چکیده:
Dans son troisième roman d’inspiration autobiographique publié en 1981, La Femme gelée, Annie Ernaux fait entendre la voix d’une épouse bourgeoise emprisonnée dans son cancan de vie insatisfaisante et dépossédée de ses aspirations. Issu d’un milieu modeste, ce personnage féminin qui accède, grâce à son mariage, à la classe bourgeoise, prend conscience, au fil des années, des clivages entre les sexes qui avantagent l’homme en termes de pouvoir et de liberté. En décrivant, dans les détails, le quotidien morne et routinier de la jeune épouse et mère marqué par le partage inégal du travail domestique, l’écrivaine met en scène les limites de l’émancipation féminine durant la seconde moitié du XXᵉ siècle et remet en question les stéréotypes de genre et les modèles parentaux véhiculés au sein de la famille et dans la société. L’analyse que nous ferons du texte d’Ernaux, à la lumière des études de genre, nous permettra de mettre en évidence les causes et les conséquences de la soumission de l’héroïne au modèle féminin imposé par le système patriarcal. Nous démontrerons que, par le biais de cette histoire à portée universelle, l’auteure engagée dénonce les normes sociales et des mentalités qui imposent, au quotidien, des rapports inégaux entre homme et femme au sein du couple et dans la société. En disséquant la réalité de la vie de couple dans les années 1960 et 1970, Ernaux offre enfin aux lecteurs un témoignage socio-historique sur les difficultés de la lutte féminine pour l’égalité des genres.
— انی ارنو در داستان خودزندگینامه خود با نام زن یخزده از زبان یک شخصیت زن صحبت میکند که هر روز، روابط نابرابر دردناکی
را بین زن و مرد تجربه میکند. این روایت، به دنبال گذر زمانی از کودکی تا بزرگسالی، امکان تبیین سرنوشت دختر جوانی را فراهم میکند
که مشتاق ازادی می باشد اما پس از ازدواج، خود را منزوی از دنیا وگریزان از یک نقش اجتماعی سنتی مییابد. این داستان که در سال
1981 منتشر شده است، فضایی را در اختیار نویسنده قرار میدهد تا بتواند تحولات وضعیت زنان در جامعه فرانسه در نیمه دوم قرن بیستم
را مورد بررسی قرار دهد. تحلیل حاضر، نشان میدهد که چگونه از طریق این اثر ادبی متعهد، ارنو، تجربه مشترک زنان در دهههای 1960
و 1970 را بازتولید میکند تا دشواریهایی را به تصویر بکشد که انها در مغلوب کردن پدیدههای قدرت و سلطه، در روابط بین زوجها و
جامعه مردسالار دارند. کلیشههای جنسیتی که توسط شخصیتهای این رمان بازتولید شدهاند، به نویسنده این امکان را میدهد تا از
تقسیمبندیهای تعریفشده اجتماعی بین مردان و زنان که منجر به نابرابریها میشود، رمزگشایی کند.
In her third autobiographical-inspired novel published in 1981, La Femme gelee,
the French writer Annie Ernaux gives a voice to a wife imprisoned in her unsatisfying life and
dispossessed of her aspirations. Coming from a modest background, this female character who, thanks
to her marriage, gains access to the middle class, becomes aware, over the years, of the cleavages
between the genders which favor man in terms of power and freedom. By describing, in detail, the boring
and routine daily life of the young wife and mother marked by the unequal sharing of domestic work,
the writer highlights the limits of female emancipation during the second half of the twentieth century
and tackles the question of gender stereotypes and parental models conveyed within the family and in
society. Our analysis of Ernaux's text, in the light of gender studies, will allow us to identify the causes
and consequences of the protagonist's submission to the female model imposed by the patriarchal
system. We will demonstrate that, through this story of universal significance, the author denounces the
social norms and mentalities which impose, on a daily basis, unequal relationships between men and
women within the couple and in society.
