Annie Ernaux's Understatement

Author(s): Warren Motte

Source: The French Review , Oct., 1995, Vol. 69, No. 1 (Oct., 1995), pp. 55-67
Published by: American Association of Teachers of French

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/396994

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THE FRENCH REVIEW, Vol. 69, No. 1, October 1995 Printed in U.S.A.

Annie Ernaux's Understatement

by Warren Motte

SINCE THE PUBLICATION OF Les Armoires vides in 1974, Annie Ernaux ha

established a place for herself in contemporary French literature as a dis
tinctive voice of the personal. In a body of work that now comprises seve
major volumes, she has deliberately put the specificity of autobiograph
and fiction on trial, interrogating traditional notions about the possibili-
ties and limits of those modes. Throughout her career, she has wagered on
a rare simplicity of style, an expressive austerity that has become in a
sense her writerly signature. I would like to examine that stylistic strateg
locally, as it is played out in La Place, the story of a woman's attempts to
come to terms with her father's death, with their life together, with th
concept of class in society and, finally, with the craft of writing.
La Place distinguishes itself from Ernaux's previous works in two
important ways. It is more apparently confessional than the texts that
precede it, animated by an anonymous je that continually questions the
theoretical dissociation of narrator and author.' Like Ernaux's other
works, La Place positions itself in the hybrid domain of autofiction,
pushes that discursive mode toward one of the boundaries of its ra
autobiography. The confessional character of La Place is complemen
by another group of reflexive gestures, as Ernaux stages, for the first ti
in her work, a sustained meditation on writing and its uses. More pa
ularly, she carefully elaborates a critical dimension in the text thr
which she examines her own writing, encouraging the reader to joi
that examination. Early in the text, she announces her narrative str
openly and frankly: "Aucune poesie du souvenir, pas de derision
lante. L'Ucriture plate me vient naturellement, celle-la meme que j'u
sais en &crivant autrefois a mes parents pour leur dire les nouv
essentielles" (24). The shape of her writing will be "flat," unembelli
without the sort of flourish that normally characterizes elegy. The n
of the "natural" is important here, as is that of the "essential"; Ern
intimates that she can account for the essential only through the na
eschewing artifice and transcendence, renouncing-in a word-po
She will tell her father's death through the language she used in her
ters to her parents. It is a language that belongs, in a sense, to them,
colors La Place from beginning to end. In the text's incipit Ernaux
that epistolary mode into play, announcing to her parents that she
55

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56 FRENCH REVIEW

passed her final e

j'etais professeur
tents pour moi"
says, simply, "C'e
effectively establ
In French, one m
mother's languag
according to Bern
pour en faire ent
the expression of
better term for t
which the Oxford
below the truth
term "meiosis," o
tionally conveyed
really is" (OED). D
that remains rhe
certain precise ef
ics extend 'meios
phatic statement
This sort of devi
rhetoric in La Pla
priates her moth
her own narrative
Ernaux describe
measured, studie
blazons the very
text: "Toute cette
glots, ma mere av
gestes s'accomplis
ordinaires" (14).
father's story, th
manner in which
very simply, with
aesthetic that ani
"Black" paintings
mal simplicity for
malism's apparen
expression can in
Speaking of Ame
cates the notion o
New York Minim
American traditi
fested in Shaker
Sanders Peirce and

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ERNAUX'S UNDERSTATEMENT 57

Sheeler, in the "scientific" realis

of Paul Strand and Walker Ev
Williams and Marianne Moore.
Other concerns appear to be co
ever the particular expressive m
that Ernaux insists upon in La P
otherwise dissimilar works as D
and Philip Glass's compositions
ness that one encounters in Ern
teristic of minimalist art (Co
artifacts present themselves as
largely renouncing metaphor an
astonishing quiddity about the
to economy, subtended by a co
lated in the following manner:
cal economy of artistic means
other values: completeness, for
ment" (1). The work of art shou
cution, ascetic in effect; in shor
involves a theoretical leap of fa
nify. The smallness of the obje
experience; the minimalist cred
closely, experience it more int
Arthur Saltzman argues more
forms "fortifications against e
of the artifact could make it mor
Finally, the minimalist gesture
ism (Goossen 168). That sort of
indeed Ernaux emphasizes it qu
Depuis peu, je sais que le roma
d'une vie soumise a la necessite
parti de l'art, ni de chercher a
d'I"mouvant". Je rassemblerai
pere, les faits marquants de sa
tence que j'ai aussi partagee. (24
The contract she offers to her
ary experience, unmediated by
mannerist stance is in itself a "
oric constitutes a new kind of r
it is important to realize that m
sitional in nature; it sets itself a
out agonistically in opposition t
relation is abundant in La Place,
antiliterature in order to establish
Throughout the text, Ernaux p

