Elle, la mère par Emmanuel Chaussade

Abstract

Reviewed by: Elle, la mère par Emmanuel Chaussade Warren Motte Chaussade, Emmanuel. Elle, la mère. Minuit, 2021. ISBN 978-2-7073-4671-1. Pp. 94. When Tolstoy offered his famous remark about unhappy families, he was surely not thinking of the kind of family that Emmanuel Chaussade describes in this, his first novel. For the state of this family beggars the notion of unhappiness, so deeply is it marked by catastrophe of every imaginable sort. At ninety-four pages, Elle, la mère is clearly no Anna Karenina. Nonetheless, it brims with event, with character, and with stories. It focuses upon a mother and her son. Both are anonymous (though on two occasions we are encouraged to infer that the latter's name is "Gabriel"). The narrative point of view is that of the son, but the story is told in the third person, rather than the first, a technique that affords the son some distance, and likewise serves to keep we readers at a safe affective remove. The novel begins with the mother's funeral, at which the son is the lone mourner. The mood of the tale does not brighten in any significant way thereafter, as the son tries to understand who his mother actually was, seeking out her origins, her experience, and the source of the misery that bedeviled her, and that constitutes his principal inheritance. He understands that she spent her entire life in moral paralysis—"La mère est vivante à l'extérieur, morte à l'intérieur" (58)—and he wonders if he is not condemned to follow her example. He discovers a multigenerational story of neglect, indifference, violence, and abuse wherein men rape their sisters-in-law and mothers sexually abuse their sons. In some cases, this "Gabriel" is obliged to do a considerable amount of excavation to uncover these events, such is the way this family hushes its scandals. In other cases, the "secret" is right before his eyes, yet recognizing and acknowledging it nevertheless proves challenging. Others do not welcome the revelations of family secrets, however. When late in life the mother begins to tell hard truths about her family, the son's siblings take care to silence her, arranging for her to be interned in a psychiatric hospital: "À leurs yeux, elle est l'unique dépositaire de leur propre folie" (74). All this to say that there is very little light on the horizon of this novel, where things go from bad to worse in an unrelenting manner. Chaussade practices a very effective strategy of saturation here, using techniques of accretion and iteration to argue the persistence of wrongdoing in a family unwilling ever to confront and denounce it. The chronic nature of that dynamic suggests that it will indeed persist. However, Chaussade invites us to reflect upon the son's quest and its consequences. Though there is no question of definitive relief, one wonders whether the son may expect any therapeutic effect, however modest, beyond the most salient result of his inquiries, that is, a most difficult story, very well told. [End Page 256] Warren Motte University of Colorado Boulder Copyright © 2021 American Association of Teachers of French