarte,
brightness. Of course, said the teacher, pleased, that's it, say it again
nice and loud. Clarte, I repeated. I felt then that all heads had turned
towards me, that I was being carried high on a fervent wave of mute
admiration, that a religious silence as deep as the ocean accompanied
my brief but divine assumption. And it was left there.
I was ten years old. I had found the word clarte. And it was that
humble little word which opened the door to a moment of glory, so
naked and so definitive, that nothing has ever been able to equal it, nor
will ever. I suppose as well that it was because of the glory that clarte
was covered in that day that it became for me an enchanted word, a
word which conveys its meaning with such delicate accuracy that a
blind man could surely conceive of light just listening to the word which
Annie Leclerc 155
represents it. Scarcely has the word begun in a ring of shadows than it
gives way humbly to the light which prolongs it. My mouth has scarcely
begun to form the word in the shadows between the tongue and the
palate before I am deposited on the confines of light. But perhaps I
would never have heard it if I had not, whilst we were waiting for it, and
because of it, myself been heard, been approved and more, been carried
right into that bath of liquid sunshine, been exalted, extolled ...
I learned that day that a word, just one word, could bathe you in that
delectable honey, in that nectar, that ambrosia.
Of course, there are other happy episodes of my early years that I
could tell you about, but I can't think of one which has the same
certainty about it, the same untarnishable brilliance. None seems to have
been so decisive in stimulating my desire to deal in words.
Is this the moment to tell you about all the things that bind me to the
name Claire, so close to clarte? If I began I would never finish ... I'll just
tell you that in every piece of fiction I write, I always want a Claire. A
Claire who would open up the path to clarte. A transparent Claire. Not
the Julie of your Nouvelle Heloise, the over-virtuous Julie, too girlish to
begin with and too motherly afterwards, but the other one, the adorable
Claire, the one that Saint-Preux says he 'loves too much to marry', the
one that you would have so much liked to have been able to love.
I'll come back to that later.
For now, just spend a few moments with me over that discovery I
made when I was ten. I'll never make a better one. Perhaps I'll never
make any more at all. My childhood is at an end. In a few month's time
I'll be leaving junior school and going into the seniors. The discovery of
the word clarte is no longer ahead of me. Perhaps eventually I'll have
used the word so much that it will be quite worn away ...
*
'Boat ride'
We are having a French lesson one afternoon.

I am sitting as usual near the back of the class, close to the big
windows, but not too close, carefully positioned at the best distance
from which I can watch the clouds racing past whenever I choose. We
are going to study an extract from La Nouvelle Heloise entitled 'Boat
ride on the lake'. Who would like to read? Me, me, me. I love reading
aloud. That's one thing that hasn't changed about me since my child-
hood. I take a special pleasure in doing dictations, copying things out,

reading aloud or reciting a favourite text. None of them demand an
independent intellectual effort and I am particularly good at them. I am
chosen to read 'Boat ride on the lake'.
I begin reading as usual, my eyes running ahead of the sentence to
grasp the meaning to which I will adjust my tone of voice, savouring the
rapt silence around me as if it were a personal favour.
' ... Imperceptibly the moon rose ... '
Bit by bit a strange metamorphosis occurs. The world around me
recedes, the other pupils evaporate into the distance, the words take over
my voice. Two young people settle themselves in a rowing boat, glide
over the surface of a lake, hand in hand, as night falls and silence takes
over the universe. Then, drop by drop, the music is born, carried along
by the water, suspended notes, barely ruffling the lake, sighs just
breaking the surface. The air is warm. The lapping of the oars trickles a
frail skein of sonorous pearls. The cry of the snipe intoxicates the
atmosphere. I can hear it all. I am there.
The text penetrates me with an emotion so intense and so sweet that
tears come to my eyes and I have to struggle to keep my voice steady in
my throat. I feel that my voice might just slip - that it longs to slip -
beneath the surface of the text's warm water, bringing to an end 'in
those arms my life with its long torments'.
I know nothing about this Julie, or about the melancholy burdening
this young man, yet I also perceive, stealing between the lines, an
inexorable happiness. Why are they sad? Why can they not love each
other again and anew, just as they loved each other before, since they
are in love? Why must they silence the avowal of their love to which
they are yielding for a last time? What has happened to them? Our
teacher certainly told us before we began reading the text, but, as usual,
I had not paid any attention. Did it really matter, in the end? What was
happening here clearly went beyond any detail of plot; this was no twist
in the narrative, but the material accomplishment of desire, as if
everything that had happened between them before, everything that was
happening now and everything that was yet to happen was contained in
those moments. Everything had come back up to the surface and come
alive again: both the ecstasies of the past and the wounds which had
been inflicted as pleasure had ebbed away, and this immense suffering
that they can embrace together also consoles them absolutely. I feel no
sadness on their behalf, I have no desire to know what will happen to
them afterwards. I feel that they have arrived. At the height, at the peak
Annie Leclerc 157
of happiness, at the point where their separation reveals its hidden

reverse: the magic of an eternal alliance in which the spoken word
between them attains the perfection of a silence filled with certainty:
they can be silent since it is understood for ever now that they have
never ceased to understand one another ...
'Ah! I whispered to her, I see that our hearts have never ceased to
understand one another! It is true, she said in a faltering voice, but let
this be the last time that they speak in this way.'
It would be hard indeed for me to explain why the reading of this
piece suddenly made such a powerful and delightful impression on me,
why I felt a balm of tenderness suffuse my entire life, why I shared the
sensation that I myself had also been lost for a long time and that I had
at last come home, to a place I would never leave.
I myself also remember, I remember everything, my childhood, my
mother, my sorrows, Madeleine's sorrow, my faithless sweethearts, my
friends' silliness or their cruelty, I remember the joys of the past,
gardens and seasons. I remember a picture that hung on the wall of my
mother's bedroom in the country: it showed two very young girls,
barely nubile, naked and demure, their feet dangling in dark water, bent
over the reflection, so close, quivering, elusive, of the moon; the picture
was called Moonfishers .
. . .Oh! liquid moon, light so secret and so intimate, could I have
returned home, to my mother, to the place of my childhood, the place
where I am loved, where the days flow into one another uninterrupted
by heartache? No, no, we never return, we just remember, that's all.
What matters is to never become separated again from our memory,
what matters is to be reunited with it, to sink into it, to allow it to take us
in, to enfold us and to cradle us ...
As I read you, Jean-Jacques, I lay down in the boat of words, I
clasped my hands at the back of my neck, I looked up at the sky. I feel
good, so good. Here I have found my shelter, my refuge, a bed both
very old and very new, softer and more delectable even than the one in
which I sometimes fell asleep beside my mother. From the hollow of
this bed everything that exists can be heard, not only the objects in the
bedroom, the paths, the flowers, the trees in the garden, but the stars in
the sky as well, and still further away the world which exists, and its
history, and its respiration, and so many living people, and the dead, so
many dead, for, it occurs to me suddenly, words in books can absorb
everything, can be at one with everything, can bring peace and
consolation to everything ...
These two lines of Italian poetry that you quote are in that passage
that we were given to read:
E tantafede, e si dolce memorie.
E si Iango costume!
(And this time so pure, and these sweet memories, and this long
familiarity ... ) Is there any need to understand Italian to feel that arms
are enfolding you, bearing you away, that there is nothing more to fear?
As I carried on my reading, I felt myself changing, casting off all my
cheap finery, my scabby layers of envy and resentment, my miasmas of
boredom, of lethargy, of apathy, and becoming extraordinarily subtle,
scrupulous, perceptive, ready to bestow an unfaltering attention on
everything in the world, on every thought, ready to throw myself in my
tum into the creation of a work of beauty, to devote my days and my
nights to it ... I had never felt that before. That immersion in memory
that was also a renewal, that sensation of being born from the humour,
from the texture, from the flavour of the pages just read, of welling up
from the liquid of the text like an extension, an emanation, a creature of
this liquidity ...
Yes, it was during that reading-boat ride on the lake that I first
experienced, to my surprise and wonderment, the kind of transfiguration
that is wrought in me (in everyone surely?) by any really pleasurable
reading of a text.
When this happens I feel myself becoming 'like' the writing of the
person I like reading. The stuff of any writing is unique, with its own
material, tangible being, which can be appreciated for its qualities of
elasticity, liquidity, unctuousness, its languor or its rapid precision, but
also for the way in which it reflects the light, stops it or lets it through.
When I emerge from a long and satisfying read, I can feel literally
transfigured into the writing of Proust, of Rousseau, of Kafka ... For a
moment I become precisely that particular beauty, that rhythm, that
undulation, that figure of desire, that absolute tension of the self, that
appetite for truth, that quintessence of prayer, and my whole body
trembles with the exhilaration of being inhabited, possessed in this way,
my brow stirs, my eyes widen, my arms unfold, my chest expands, my
legs thrust forward ... Ah! how I live in that moment, swept along by an
inexhaustible force!
Don't imagine for a moment though that I begin thinking just what
you think, or what they think; that I write like you, or like them, if I
write -at least I don't think I do. I don't stop being me and become
someone else; on the contrary, it's as though I were finally being given
Annie Leclerc 159
the possibility of being me, all of me, capable of apprehending the