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58 FRENCH REVIEW

testing each for its

how the notion of
gests, place arises o
nity that we may c
we venture outside
geois husband joins
death, Ernaux says
the crowd at her f
de ces personnes 'h
tait derangde" (20).
tion that character
it ironically of cou
those people betray
well, for at some l
in the natural, tha
and-like her husba
Among all the cons
standing of place t
come to terms with
that is fraught wit
treason. Ernaux say
work as a farm lab
the farm where he
away from her "pl
feel how shameful
in her father a se
guided by a simple
original, here and
Ernaux) dies, the f
par la fenetre, de s
place terrifies him:

La peur d'etre depla

premiere avec un bi
plment. Autre sou
mier "lu et approuv
"a prouver". Gene, o
bre de l'indignit&. (

It is in such a pers
seen. Now a second
students, working
ceeded, she explain
counter is emblema
the one hand, Erna
she might have oc
other hand, Ernaux

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ERNAUX'S UNDERSTATEMENT 59

for the latter has remained in

Ernaux herself has emigrated t
kind of treason, directed first
struggles with this untenable i
Place. With a gesture of circular
beginning, allowing us to read
Genet in a new light: "Je hasar
recours quand on a trahi" (9). If
treacherous, one way to subver
beneath writing, as it were, to
integer in one's discursive form
As Ernaux casts it, the basic is
father is the question of class. S
enough; but class is a very slip
notion-initially at least-throu
class had been for him the code
nished the means of situating
Beginning as an unlanded peasa
then the owner of two modest
in other words, traversed the
barely: Ernaux notes that the f
ingman's wage (42), and while h
the day, her father took a job f
refinery, where he was in due t
provided a better living, and he
outside job. Yet even then Erna
the prospect of returning to t
escaped: "ils avaient peur d'etre
retomber ouvriers" (39).
The social condition of Ernaux
essarily conflicted: if their cul
working class, their material s
tariat. When they buy the seco
d'ouvrier de mon pere s'arrete i
of social no-man's-land, caught
themselves have no real hope o
py the bottom of the social str
votes) would so deftly exploit
those surrounding it in the s
place: "Mon pere est entre dans
ou braves gens" (80). Amid the c
his ideological horizon, Ernaux'
tion abstracted from the bourg
is his daughter. The possibility
is what allows him to make sen

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 60 FRENCH REVIEW

permits him to se
fiert., ou meme,
monde qui l'avait
For Ernaux, coache
class, seeing her p
obsessed by the ide
gar and crass-"Tu s
(92)-this process e
moves away from
and irreversibly, fro
will propose to her
La Place, and privil
Plus tard, au cours
que j'explique tout
vie, et cette distan
de classe, mais pa
separe. (23)
Ernaux reads her social emigration both as the successful fulfillment of
her parents' hopes for her and as treason. That conflict permeates not
only La Place, but all of her work. It torments in equal measure Denise
Lesur, the narrator of Ernaux's first novel, Les Armoires vides, who in
many ways prefigures the narrator of La Place. Loraine Day remarks of
Denise that "the obsessive desire to escape from her class background
retrospectively appears to the narrator to be the fundamental trope of her
psyche from early adolescence until the present time of the unfolding
narration" (43), and argues that "it is her experience of class which consis-
tently emerges as the dominant factor in the construction of her subjec-
tivity" (46). The same is true of the narrator of La Place, I think, except for
the fact that here the notion of class has been nuanced and intensified by
its deliberate location in the father-daughter dynamic. Indeed, it is only
after her father's death that Ernaux realizes fully her new social status:
returning to her own home by train after her father's funeral, she tells
herself: "maintenant, je suis vraiment une bourgeoise" (23).
But the issues of class and the conflict they engender prove to be
broader still. As Carol Sanders remarks about Denise Lesur, Ernaux is the
first member of her family to be afforded a voice (23). For the notion of
class is as intimately bound up in language as it is in economy. Clearly,
changing one's class means changing one's language. Ernaux remarks
that her grandfather, a farm laborer and an alcoholic, was illiterate:
"Chaque fois qu'on me parlait de lui, cela commenqait par 'il ne savait ni
lire ni ecrire', comme si sa vie et son caractere ne se comprenaient pas
sans cette donnde initiale" (26). Her grandparents' only language was
patois, rather than standard French, which Ernaux's father interprets as a
shameful sign of their social inferiority (62). As Ernaux receives it, family
tradition always insists on the grandmother's difficult life: "Sa femme ne

