In July, Vietnamese Women’s Publishing House released nationwide the novel Fille (roughly translated: Daughter) by author Camille Laurens – one of Grandmaster” of contemporary French literature.
Daughter in turn reveals the fate of women through the character Laurence Barraqué, who faces changes in life. French society for 40 years.
Born in 1959 into a middle-class family, Laurence Barraqué grew up with his older sister in the city of Rouen (Northern France), his father was a doctor and his mother worked. housewife.
From a very early age, through language and parents, Laurence understood that a girl’s position in life was always lower than that of a boy. By the 1990s, when she became a mother grapples with the question “What does it mean to be a girl?” and what lessons she should or should not teach her beloved daughter.
In the first half of the book through Laurence’s concerns the reader sees that a person is not born alreadya girl but becomes a girl. p>
From the moment of birth when Laurence’s gender was announced to her parents’ dismay it cast a shadow over her relationship with her parents. As Laurence matures, he continues to expose the way society defines the limits and underestimates girls through language.
The author changed the narrator to reflect the level of self-control. controls the girl’s life.
Laurence’s childhood is described in the second person: “I discovered my family with my ears, my eyes and my touch. First of all is “mama”. “Mama” is the first word I learned and is the name of a woman”.
Around the age of 3 – 8 Laurence asserts herself The strong first person predominates: “My first memory opened with a scream as if I had woken up from a nightmare after a deep sleep.”
And then there’s the third person to show Laurence’s sense of detachment after facing sexual assault, the aftershocks of which lasted from the age of 9 into his early teens:< /p>
“Chandsome princes disappeared from thedream of the magical house, too. The night of she was full of insects. Cockroaches and spiders everywhere.”
Finally the first person returns to Laurence’s own awakening of desire and control.
But then the second person returns when Laurence is married and pregnant at the age of 30. At this point, Laurence is vulnerable and loses control over his own body and will: “You will give birth to me baby in the city where you were born. Your father will be very happy.”.
When Laurence’s daughter Alice enters the “stage” of life the “I” reappears – Laurence becomes a loving mother lovingly surrounds her daughter.
She talks about each stage of Alice’s childhood as if it were her own. But this time the focus is not on how society discriminates against gender but on anxiety worried about Alice’s refusal to be a girl in her language, dress, behavior, and even her gender.
Girl is considered an interesting work. unique and interesting. Camille Laurens uses three-person narration to emphasize the thoughts, feelings and transition from a girl to a woman.
This helps to express in a unique way. authentic and unique female experience in the 20th and 21st centuries. To some extent, Laurence has become a representative of the life stories of countless women.
Camille Laurens’ real name is Laurence Ruel-Mézières, born in 1957 in Dijon. She taught in Rouen and then in Morocco since 1984. Since September 2011 she has taught at the Paris Institute of Political Studies.
In 1994 she experienced tragedy when she lost a child. the origin of the work Philippe (1995) and then Cet absent-là. Through these two works, she questioned the relationship between literature and truth, moving closer to the “écriture de soi” genre (pseudo-autobiography).
Her next novels Dans ces bras-là won the Prix Femina and Prix Renaudot des lycéens in 2000; L’Amour roman Ni toi ni moi and Romance nerveuse – the desire to express personal truth based on the constant demands of style and form.
The novel Celle que vous croyez (2015) asks questions about new unexpected forms of love in the age of social networks and dating websites .
Camille Laurens has also published essays, notably Quelques-uns (1999) an essay on the problem of words. Several of her novels have been adapted into plays and her work Celle que vous croyez was adapted into phim in 2019.
Since 2002 Camille Laurens wrote articles for various daily newspapers: Le Grain des mots L‘Humanité Le Monde Liberation. She was a member of the Prix Femina jury (2007 – 2019) and is currently on the Prix Goncourt jury.
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