world, of experiencing delight and of thinking deeply and truthfully, and
all within the very body, the breath, the sweep, the music of a writing
with clear and definite contours.
It seems to me that it was at that moment, in that first experience of a
poignant and regenerating reading, that I knew that I would be a writer.
Or rather that nothing could be desired beyond writing. My destiny
appeared to me to be like a prose of fresh water into which I would slide
my whole being in order to seek it out, again, and again; in the widening
ripples of the water I would write indefinitely of the beauties that I had
glimpsed ... Writing ... Making it a daily activity without having to
make a secret of it, without having to steal time and attention for it that
by rights belonged to some other activity ... Writing in real notebooks
that would not be history or English or maths notebooks, but notebooks
just for writing ... The idea made me feel giddy. Like the giddiness I
felt at the idea that some people (young people who were married or
students living a long way from their parents) could indulge in all the
delights of sexuality without having to lie and pretend, without having
to be so secretive that in the end the pleasure was half spoiled. (I found
it surprising in any case that people who did enjoy that particular
freedom were so successful in keeping to themselves the secret of this
insulting pleasure, the pleasure of birds on the tree-top, not letting it
show ... ) However that may be, the fact is that the profession of writer
appeared to me to offer the same enchanting delights as lovemaking
without parents or priest ... I suddenly imagined the felicity of the adult
writer.
8
Marie Redonnet
Introduction
Born in 1948, Marie Redonnet had no thought of writing

before she reached her thirties. At school she took an interest
in mathematics and describes herself as having been
'blocked' as far as writing was concerned., However, at the
age of 29, after the death of her father, she began an analysis
that was to last seven years and which gradually unblocked
her desire to write. Her first productions were poems, or
rather, poetic fragments, along the lines of the Japanese
haiku. From these she progressed to writing a set of very
short stories, in which the undeveloped central characters
resemble figures from the tarot cards, followed by a play. By
the end of September 1985, with her analysis over, she had
completed her first novel, entitled Splendid Hotel, the first
novel in a trilogy of which the remaining two volumes were
to follow rapidly: Forever Valley and Rose Melie Rose, both
published in 1987.
The completion of Splendid Hotel marked a new stage in
Redonnet's view of herself as a writer. The production of a
longer text in itself confirmed her vocation to write. Its immi-
nent publication also posed the problem of its signature: in
shortening her Christian name Martine to Marie, and in
substituting her mother's maiden name Redonnet for her own
family name of L'Hospitalier, Redonnet was well aware that
she was both literally and symbolically creating an identity for
herself through writing. By the same token she was also con-
sciously inserting her new identity into the kind of matrilinear
tradition which is a strong feature of her writing. 2 A third and
160
Marie Redonnet 161
crucial development was the acceptance of the novel for

publication by Editions de Minuit, a small, independent and
highly prestigious publishing house, whose authors include
Samuel Beckett and Marguerite Duras. In offering her work to
Minuit, and in being accepted by them, Redonnet also there-
fore had a sense of placing herself in a tradition of writing
which she admired and to which her own work refers. 3
All three novels are written in a highly characteristic style,
which seems to be in part a reflection of her writing habits.
She describes the writing process as being a violent and
rapid activity, in which she can produce an entire text in a
period of ten days or so. A blank period follows, after which
she produces a new version, again in its entirety. The
process is repeated as often as she feels necessary until she
has the final version. Her writing practice thus minimises any
immediate conscious and aesthetic control, and one of the
reasons for her eschewal of anything resembling rhetoric or
grand phrases is her conviction that this would cut off her
writing from its sources. Instead, her writing has a flat tone
and a bare, minimalist style which depends a great deal for
its effect on the symbolic charge of the language, on signifi-
cant repetitions, on slight changes of emphasis and on a wry
sense of comedy. The written language has a high status
within Redonnet's fictional worlds, and words are spent in it
with an evident sense of their import and worth.
She considers the three novels to be a trilogy, even though
she did not set out consciously to write one. Each is recount-
ed by a female first-person narrator, struggling with inter-
secting problems of identity and inheritance. The first,
Splendid Hotel, is prefaced by a quotation from Rimbaud's
poem 'After the Flood' which reads: 'The caravans departed.
And the Splendid Hotel was built in the chaos of ice and the
polar night.' This epigraph suggests both the visionary quali-
ty of Marie Redonnet's writing and the fin du monde atmos-
phere of her texts. Splendid Hotel narrates the trials of three
sisters who inherit from their grandmother a decrepit hotel
built on a marsh. Two of the sisters are unequal to the task
and die towards the end of the text; the third, who is also the
narrator, battles on alone to keep her inheritance from her
female forbears going. Redonnet calls this a 'blighted'
inheritance, because the narrator's task is virtually impos-

sible: strange diseases and infestations invade the hotel from
the marsh, each one worse than its predecessor, producing a
cycle of crises and partial recoveries, each one leaving the
hotel in an even worse condition than before. The relation-
ship between the hotel and the marsh, is invested with a
variety of interlocking meanings, some of which are depen-
dent on the way in which the hotel can be identified as a
representation of the Father (Redonnet has drawn attention
to the connections between her paternal name L'Hospitalier
and the word hotel). 4 Despite the fact that the narrator keeps
going, there is a strong sense that her inheritance is doomed.
In Forever Valley, the narrator is again a young woman
living this time on a mountainside in a desolate hamlet. Her
life is split between two parental figures: her father, a former
pastor whose legs are paralysed and whose church lies in
ruins, and Massi, her adoptive mother, who runs the local
dance-hall cum brothel. The narrator is curiously undevel-
oped - she is unable to read, and, at 16, is still awaiting
puberty. By night she nevertheless works in the brothel,
where she meets Bob. Her days are devoted to digging up
the garden which was once the graveyard of her father's
church, in a determined attempt to discover the corpses
which lie there (the relationship between the graveyard on
the one hand and the presbytery and church on the other has
parallels with the hotel-marsh symbiosis of the previous
novel). She never finds the corpses, but her project is turned
on its head as first her father, and then her lover Bob, meet
their deaths - she buries them both in the graveyard. The
brothel closes and she has to leave the hamlet to go and live
with Massi in the valley below, where she is unhappy. The
text closes with her melancholy realisation that she has still
not reached puberty and does not ever now expect to do so.
The failure to achieve womanhood, the macabre twist which
leads to the narrator fulfilling her project in the way in which
she would have least wanted, and the fate which dictates that
she will spend the rest of her days in the valley, make
Forever Valley the most sombre of the three texts.
Rose Melie Rose, from which the extracts given here are
taken, elaborates many of the same themes but produces
Marie Redonnet 163
a much more optimistic outcome. The text is narrated by