In this text, the narration, following the chronological transition from childhood to adulthood, allows
us to see the reversal of the destiny of a young girl eager for freedom who finds herself imprisoned in
her life as a wife and mother. If the narrator grew up in a modest environment, surrounded by parents
who divide up household chores and work, it is during her process of socialization outside the home that
she will become aware of gender stereotypes conveyed by collective thought. Indeed, we learn that it is
at school and with the families of her friends that she will become aware of the divisions that exist
between men and women and that she has been brought up in an “abnormal manner”, without respect
for differences by parents who form an “atypical couple”. Realizing that she does not receive the same
education at home as her friends, the protagonist fears being rejected by society because she “lacks
something”. She tries to make up for it by following the example of her friend Brigitte who is proud to
be able to follow, from an early age, in the footsteps of her mother who takes care of her house perfectly
well. As a teenager, encouraged by her friends, the narrator wishes to become “beautiful”, “sweet” and
“feminine” to please boys, and applies herself to following the advice she reads in magazines. Although
pursuing higher education destines her to become independent, the student is obsessed with marriage,
which seems to her, like most of the young women around her, “obligatory and sacred”. She gets married
very quickly to another student from the middle class, thinking that this one will support her in her
career. Once settled into her relationship, the narrator cannot count on the help of her companion to
organize their life together. On a daily basis, she has to “learn the role” of a married woman. The
appropriation of this new identity does not come without sacrifices. The young woman recounts her
difficult daily life as a wife and young mother where she is the only one to take care of her child and do housework.
By dissecting the reality of married life in the 1960s and 1970s, Ernaux offers readers a socio-historical testimony on the difficulties of women's struggle for gender equality. La Femme gelee is an intimate story written in the first person singular by a narrator who confides, in a familiar register and without reservations, on the difficulties of detaching herself from the surrounding social discourse which requires individuals to follow models of behavior. The story told by the main character helps to account for the weight of stereotypes and the submission of women to the female model imposed by the patriarchal system that Ernaux presents throughout his text to denounce and reject them. We find in this novel a violent indictment against the unequal sharing of household chores and “domestic enslavement” of the woman who has become “the keeper of the home” in charge of “the subsistence of human beings and the upkeep of things”. The main character's speech echoes the reasoning of Simone de Beauvoir who criticizes dominant representations of women and motherhood in a patriarchal society. Not wishing to give up her professional plans, the narrator redoubles her efforts to continue her higher education and become a teacher while taking care of her family. The fact that she is not supported by her husband drives a wedge between her and her partner, and it is a still young but disillusioned woman that we find at the end of the novel. If she denounces in a long monologue the inequalities between herself and her husband, however, she does not have the means to revolt. Over the years, she finds herself alienated by the words and injunctions repeated to her by her teachers, her friends, the mothers of her friends, her husband and her in-laws. To refer to the cleavage between men and women, the narrator uses the third person singular and the substantives “mom” and “dad” which reduce the characters to their roles. This choice allows her to generalize her experience, since her daily life, which she describes in detail, is that experienced by the majority of women during the second half of the twentieth century. She notes, bitterly, that there is a dichotomy between the roles assigned to each of the parents, the father being the one who commands and who works outside the home, and the mother being the one who takes care of her child and who does domestic work alone. The end of the novel presents a thirty-year-old wife tired of opposing this traditional difference in roles between husband and wife without being able to live with “a joyous acceptance of roles”. The desires of the young teacher are extinguished and every day she feels more and more isolated from the world “by the famous halo of the married woman”. She is this transparent being who looks like all those sad women who horrify her at the hairdressing salon, she is “a frozen woman”.
Annie Ernaux has often expressed the wish to change mentalities by writing to speak freely about the condition of women in texts such as Les Armoires vides (1974), L’Evenement (2000) or more recently Memoire de fille (2016). Her third novel, La Femme gelee, is an autobiographical tale that has enabled the writer to offer readers a precious testimony on the condition of women in France during the second half of the twentieth century which, despite major advances in the field of women's rights did not lead to equality between women and men. Published in 1981, this text is proof that many cleavages between the sexes remained in French society during the 1960s and 1970s, women finding themselves forced to imitate stereotypical behaviors as the narrator of La Femme gelee does. By criticizing the dominant representations of women and motherhood, the author offers readers an engaged discourse that consists of saying in order to react. This novel, which makes it possible to denounce the phenomena of power and domination, announces the following books of Ernaux.