Ernaux, Annie (b. 1940). French novelist. Ernaux's writing is strongly marked by her childhood and working-class origins in Normandy. Her early novels have strong feminist themes: Les Armoires vides (1974) is narrated by a student from a working-class background undergoing an abortion; Ce qu'ils disent ou rien (1977) has a younger female narrator who finds herself confronted one summer by hitherto unsuspected gender roles and sexual codes; La Femme gelée (1981) is the narrative of an intellectual married woman, again of humble social origins, whose ambitions and desires have been smothered by marriage and motherhood. ‘Je cherche ma ligne de fille et de femme’, writes the narrator, echoing Ernaux's project in examining the social and cultural meaning that her gender holds. With La Place (1981) and Une femme (1988) she takes a new direction, producing narratives which combine an autobiographical, historical, and social dimension. La Place focuses on her father, exploring her relationship with him and the abyss which her middle-class culture acquired through education has created between them. The text lovingly recreates her father's habits, tastes, and language. Une femme, written immediately after her mother's death, similarly evokes her mother's life, this time accompanied by the particular ambivalences of daughter-mother love and identification.
[Elizabeth Fallaize]