Melie, whose twelfth birthday occurs at the beginning of the
text, and is initially set in the harmonious, maternal universe
of the Hermitage, high up above the valley. Here Melie has
been discovered as a baby abandoned in a cave 'with noth-
ing' by her adoptive mother Rose, and has been nurtured
and initiated into the magical Book of Legends. Her twelfth
birthday is marked not only by the death of the good mother
Rose, but by the onset of her first menstruation. The entry
into womanhood denied to the narrator of Forever Valley is
thus accomplished at the outset, but is associated with the
departure from the maternal universe for the world of the
valley below. In the world of Oat- pronounced rather like the
English word 'what' 5 - where everything seems to be fast
declining, Melie receives a series of initiations (into, amongst
other things, sexuality and the 'new' alphabet). Melie grows
and prospers in contrast to those around her - one by one
almost everyone she knows in Oat dies, leaves or changes or
both; buildings fall into ruin and projects fail. In the midst of
this comes her idyllic meeting with a fisherman, Vern, the
Prince Charming figure whom she marries, but who sets off
after their wedding night on a quest from which he never
returns. 6 Melie, pregnant with a child whom she will call Rose
- completing the three names of the novel's title - returns to
the protective space of the cave high above the valley to give
birth. Melie dies in childbirth, as all good mothers do in
Redonnet's fiction, but she leaves for Rose an inheritance of
the Book of Legends, interleaved with a set of photographs
which she has taken, and a box of jewels which Vern had
given her as a wedding present. Little Rose will thus begin
the cycle all over again, but with a richer inheritance - she
will not be discovered 'with nothing'. The text closes on
Melie's own death in another womb-like space - the back
seat of the Buick- within sight of the sea, which itself is
accorded a special status in the text.
The world of Rose Melie Rose is highly symbolically and
mythically charged; its structure is tightly patterned, despite
the fact that it describes a world in decline. The figure 12, for
example, is highlighted again and again in the text- Melie is
12 on the day the narrative begins, she takes 12 photographs
to leave to her daughter, the novel has 12 chapters and 12

characters. Though it may be impossible to allocate any strict
meaning to the number, this kind of patterning supports
Rose's belief that the world is full of signs, and hence of
some ultimate meaning, however mysterious. A dominant
myth in the text which takes various forms is that of the Fairy
Queen - the Book of Legends, which is Rose's gift to Melie
and which functions in the novel as a source of mythological
and archetypal meanings, describes the quest of the fairies to
find the Fairy Queen. The quest never attains its end because
no one knows what the Fairy Queen looks like, but it is
implied that the quest is valuable in itself. Most of the char-
acters in the text have a quest, many of which fail, but some
of which, like the fairies' quest, are endowed with a positive
value. One of these is undoubtedly Vern's search for the sea
channel which all the local fishermen know about but none
has ever pursued to its end. Vern sets out on his final journey
to search for it in a boat called The Fairy Queen, and appears,
in his own way, to be making the impossible return to the
mother, in a parallel journey to that of Melie.
Melie's own quest is described by Redonnet as the attempt
to fill in the blank of her memory and past. One of the text's
symbols of this blank is the canvas which is given to Me lie by
Rose's friend, the older Melie. The canvas is a painting of a
woman which Melie at first takes to be Rose; then it turns out
to be a bad copy of a picture in a museum on the Continent.
It is thus, we can surmise, an image of what an indigenous
culture should not be. Gradually, in the course of the text, the
image on the canvas fades, to leave a blank. The blank can-
vas can be thought to stand, amongst other things, for the
blank canvas of women's writing, as well as for the blank of
Melia's past. At one moment in the text, the blank canvas is
flooded with rose-coloured light; one of the ways in which
Melie creates a past and a future for herself is by inserting
herself into the chain of women of which her adoptive
mother Rose and her own child Rose are a part. The inheri-
tance she leaves for her child is also part of this chain: the
Book of Legends is inherited from the older Rose, but
enriched by Melia's photographs. Melie inscribes the book
'For Rose' in both the old alphabet which Rose had taught
Marie Redonnet 165
her and the new one she has learned in Oat. Each of the pho-
tographs also bears a legend on its reverse side in Melie's
handwriting. 7 Where the narrator of Forever Valley could not
read or write, Melie learns to read and write in two systems
and passes this on to her child. She also leaves her writing
on the wall of the cave, inscribing this symbol of the matrix
with her own name and that of Rose. Where previously the
text's narrator is imprisoned unhappily in the valley, Melie is
shown to be able to go down to the valley, to profit from the
experience, and then to return to the mountain heights
where her daughter's life can begin. 8
After completing the trilogy Marie Redonnet turned her
attention to the production of two of her plays- Tir et Lir and
Mobie-Diq- and has most recently published a fourth novel,
Silsie (1990). The extracts given below are all taken from the
final novel of the trilogy, Rose Melie Rose: the first episode
describes Melie's discovery that she must leave the
Hermitage; the second her wedding with Vern and Vern's
departure; the third, taken from the closing pages of the
novel, the birth of her baby and her own death.
Notes
1. See interview with Josyane Savigneau in Le Monde, 4
September 1987. She did nevertheless earn her living for some
years as a lycee teacher of French.
2. Interview with Elizabeth Fallaize, June 1988. The importance to
Marie Redonnet of her identification with her mother is stressed
in the 'obituary' which she wrote for herself in Le Dictionnaire:
Litterature fran9aise contemporaine, ed. by Jerome Garcin
(Paris: Franc;:ois Bourin, 1988), pp.358-9. Olivier Perrin, in an
unpublished dissertation, further draws attention to the fact that
in shortening the name Martine to Marie, Redonnet is both
adopting a name which synthesises her own name and her
mother's (Martine and Marguerite), and is taking a name which,
as the name of Jesus's mother, is in itself the maternal name
par excellence. (See 'Les mythologies personnelles de Marie
Redonnet', Universite Paris XII, 1989, pp. 26-27.)
3. Editions de Minuit publish only about twenty-five new books a
year, of which only one or two are by new writers. Redonnet
explained in interview (June 1988) that she was drawn to Minuit
partly as the publishers of Duras, but primarily as the publishers
of Beckett; she describes herself, semi-humorously, as a

'daughter of Beckett', emphasising that that means not only
inheriting his tradition but also revolting against it. Being
accepted by Minuit was a crucial stage because it made her
believe in herself as a writer. She was then able to complete the
trilogy at enormous speed: Splendid Hotel was published in
March 1986 - by July she had finished Forever Valley, itself
published in February 1987. Rose Melie Rose was written in
seven months, and completed in December 1986, even before
the previous novel had appeared.
4. In an interesting article entitled 'Redonne apres Maldonne',
L'lnfini, no. 19 (1987), pp. 160-3.
5. Probably a reference to Samuel Beckett's Watt.
6. Alert readers will note that any sexual encounter between Melie
and Yem seems to be specifically excluded from the description
of their wedding night. This appears inconsistent with some of
the crude (though humorous) sexuality which figures elsewhere
in the text; it is, however, consistent with fairy-tales in which the
appearance of menstrual blood (symbolised through pricked
fingers or red roses) is sufficient to produce a child. In interview
(June 1988), Redonnet declared that humour was her way of
dealing with a topic which she might otherwise find difficult to
treat.
7. Redonnet commented in interview that in leaving behind her set
of inscribed photographs, Melie leaves behind a work of art.
Many of the other characters in the text have projects with an
artistic dimension, but Melie is the only one to succeed.
8. I discuss this text in greater detail in an article entitled, 'Filling in
the Blank Canvas: Memory, Inheritance and Identity in Marie
Redonnet's Rose Melie Rose', Forum for Modern Language
Studies, vol. 28 (1992), pp. 320-34.
Marie Redonnet bibliography
Books and articles by Redonnet
Le Mort et Cie (Paris: POL, 1985).

