La récriture au féminin : La Femme rompue de Simone de Beauvoir et La Femme gelée d’Annie Ernaux

Abstract

Annie Ernaux is one of the French successors of Simone de Beauvoir, whose work and ideas have greatly influenced her. Reading The Second Sex (Le Deuxième Sexe) was a revelation for Annie Ernaux, who wisely refers to this text several times throughout her work. A resemblance both at formal and thematic levels can be distinguished in several of their books. As for the female question, we see throughout the reading of A Frozen Woman (La Femme gelée) by Annie Ernaux, the echo, even the traces, of The Woman Destroyed (La Femme rompue) by Simone de Beauvoir. What could be the reason for a writer to choose – seemingly voluntarily – content previously covered by another? Much more than tackling the same topics to update them, women’s writing seems to resume, even repeat itself when dealing (from a new angle), with women’s issues that are far from being acquired. In this article, two books of the two authors dealing with the female question will be compared from the point of view of intertextuality and female writing with the aim of understanding the process of rewriting that is revealed in the work of female authors.