Ernaux: La Place and La Honte

Abstract

Annie Ernaux's La Place has undoubtedly received more critical attention than any other publication by her. Much of this attention analyses the work alongside its most obvious sister text, Une femme, as exemplified in Loraine Day and Tony Jones' seminal La Place and Une femme (Glasgow, University of Glasgow French and German Publications, 1990) and Marie-France Savéan's more pedestrian La Place et Une femme d'Annie Ernaux (Paris, Gallimard Foliothèque, 1994). Alison S. Fell's unusual pairing of La Place with the lesser known La Honte is therefore a welcome one, and compares these texts' differing treatments of broadly similar topics, charting developments over the 13 year interval separating their respective publications. As Fell remarks: ‘La Honte is thus a continuation of the quest begun by the narrator in La Place, and the existence of the two texts has important ramifications for an account of the methodology and goals of Ernaux's writing’ (p. 16). Fell rightly identifies Ernaux's key narrative trait as one of constantly revisiting old haunts, and the parallel examination of the works' formal and thematic similarities (similarities covered in Fell's chapter titles include genre; education and class; language and style; and, finally, family secrets) leads to a highly fruitful series of analogies and, importantly, contrasts. While this study inevitably treats areas already covered in earlier Ernaux criticism, it also contributes insightful analyses to well-worn critical furrows (Fell is particularly lucid in detailing the relationship between the role of representativeness/objectivity and individual/subjectivity in Ernaux's writing), and provides a stimulating account of previously neglected areas in Ernaux's writing (such as the important role of descriptions of photographs throughout her corpus). In addition, Ernaux: La Place and La Honte provides much useful background information in the form of literary, historical or sociological contextualization, as exemplified in its discussions of the French education system or in the very pertinent summary of Pierre Bourdieu's work. Another key strength of this text is its judicious use of both well-established and more recent secondary criticism: Fell's bibliography is well-chosen and up-to-date, and bibliographical references are employed productively throughout. Written in an accessible, comprehensive manner, this publication, in keeping with its classification as a critical guide, will be of particular use to undergraduate students with a limited knowledge of Annie Ernaux's corpus and the secondary literature relating to it. As if in response to existent Ernaux criticism and as justification for her own revisiting of a well-established Ernaux favourite, Fell concludes: ‘[T]his belief in the inability of a single written text to convey the complete or final “truth” of an individual or of the past is a crucial element of Ernaux's autobiographical project, and one which is consistently demonstrated throughout La Place and La Honte’ (p. 81).