Doublures (Paris: POL, 1986).
Splendid Hotel (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1986).
Forever Valley (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1987).
Rose Melie Rose (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1987).
Tir et Lir (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1988).
Mobie-Diq (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1988).
Silsie (Paris: Gallimard, 1990).
'Redonne apres Maldonne', L'lnfini, No. 19 (1987), pp. 160-3.
Marie Redonnet 167
'Necrologie', in Le dictionnaire: Litterature fran{:aise contemporaine,

ed. Jerome Garcin (Paris: Fran~tois Bourin, 1988), pp. 358-9.
'Deux auteurs, Trois. Questions: Marie Redonnet et Jacques
Geraud', Impressions du Sud, no. 14 (1987), pp. 50-1.
Articles on Redonnet and selected reviews
Bellour, Raymond, 'Une mythologie blanche', Magazine Litteraire,

October 1987.
Bernstein, Michele, 'Marie Redonnet. Fin de partie', Liberation, 12
February 1987.
Bernstein, Michele, 'Marie Redonnet, douze gouttes de sang',
Liberation, 24 September 1987.
Etienne, Marie, 'Lucide et nair', La Quinzaine Litteraire, 16 May
1986.
Fallaize, Elizabeth 'Filling in the Blank Canvas: Memory, Identity and
Inheritance in the work of Marie Redonnet', Forum For Modern
Language Studies, vol. 28 (October 1992), pp. 320-34.
Ferniot, Christine, 'L'hotel des ecrivains affiche complet', Les
Nouvelles Litteraires, March 1986.
Lebrun, Jean-Claude and Claude Prevost, 'Profil: Marie Redonnet',
in Nouveaux Territoires Romanesques (Paris: Messidor, 1990),
pp. 193-8.
Nuridsany, Michel 'Marie Redonnet: des chiffres et des reves', Le
Figaro, 30 December 1987.
Perrin, Olivier, 'Les mythologies personnelles de Marie Redonnet',
unpublished master's dissertation for University of Paris XII,
1989.
Prevost, Claude 'Une parabole ravissante', L'Humanite, 4 November
1987.
Savigneau, Josyane, 'Une vie et une vallee perdues', Le Monde, 27
February 1987.
Savigneau, Josyane, 'Narratrice d'un monde qui s'acheve', Le
Monde, 4 September 1987.
Schmitt, Olivier, 'Rencontre avec Marie Redonnet: Ecrire entre
enigme et secret', Le Monde, 13 July 1988.
Rose Melie Rose*
Rose says that the river disappears under the mountain where it has its
source. The river wells up again in front of the cave, just before the
waterfalls. It's a well-known place. It's always attracted travellers.
When I was little, I used to call the cave the Fairy Cave after the title of
one of the legends in my book. The legend says that couples who spend
their wedding night in the Fairy Cave have a child nine months later.
The legend also says that when a traveller feels that his last hour has
come he takes refuge in the Fairy Cave. When he dies, the fairies spirit
his body away. Fewer and fewer travellers go up as far as the waterfalls.
The book of legends is the only book that Rose owned. She taught me to
read in that book. Now, it's my book. Rose gave it to me as a present for
having learned to read so well. It's written in the old alphabet. Rose
only knows the old alphabet. It's the only alphabet I know, as well.
Rose found me in the cave one morning. I had just been born. Rose's
house is the only one near the waterfalls. The house is built of wood still
in good condition. Rose says that no one wants to buy wood from the
forest now because houses aren't built of wood now. She called her
house the Hermitage. The Hermitage is also the name of the place. Rose
turned her house into a souvenir shop. It was a good idea of hers. The
travellers who climb up to the waterfalls and who come to see the cave
buy a souvenir from the Hermitage. Rose moved in near the waterfalls
not long before she found me in the cave. She was already old then.
Rose has been old as long as I've known her. She wouldn't have given
up her souvenir shop for anything in the world.
Now Rose is older still. She says she doesn't know how old she is.
She can only be very old. She's so old that I don't know either how old
she can be. She's stooped and all wrinkled. She can hardly see any
more. She walks with difficulty, leaning on a stick. Her movements are
getting clumsier and clumsier. She won't admit it, and she moves round
the shop as if she could see properly. The souvenirs are valuable and
fragile. When I see Rose in the shop with her stick, I worry what might
happen to the souvenirs. I'm the one who looks after the shop. Rose just
waits now for the travellers to come. The wait is getting longer and
longer. The place must be getting forgotten about. Rose says that when
the last souvenir has been sold she'll shut up the shop. She says that
soon it will be time for me to leave the waterfalls.
* Marie Redonnet, Rose Melie Rose, copyright Editions de Minuit, 1987.
Marie Redonnet 169
When Rose found me in the cave I had nothing. She has always said
that she hadn't seen anyone go up to the cave for several days. She
called me Melie because she thinks Melie and Rose are the most
beautiful names. She didn't register my birth at the town-hall because
the town-hall is in Oat, and Oat is several days walk down the track
from the waterfalls. Rose has never been back to Oat since she settled at
the Hermitage. She has always said that it isn't being registered at the
town-hall in Oat that matters, but that my name is Melie.
What had to happen has happened. Rose has broken the last sou-
venirs. She knocked into the table with her stick. The table was very
unsteady and it tipped over. All the souvenirs were laid out on the table,
and they were all breakable. Rose asked me to pick up the souvenirs,
and to throw the bits in the river. When the souvenirs get to the bottom
of the waterfalls they won't be in bits, they'll be in smithereens. Rose
looks relieved that there are no more souvenirs to sell.
When I came back from throwing the broken souvenirs in the river,
Rose told me that I had to leave the Hermitage now. I didn't believe her.
Then she told me that her last hour had come. She knew when her stick
knocked over the table with the last souvenirs on it. She wants to spend
her last night alone in the cave. She has always lived with her book of
legends. She wants to finish her life in the way the legend says. When
she said goodbye to me she was already in the distance. She said that
now I can live without her away from the Hermitage. The Hermitage is
just a place of passage. Like me she lived there for twelve years, her last
twelve years for her, and my first twelve years for me. I watched her go
up the path to the cave. Her hair was down. I noticed that it was long
and very white. She always hid it under her cap. I watched her go up as
though she were someone else.
The next morning, I went up to the cave. Rose was dead. I closed her
eyes. I stayed beside her for a long while looking at her. When the sun
entered the cave at midday, it lit up Rose. She looked asleep. It was as
though she wasn't dead. I buried her in the cave, in the place where she
found me twelve years ago. It's a safe place. On the wall, I carved her
name, and mine as well. And then I joined them up together. Rose and
Melie is written on the cave wall.
Rose died on my birthday. I'm twelve years old, counting from the
day when Rose found me in the cave. When I woke up, I saw the blood
on my sheets straight away. My first period. It came on the day of my
twelfth birthday which is also the day of Rose's death. Rose told me it
would come soon. She could see from the way my body has changed so
much over the last year. She had explained to me what you have to do
when you have your first period, as though she foresaw that she
wouldn't be here any more. She had told me that I should leave the
Hermitage the day of my first period. She could read the signs. She saw
them everywhere even though her eyesight was bad. I've never seen the
signs myself. Rose said that it was normal not to see them at my age.
Now that Rose is dead and that my first period has come, I have to
leave. I must obey Rose, even if she isn't here any more. It must surely
be a sign that my first period has come on the day of my twelfth
birthday which is also the day of Rose's death.
Rose wrote an address on the last page of my book of legends. That's
the address where I have to go. She didn't leave me with nothing, she
left me an address. On the last page of the book she wrote: 7 rue des
Charmes in Oat. That's Rose's writing all right. Oat is at the end of the
track. I only have to follow the track to get to Oat.
*
I'll never forget this Sunday. Yem and I took the boat out to sea, and
then we went to visit Cob at Seagull Beach as we do every Sunday.
Yem brought a bottle of sparkling wine to drink in the Buick. He's as
happy as if he'd just brought in his best catch. Yet he came back to the
harbour last night before midnight with all his crates empty and told me
that he was giving up fishing. He doesn't look upset to be giving up, on
the contrary, he looks relieved. Yem didn't tell me what he's going to
do now that he's given up fishing. We drank the whole bottle of
sparkling wine. Our heads were spinning faster and faster. It was as
though the Fairy Queen was no more. The Buick began to spin as well.
And in the ever faster spinning Buick, Yem asked me to marry him. I
thought he didn't want to get married until the house was finished. But
he says he's changed his mind. He wants us to get married now. He
says we've been engaged long enough. So the sparkling wine is to
celebrate his proposal. He said that he was sorry that he didn't have
enough money left to buy me a wedding present. I told him that the box
of jewels was an engagement and a wedding present.
Cob was moved when Yem told him that we were going to get
married. For a while now, he hasn't been going to the port any more.
But he said that he would for the wedding. He wants to be our first
witness. He turned over the engine of the Buick to make sure that it's
Marie Redonnet 171
still working. He doesn't want to drive any more because he doesn't

want to move from the terrace of his bungalow, where he feels so
comfortable. So he forgets to maintain the Buick. There's sand filtering
under the bonnet. Cob doesn't know anything about mechanics. Seagull
Beach may be sheltered, but when the wind blows it makes the sand fly
and the sand filters under the bonnet of the Buick. Sand is bad for the
engine. The chromium is beginning to get spotted with rust. Cob thinks
the Buick is fine as it is. He says he doesn't have to worry because the
engine turns over.
The second-hand dealer married us two days later. It was his first wed-
ding since he became the Continent's official representative in Oat. He
took the wedding ceremony very seriously. He did all he could to get the
photographer to come. The photographer eventually gave in, even though
he had vowed never to leave his room again. He was our second witness,
with Cob. I know that coming to my wedding made the photographer
think of Mademoiselle Marthe who never did get married, and he thought
about the life she leads now day and night at the Bastringue dance-hall. I
thought about Mademoiselle Marthe as well for a moment. But I soon
forgot her. It was my wedding day. The second-hand dealer married us
on the bridge of the Fairy Queen as Yem wanted. In my jewellery box,
there is one jewel left which I haven't worn yet. It's a very old ring. It
will be my wedding present. Yem put it on my finger. It's just the right
size for my finger. I'll never take it off. There isn't a ring for Yem.
Yem wanted to take a photograph of me in my wedding-dress on the
bridge of the Fairy Queen. It was the last photograph left in the polaroid.
I preferred Yem to take a photograph of me in front of our future house.
There's a large hole in the earth now that the foundations are finished.
My wedding-dress was a wedding-present from the second-hand dealer.
It's a dress made of satin and lace with a long train. It's a very old dress
that has never been worn. The second-hand dealer had kept it to give his
fiancee on their wedding-day, but he never had a fiancee. It's the first
time that I've worn a long dress with a train. The second-hand dealer
says that a wedding-dress is only worn for twenty-four hours. He
wanted to give Yem a bridegroom's suit, but the suit wasn't his size. So
Yem got married in his Sunday clothes, a sailor's suit with gold buttons.
It's the first time Yem has used the polaroid. He calculated the frame
just right so as to get in the foundations of cur future house and the
Fairy Queen as well in the background. He put me in the foreground.
I'm a bit blurred on the photo because of the net veil covering my face
and blowing up in the wind. Yem gave me the photo and I wrote on the
back: M elie photographed by Yem on their wedding-day in front of the

completed foundations of their future house with the Fairy Queen in the
background. I wish Yem had been beside me on the photo. But he said
that he should be the one to take the last photo. He couldn't be on the
photo and take the photo at the same time, of course. The photographer
had gone when Yem took my photo.
I spent my wedding-night in the cabin of the Fairy Queen with Yem.

We didn't sleep all night. I kept my wedding-dress on all night. It was
Yem who wanted me to keep it on. I'll have worn it for twenty-four
hours, exactly the length of time that the second-hand furniture dealer
said it has to be worn. Yem talked all night. He told me that he's leaving
for a very long voyage on the Fairy Queen. He's never forgotten the
voyage that he went on with Cob to Ot. Ot, he says, is nothing like Oat.
Yem wants to explore the channel, to follow it as far as it goes. He
wants to know where the channel leads. He says that the Fairy Queen is
made for the channel and that he doesn't want to miss the chance he's
got. He says that he understood this bit by bit when the fish began to
disappear. He doesn't miss fishing any more. Yem waited till our
wedding-night to tell me that he's leaving. I asked him if I could go
with him. He said that there wasn't room for two on the Fairy Queen for
such a long voyage. He said as well that he would come back and that I
should wait for him. All night long, he talked to me about the voyage
that he's going on along the channel.
At dawn I climbed down on to the quayside, like the other mornings,
and I watched the Fairy Queen leave the port. Eventually Yem stopped
looking towards me and began looking out to sea in the direction of the
channel. But I carried on standing upright on the quayside in my
wedding-dress trying to keep sight of him. I stood for a long time
looking at the sea, a long time after the Fairy Queen had disappeared
over the horizon. And then suddenly everything stopped. I had the
impression that even the sea had stopped moving.
I was still on the quayside when the fishermen came. They asked me
what I was doing there all alone in my wedding-dress. So I told them
about Yem's departure and about the channel that he wants to follow as
far as it goes. The fishermen shook their heads. They say that the
channel only exists in legends. They think that I shouldn't have married
Yem. But I don't agree with them. I was right to marry Yem whatever
the fishermen who don't understand about the Fairy Queen think.
My period is late. I've ~Jways been perfectly regular, ever since I left
the Hermitage. And now for the first time my period is late. I reread the
Marie Redonnet 173
booklet that they gave me at the clinic. I read in it that when your period
is late you should go straight away to see someone at the clinic. At the
clinic they examined me and they took samples. They told me that my
period isn't just late, it's not coming at all. That means that I'm
pregnant. They gave me another booklet which explains everything that
happens during the nine months of pregnancy. Nine months is a long
time. I keep reading the booklet, over and over. I want to understand
everything. It's the first time that I've been pregnant. It's a lot more
important than the first time I had a period.
Every day I walk past the site of our future house. At the moment it's
just a closed-up building-site with a big hole in the middle of it. I've put
a sign up in front of the foundations: Private Property. And I wrote the
names of the owners on the sign: Yem and Me lie. I like walking past the
sign where our names are written next to private property. Yem and I
got married under the joint estate system. The second-hand dealer
explained to us what that means. Everything I own belongs to Yem, and
everything Yem owns belongs to me.
*
When I felt the first pains, I put all my things in my bag and I went up to
the cave. I want to give birth in the cave. The pains lasted all night and
all morning. I was delivered at midday, when the sun reached its zenith
and entered the cave. I did everything just the way the booklet explains
without panicking. I did all the right things in the right order, including
cutting the cord which I did myself. I managed everything by myself in
the cave.
It was a little girl. I've called her Rose. From the moment I saw her I
called her Rose. I gave her a bath in the river just where it comes above
ground. The water in the river is warm when it comes out from the
mountain. Rose is in no danger of catching cold. She looks strong and
sturdy. I wanted her to have her first bath at the river's source, like a
baptism. Then I wrapped her in my wedding-veil. I brought it specially
for Rose. Rose looks beautiful wrapped in my wedding-veil. Her eyes
are blue just like Yem's. I made her a little bed from sand and moss, and
I put her down to sleep in the dim light of the cave, with Melie's shawl
as a blanket. I brought everything that Rose needs. She's been sleeping
since I gave her her bath. I watched her sleep for a long time, and then I
fell asleep myself, I was so worn out and exhausted. Its nice and warm
in the cave.
When I woke up, I took Rose in my arms. I rocked her for a long time,
singing the song that Rose used to sing to me when I was little. Rose
woke up and started crying. So I put her to the breast. But Rose carried
on crying despite being put to the breast. I haven't got any milk. Why
haven't I got any milk? I made her up a bottle following exactly all the
instructions in the booklet. Rose drank the whole bottle. Then she fell
asleep again against my body, and I fell asleep again against her body.
I've spent two more days with Rose in the cave. I feel weaker as each
day passes. There's a buzzing in my ears which is getting louder and
louder. I watch Rose sleeping. I rock her and sing Rose's song to her. I
give her her bath in the warm spring water of the river. I give her her
bottles. Rose is safe in the cafe. No harm can come to her.
On the third morning, at dawn, I left the cave. I'm going down alone
without any baggage. I gave Rose her last bottle. I wrote her name on
the book of legends. I wrote on the cover: FOR ROSE. I wrote it twice,
once in the old alphabet and once in the new alphabet. That's my pre-
sent for Rose, my book of legends with my twelve photos inside. I left it
by her feet where it couldn't be missed. I'm leaving her my bag as well.
Inside it there's my empty polaroid and my jewellery box. Before I gave
birth I took off my jewels and I put them back in the box. That's my
second present for Rose. It's a present from Yem as well since it was
Yem who gave me the box of jewels. I only kept my wedding-ring on
my finger, the ring of my wedding to Yem. In the book of legends
there's my identity card as well. The second-hand dealer didn't forget to
add on it the date of my marriage to Yem.
I put some stocks in my pocket but I can't eat anything. It's a good
thing. the path goes downhill, I only have to let my legs carry me down.
I can't feel my legs any more, I can't even feel my body. I just walk as
though I were in a dream. I don't recognise the path or the forest now.
In the evening, I haven't got the strength to look for shelter, so I sleep
by the path. At night I shiver with cold by the path. I noticed as soon as
I started out that my underclothes are stained with blood. I'm losing my
blood. It's not a period. Periods don't come back so soon after child-
birth. It must be one of the complications described in the booklet.
Walking is bad for haemorrhages. The blood is dripping drop by drop
without stopping. Something must be tearing somewhere inside. There
are drops of blood behind me on the path. I feel weaker and weaker but
I'm carrying on down. I think about Rose and about the Fairy Queen.
I've reached the crossroads. On the left is the track that leads to Oat,
on the right the path for Seagull Beach. I took the path to Seagull Beach.
I turned round one last time to look at the path that goes up to the
Marie Redonnet 175
Hermitage. That was when I saw a couple taking the path up.
Tomorrow, this evening perhaps if they walk quickly, they'll get to the
waterfalls, they'll go up to the cave. They'll find Rose. Perhaps they'll
decide to move in to the Hermitage and reopen the souvenir shop, now
that the sign is back up?
When I arrived at Seagull Beach, I got straight into the Buick. As

soon as I lay down on the back seat, I lost consciousness. I don't know
how long it was before I came to again. The seat of the Buick is stained
with blood. The blood is still flowing. It's bad to lose so much blood.
What a state the Buick's in. It's all rusted and now the back seat's
stained with blood. The seagulls have managed to tear through the hood
with their beaks. They've taken over the Buick. They're all over the
front seat, there are lots of them squashed up beside me on the back
seat, there are some on the hood looking at me through the windscreen,
looking at the blood. The seagulls would keep me warm if I wasn't so
cold. I'm shivering with cold.
I pulled myself up a bit to look at the beach. The window's dirty, the
sea looks dirty through the window. I can see a big white yacht anchored
just opposite the Buick. I've never seen such a big yacht. I can't see
anything written on the yacht. The hull is an immaculate white without a
single letter painted on it. I have no way of finding out the name of the
yacht. I'm still losing blood. There's a mist in front of my eyes. The
yacht is getting fainter and fainter. I call Yem's name as I used to do in
the Buick. But today isn't Sunday. Sunday is my birthday, I'll be sixteen.
Where has Yem got to with the Fairy Queen? Did he get to the end of
the channel? I really would have liked to tell him about Rose.
The wind has got up. The yacht is sailing away from Seagull Beach. I
watched it for a long time disappearing further and further out to sea.
The wind is whipping up the sand on the beach. There are no traces on
the beach because the wind is wiping out all the traces. The seagulls
took off all together in a single flight. They've abandoned the Buick.
The sea is as empty as Seagull Beach. I'm alone in the Buick, all alone
now that the seagulls have flown off high in the sky, a long way up. The
windscreen, the side-windows and the rear window are getting covered
in a fine layer of sand. I can't see the beach any more, nor the sea, nor the
sky, nor the gulls. The mist in front of my eyes is getting thicker and
thicker. I can't even see the blood on the seat. I can't see anything any
more, anything at all except Rose wrapped in my wedding-veil in the
Fairy Cave.
Bibliography
For bibliographies relating to individual writers please consult the sections

devoted to each.
Albistur, Maite and Daniel Armogathe, Histoire du jeminisme franr;ais du

moyen age anos jours (Paris: Editions des femmes, 1977).
Atack, Margaret and Phil Powrie (eds), Contemporary French Fiction by
Women: Feminist Perspectives (Manchester and New York: Manchester
University Press, 1990).
Badinter, Elisabeth, L' Amour en plus: Histoire de I' amour maternel XVI/e-XXe
siecle (Paris: Flammarion, 1980); The Myth of Motherhood, trans. by R.
DeGaris (London: Condor, 1981).
Battersby, Christine, Gender and Genius: Towards a Feminist Aesthetics
(London: The Women's Press, 1989).
Beauvoir, Simone de, Le deuxieme Sexe, 2 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1949); The
Second Sex, trans. by H.M. Parshley (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986).
Bessiere, Jean, Creation romanesque et sociodynamique culturelle: Les prix
litteraires de 1974 (Paris: Lettres Modemes, 1981).
Bonvoisin, S-M. and Maignien, M., La Presse feminine (Paris: Armand Colin,
1986).
Brasey, Edouard, L' Effet Pivot (Paris: Editions Ramsay, 1987).
Braidotti, Rosi, Patterns of Dissonance (Oxford: Polity Press, 1991).
Bree, Germaine, Women Writers in France: Variations on a Theme (New
Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1973).
Burke, Carolyn Greenstein, 'Report from Paris: Women's Writing and the
Women's Movement', Signs, vol. 3 (1978), pp. 843-55.
Caute, David, The Year of the Barricades (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1988).
Chodorow, Nancy, The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the
Sociology of Gender (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978).
Chodorow, Nancy, Feminism and Psychoanalytic Theory (Oxford: Polity Press,
1989).
Cixous, Helene, 'Le Rire de la meduse', L'Arc, no. 61 (1975), pp. 39-54; 'The
Laugh of the Medusa', trans. by K. and P. Cohen, in New French Feminisms,
ed. by Elaine Marks and Isabelle de Courtivron (Brighton: Harvester, 1980),
pp. 254--64.
Cixous, Helene, 'Extreme Fidelity', in Writing Differences: Readings from the
Seminar of Helene Cixous, ed. by Susan Sellers (Milton Keynes: Open
University Press, 1988), pp. 9--36.
Cixous, Helene, Madeleine Gagnon and Annie Leclerc, La Venue a I' ecriture
(Paris: Union Generale d'Editions, 1977).
176
Bibliography 177
Compagnon, Antoine, 'The Diminishing Canon of French Literature in

America', Stanford French Review, vol. 15 (1991), pp. 103-15.
Copley, Anthony, Sexual Moralities in France 1780-1980: New ideas on the
Family, Divorce, and Homosexuality (London and New York: Routledge,
1989).
Dallery, Arleen B., 'The Politics of Writing (the) Body (ecriture feminine)', in
Alison Jaggar and Susan Bordo (eds), Gender' Body/Knowledge: Feminist
Reconstructions of Being and Knowing (New Brunswick and London:
Rutgers University Press, 1989), pp. 52~7.
Didier, Beatrice, L' Ecriture-Femme (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,
1981).
Duchen, Claire, Feminism in France from May '68 to Mitterrand (London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986).
Duchen, Claire (ed.), French Connections: Voices from the Women's Movement
in France (London: Hutchinson, 1987).
Dudovitz, Resa, The Myth of the Superwoman: Women's Bestsellers in France
and in the United States (London and New York: Routledge, 1990).
Duplessis, Rachel Blau, Writing Beyond the Ending: Narrative Strategies of
Twentieth-Century Women Writers (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1985).
Duras, Marguerite and Xaviere Gauthier, Les Parleuses (Paris: Minuit, 1974);
trans. by Katherine Jensen (Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1987).
Fanon, Frantz, Peau noire et masques blancs (Paris: Seuil, 1952); Black Skin,
White Masks, trans. by Charles Markmann (London: MacGibbon & Kee,
1968).
Foucault, Michel, Folie et deraison: Histoire de lafolie al'dge classique (Paris:
Gallimard, 1961); Madness and Civilisation: A History of Insanity in the Age
of Reason (London: Tavistock, 1967).
Gallop, Jane, Thinking Through the Body (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1988).
Garcia, Irma, Promenade femmiliere: Recherches sur l' ecriture feminine (Paris:
des femmes, 1981).
Garcin, Jerome (ed.), Le Dictionnaire: Litterature franr;aise contemporaine
(Paris: Fran~ois Bourin, 1988).
Gelfand, Elissa and Virginia Thorndike Rules, French Feminist Criticism:
Women, Language and Literature. An Annotated Bibliography (New York
and London: Garland Publishing, 1985).
Grosz, Elizabeth, Sexual Subversions: Three French Feminists (Sydney: Allen
& Unwin, 1989).
Groult, Benoite, Le Feminisme au masculin (Paris: DenoeVGonthier, 1977).
Guggenheim, Michel (ed.) Women in French Literature (Saratoga: Anma Libri,
1988).
Hall, Colette, Janice Morgan and Carol Snyder (eds), Redefining Autobiography
in Twentieth-Century Women's Fiction: An Essay Colletion (New York:
Garland, 1991).
Hamon, Herve and Patrick Rotman, Les lntellocrates: Expedition en haute
intelligentsia (Paris: Ramsay, 1981).
Heilbrun, Carolyn, Writing a Woman's Life (London: The Women's Press, 1989).
Hemnann, Claudine, Les Voleuses de langue (Paris: des femmes, 1976).

Irigary, Luce, Speculum: De I' autre femme (Paris: Minuit, 1974); Speculum of
the Other Woman, trans. by Gillian C. Gill (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1985).
Irigary, Luce, Ce Sexe qui n' en est pas un (Paris: Minuit, 1977); This Sex Which
Is Not One, trans. by Catherine Porter and Carolyn Burke (Ithaca: Cornell
Irigary, Luce, Ethique de Ia difference sexuelle (Paris: Minuit, 1984).
Jacobus, Mary, Reading Woman: Essays in Feminist Criticism (London:
Methuen, 1986).
Jardine, Alice, Gynesis: Configurations of Woman and Modernity (Ithaca and
London: Cornell University Press, 1985).
Jardine, Alice and Anne Menke, (eds), Shifting Scenes: Interviews on Women,
Writing and Politics in Post '68 France (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1991).
Jensen, Jane, 'Representations of Difference: The Varieties of French
Feminism', New Left Review, no. 180 (1990), pp. 127-60.
Jones, Ann Rosalind, 'Writing the Body: Towards an Understanding of
'l'ecriture feminine" in The New Feminist Criticism: Essays on Women,
Literature and Theory, ed. Elaine Showalter (London: Virago 1986),
pp. 361-77.
King, Adele, French Women Novelists: Defining A Female Style (London:
Macmillan, 1989).
Kristeva, Julia, La Revolution du langage poetique (Paris: Seuil, 1974);
Revolution in Poetic Language, trans. by Margaret Waller (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1984).
Kristeva, Julia, 'Women's time', in Toril Moi (ed.), The Kristeva Reader
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), pp. 187-213.
Kristeva, Julia, Solei/ Noir: Depression et Melancholie (Paris: Gallimard, 1987);
Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia, trans. Leon S. Roudiez (New York:
Kristeva, Julia, Etrangers a nous-memes (Paris: Favard, 1988); Strangers to
Ourselves, trans. by Leon S. Roudiez (New York and Hemel Hempstead:
Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991 ).
Lamar, Celita, Our Voices, Ourselves: Women writing for the French Theatre
(New York: Peter Lang, 1991).
Laubier, Claire (ed.), The Condition of Women in France: A Documentary
Anthology (London and New York: Routledge, 1990).
Lebrun, Jean-Claude and Claude Prevost, Nouveaux Territoires Romanesques
(Paris: Messidor, 1990).
Lecarme, Jacques and Bruno Vercier, La Litterature en France depuis 1968
(Paris: Bordas, 1982).
Lechte, John, Julia Kristeva (London and New York: Routledge, 1990).
Marks, Elaine and Isabelle De Courtivron (eds), New French Feminisms
(Brighton: Harvester, 1981 ).
Michel, Andree, Le Feminisme (Paris: PUF, 1979).
Miller, Nancy K., Subject to Change: Reading Feminist Writing (New York:
Bibliography 179
Mills, Sarah, Lynne Pearce, Sue Spaull and Elaine Millard (eds), Feminist
Readings/Feminists Reading (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf,
1989).
Moi, Toril, Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory (London:
Methuen, 1985).
Moi, Toril (ed.), French Feminist Thought (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987).
Monteith, Moira (ed.), Women's Writing: A Challenge to Theory (New York: St
Martin's Press, 1986).
Montefiore, Jan, Feminism and Poetry: Language, Experience, Identity in
Women'sWriting (London: Pandora, 1987).
Noel Evans, Martha, Masks of Tradition: Women and the Politics of Writing in
Twentieth-Century France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987).
Peyre, Henri, French Novelists of Today (New York and Oxford: Oxford
Plaza, Monique, Ecriture et Folie (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,
1986).
Poulain, Martine, Pour une sociologie de Ia lecture: Lectures et lecteurs dans Ia
France contemporaine (Paris: Editions du Cercle de La Librairie, 1988).
Reader, Keith, Intellectuals and the Left in France Since I968 (London:
Macmillan, 1987).
Reynolds, Sian, 'Whatever Happened to the French Ministry of Women's
Rights?', Modern and Contemporary France, no. 33 (1988), pp. 4-9.
Sellers, Susan, Writing Differences: Readings from the Seminar of Helene
Cixous (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1988).
Sellers, Susan, Language and Sexual Difference: Feminist Writing in France
(London: Macmillan, 1991).
Shiach, Morag, Helene Cixous: A Politics of Writing (London and New York:
Routledge, 1991).
Schuwer, Philippe, Editeurs d' aujourd' hui (Paris: Retz, 1987).
Showalter, Elaine, The New Feminist Criticism: Essays on Women, Literature
and Theory (London: Virago, 1986).
Snitow, Ann, Christine Stansell and Sharon Thompson, Desire: The Politics of
Sexuality (London: Virago, 1984).
Spender, Dale, The Writing or the Sex ? Or Why you don't have to read
women's writing to know it's no good (New York and Oxford: Pergamon
Press, 1989).
Sullerot, Evelyne, La Presse feminine (Paris: Armand Colin, 1963).
Sutherland John, Fiction and the Fiction Industry (London: Athlone Press,
1978).
Tilby, Michael (ed.), Beyond the Nouveau Roman: Essays on the Contemporary
French Novel (New York: Berg, 1990).
Todd, Janet, Feminist Literary History (Oxford: Polity Press, 1988).
Tondeur, Claire-Lise (ed.), Voix de femmes: Ecritures de femmes dans Ia
litterature franr;aise du XIX-XXe siecle (Lanham: University Press of
America, 1990).
Tristan Anne and Annie de Pisan, Histoires du MLF (Paris: Calmann-Levy,
1977).
VanRossum-Guyon, Fran~oise, 'Sur quelques aspects de l'ecriture feminine', in
Ecriture de Ia religion, Ecriture du roman, ed. by Charles Grivel (Lille:

Presses Universitaires de Lille, 1979).
Vessilier, Michele, Le Metier d' auteur (Paris: Dunod, 1982).
Ward-Jouve, Nicole, White Woman Speaks with Forked Tongue: Criticism as
Autobiography (London and New York: Routledge, 1991).
Weedon, Chris, Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1987).
Whitford, Margaret, Luce lrigary: Philosophy in the Feminine (London and
New York: Routledge, 1991).
Wilwerth, Evelyne, Visages de Ia litterature feminine (Brussels: P. Mardaga,
1986).
Wilcox, Helen, Keith McWatters, Ann Thompson and Linda Williams, (eds),
The Body and the Text: Helene Cixous, Reading and Teaching (Hemel
Hempstead and New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990).
Yourcenar, Marguerite, Discours de reception de Madame Marguerite
Yourcenar a l' Academie Fran~aise (Paris: Gallimard, 1981 ).
Special numbers of magazines and periodicals
Les Temps Modernes, 'Les femmes s'entetent', nos 333-4 (April-May 1974).
Tel Que/, 'Lutte de femmes', no. 58 (summer 1974).
Les Nouvelles litteraires, 'Des femmes en ecriture', 26 May, 1976.
La Revue des Sciences humaines, 'Ecriture, femininite, feminisme', no. 168
(1977).
Tel Que/, 'Recherches feminines', no, 74 (winter 1977).
L' Esprit Createur, 'Contemporary Women Writers in France', no. 19 (summer
1979).
Signs, 'French Feminist Theory', vol. 7 (autumn 1981).
Feminist Studies, 'The French Connection', vol. 7 (summer 1981).
Magazine litteraire, 'Femmes: une autre ecriture?', January 1982.
Yale French Studies, 'The Politics of Tradition: Placing Women in French
Literature, vol. 75 (1988).
La Quinzaine litteraire,'Ou va Ia litterature?', no. 532, 16--31 May 1989.
The Review of Contemporary Fiction, 'New French Fiction', vol. 9, no, 1, spring
1989.
Index
abortion 6, 7, 14,27,68 des femmes 16-17, 18-19,22,56,

Academie Fran~aise 18, 19, 21, 29 112
Algeria 16,30,32,33,90 Desforges, Regine 29
Apostrophes 23-4, 29 domestic tasks 69, 132
Ardener, Edwin and Shirley 25 Doubrovsky, Serge 29
Amothy, Christine 28-9 Duras, Marguerite 1, 3, 4, 10,
autobiograpy 14-15, 23-4, 25, 67, 19-20,23,26,28,29, 161,165
134-5
Avril, Nicole 29 economic factors 1, 5-6, 17-18, 109
ecriture feminine 9-12, 27, 28,
Badinter, Elisabeth 15, 28, 73 52-4, 113
Balint, Michael 52, 56 Emaux, Annie 8, 14-15, 22-3, 27,
Barthes, Roland 10, 29, 72 28,29,67-87
Beauvoir, Simone de 3, 7-8, 15, 23, Etcherelli, Claire 15-16, 88-108
24,27,28, 71,73,89
Beck, Beatrice 28 fairy-tale 22, 24, 53-4, 55, 164
Beckett, Samuel 161, 166 Fanon, Franz 13
Bernheim, Emmanuele 29 fatherhood 6, 12, 23, 67, 68, 69-70,
Bienne, Gisele 17 160, 162
Billetdoux, Raphaele 29 Femina prize 4, 16, 20, 29, 89
body 9-12, 13,27,28,31,32,51-5, feminism in France 1, 3, 6-9, 12,
131-3, 135 14, 15, 16,18-19,21
Bourdieu, Pierre 15, 70 Flaubert, Gustave 67
Bragance, Anne 29 Foucault, Michel 13, 67
Fouque, Antoinette 8, 18
Cardinal, Marie 2, 13, 22, 3(}-50 French-Canadian 28, 33, 111
Cerf, Murielle 29 French, Marilyn 14
Chapsal, Madeleine 29
Charles-Roux, Edmonde 28 Gagnon, Madeleine 10
Chawaf, Chantal 10, 11-12, 15, 17, Garreta, Anne 24
21-2,24,26-9,51-66 Gauthier, Judith 26
Cixous, Helene 9-10, 11, 17, 22, Genet, Jean 70
29,53 Germain, Sylvie 29
class 4, 7, 15-16,23, 67, 68, 69, 70, Goncourt prize and academy 3, 19,
88,92 20,21,26
Colette 3, 17,26 Groult, Benoite and Flora 18, 28
Collange, Christine 29
Hebert, Anne 29
Debray, Regis 24 Hyvrard, Jeanne 10, 13-14,22,
Delay, Florence 29 109-30
181
182 Index
higary,Luce 9,27 publishing 7, 16--19, 20--2, 25, 28,

54
Jong, Erica 14 Prou,Suzanne 29
Joyce, James 29,135
realism 14-16, 55
Kristeva, Julia 9, 23, 25
Redonnet, Marie 2, 24-5, 160--75
Lacan,Jacques 6,8,52 Renaudotprize 20,22,29
Lafayette, Madame de 3, 17 Reyes, Alina 24
language and women 9-10, 11-12, Rihoit, Catherine 29
14, 15, 18,32,50-4, 70,112-13, Rimbaud, Arthur 31, 161
131, 161 Rivoyre, Christine de 26, 29
Langfus, Anna 28 Robbe-Grillet, Alain 4, 23
Le Doeuff, Michele 8, 27 Rochefort, Christiane 1, 4-5, 22, 28
Leclerc, Annie 6, 9-10, 13, 15, 22, romance plot 16, 93
23,29,32,131-59 Roudy, Yvette 18
Leduc, Violette 23 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 22
Levi-Strauss, Claude 24
Sagan, Fran~oise 4, 5, 29
madness 12-14,54,109-10,114 Sallenave, Danielle 29
Maillet, Antonine 28 Sand, George 3, 29
Mallet-Jorris, Fran~ois 4, 29 Santos, Emma 10
marriage 15, 68 Sarraute, Nathalie 1, 3, 4, 23, 26
masculinity 11, 26,113,131,136 seventies (1970s) 7-9, 16--17, 19, 22
maternity 11-12, 15, 28, 132, 163 sexuality 3, 4, 5, 11, 22, 52, 55, 68,
May 1968, events of 1, 2, 5-8, 16, 72, 135, 166
19,92 sixties (1960s) 3-7, 16, 69, 91
Medicis prize 5, 20, 28 Sollers, Philippe 23, 29
menstruation 10, 132, 163 Spender, Dale 29
mother-daughter relationship Stael, Madame de 17, 29
11-12, 13, 14, 31, 33, 113, 115
motherhood 14, 15, 68-9, 135 tarot 114, 160
Miller, Nancy 2 Therame, Victoria 17
Minuit, Editions de 13, 22, 109, Tournier, Michel 29
111, 161 Triolet, Elsa 28
Mitterrand, Fran~ois 18
Mnouchkine, Ariane 22 unconscious 25,51,52-4,55,161
New Novel (Nouveau Roman) 4, 23
Virago 19
Perrein, Michele 29
Pivot, Bernard 24, 29 Ward-Jouve, Nicole 21,29
Pleiade 3, 26 Wittig, Monique 1, 5, 12, 22, 28, 56
prostitution 114, 162 womb 11, 14, 53, 71, 112, 113-4,
Psychanalyse et Politique 8-9, 13, 163, 165
16
psychoanalysis 6, 8, 12-14, 22, 30, Yourcenar, Marguerite 3, 4, 19, 20,
31,32,33,52-5,160 21,24,29

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editorial advisory group

Phillida Bunckle, Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand;

As far as possible books adopt an international perspective incorporating

A list ofpublished titles follows overleaf

Christy Adair Women and Dance

All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission

No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or

Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to

First published 1993 by

ISBN 978-0-333-49005-1 ISBN 978-1-349-23002-0 (eBook)

Typeset by Expo Holdings Sdn Bhd, Malaysia

Series Standing Order (Women in Society)

1. Introduction: women's writing and the

6. Jeanne Hyvrard 109

7. Annie Leclerc 131

8. Marie Redonnet 160

Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following for permission to

1988, 1983, 1981, 1978 by Editions Gallimard; Editions Denoel for

French women's writing, which has historically tended to remain on the

The model of the writer

writing in a period where a new range of discourses about women and

published in 1966 and 1967 were given a dismissive critical reception.

on to write Les Petits Enfants du siecle (Josyane and the Welfare)

Change in the 1960s

The first stirrings of feminist activity emerged in late 1968 when,

Embodying female difference

The idea of female difference, so central to this strand of what, from an

in the project of bringing about what Psych et Po called 'the Revolution

Cixous's call to women to write their bodies; both women were

Chantal Chawaf, one of the writers represented in this collection and

identification with woman'. 33 Women, on the other hand, if they avoid

Psychoanalysis and madness

The crucial importance of psychoanalysis as a body of theory to a

evident. It had also gained a strong hold in France as a clinical practice,

become increasingly apparent. Ernaux has explained that it was when

Publishing in the 1970s

sphere of creativity. It advertised itself as a 'publishing house by and for

Into the 1980s

Women writers triumphant?

Conceding the assumption that literary genius is spread randomly

standing with elogious reviews from such institutionalised publications

fiction, sociology and autobiography in which she attempts to recreate

rapidly on Saturday morning. The identification between writer and

more 'magical' stream of writing, while the darker underside of her

1. Nevertheless, I am happy to report that since my original set of choices

Miller, Subject to Change: Reading Feminist Writing (New York: Columbia

divested of any regressive immersion in the maternal fusional body',

Arnothy 1980 and Michele Perrein 1984; Renaudot, Danielle Sallenave

Born in 1929 into a family of white French settlers in Algeria,

Autrement dit ('In Other Words'), published in 1977,

viewed as negative. The themes of psychoanalysis, of writing

on 14 June 1988 in which Marie Cardinal participated and which

Marie Cardinal bibliography

Ecoutez Ia mer (Paris: Julliard, 1962).

Prefaces, articles and interviews by Cardinal

'La Rentree des prix', Rouge, 22 November 1977.

'Preface' to La Sexualite des femmes by Franc;:oise Dalto (Paris:

Books and articles on Cardinal's work and selected reviews

Bettelheim, Bruno, 'Preface' and 'Afterword' to The Words to Say It,

and Phil Powrie (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990),

Les Mots pour le dire (The Words to Say It)*

your crises. Everything is important: noises, colors, odors, gestures,