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ERNAUX'S UNDERSTATEMENT 61

riait pas tous les jours" (25). E

passage, and in many others, i
guage. For if her parents, lik
generation, had succeeded in b
the new language to which
language dominated, in Ernau
patois, it is in a real sense a "
the sort of French Ernaux le
school and university.
The problem she faces, thus,
tered: her language is no long
only the lexicon that is diffe
well: "On ne savait pas se
maniere raleuse. Le ton poli
Place, Ernaux quite "naturally
intents is to demonstrate a m
accurate picture of her fathe
language must be given. Part
late this popular discourse i
there are 57 of them in La
surrounding them; their alteri
eral discursive economy of
words, just as Ernaux "tells"
tells the social and linguistic c
For Ernaux, language is thus
son: "Tout ce qui touche au
rancoeur et de chicanes doule
attempt to come to terms wit
apprenticeship in some detail
bourgeois discourse resembled
guage: "Enfant, quand je m'
chatie, j'avais l'impression d
dent of foreign language, she
ess of painstaking-and pain
experience closely resembles t
Loraine Day describes the latt

At school, Denise is immediat

where the habits, behaviour
ronment have no currency. Th
ceives in the existence of her c
which she increasingly loves to
grows more and more contem
Denise learns to hide her sha
silence about her home life, ea
consistently high marks whi
herself to speak as the teacher

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 62 FRENCH REVIEW

of the books she

tem of passwords

Once having acc

impossible to ret
from her parent
to use in order t
upon her parents
delighting in Fra
was Marcel's maid
the allusion to Pr
nently elite discu
construct. Like E
yawns between t
Verdurin's salon,
Proust will see la
account for a life. Yet in terms of its fundamental attitude toward lan-
guage, Ernaux's autodiegetical project could not be less Proustian. Fo
each sentence, each word that she inscribes upon the page separates her
from her past more definitively still:

Naturellement, aucun bonheur d'&crire, dans cette entreprise oui je me

tiens au plus pres des mots et des phrases entendues, les soulignant par
fois par des italiques. Non pour indiquer un double sens au lecteur et lu
offrir le plaisir d'une complicitY, que je refuse sous toutes ses formes,
nostalgie, pathetique ou derision. Simplement parce que ces mots et ces
phrases disent les limites et la couleur du monde oi vecut mon pere, o
j'ai vecu aussi. (46)
Ernaux is constantly writing against language and literature. If this oppo
sitional stance is obvious in the case of the italicized popular language in
La Place, it is no less true of the more "conventional" literary language
which makes up the bulk of the text. For the rhetoric of understatemen
in the text serves constantly to destabilize the latter; in short, language i
La Place is radically undercut.
Once again, it is a question of place. The final interrogation of tha
notion will be situated on the ground of literature and its norms.
Characteristically, Ernaux's examination of place will play itself out in
conflict and apparent paradox. On the one hand, her project is subver-
sive: in writing La Place, she is trying to undermine literature; on the
other hand (and through the very same gesture), she is seeking to burrow
into literature from beneath, and establish a place for herself within it
Just as she felt it necessary to rehearse her father's understanding of th
notion of class in order to examine her own understanding of it, so too
she evokes his very tentative relation with literature as a necessary first
step in an analysis of her own view of reading and writing.
Ernaux remarks that the only book her father remembers from his
childhood is Le Tour de France par deux enfants, a collection of popular

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ERNAUX'S UNDERSTATEMENT 63

homilies and maxims. As she quo

of that work, it becomes clear th
cisely the sort of moral common
guage. If her father remembers t
is because, as he puts it quite sim
she was twelve, she says, her fat
where neither of them had ever
books they would like to borrow,
sternation: "A la maison, on n'av
ce qu'on voulait, etre capable de c
marques de biscuits" (112). The li
for Ernaux, a "light" Maupassant
to the library, and Ernaux's mot
them. Her father's understandi
important for Ernaux. He takes th
lexicon of farmwork: "I1 a tou
l'autre sens de culture, le spiritu
idea of uselessness which makes h
ture, in spite of his daughter's in
la musique, c'est bon pour toi,"
pour vivre" (83). Although he tak
tic accomplishments, the things t
outside of real life: "Les etudes n
vie ordinaire" (81). The sort of ed
for him, a luxury; in a real sens
supplementary relation to life as
in her new world, the same is tru
iddes n'avaient pas cours dans les
There too, Ernaux discovers that
child, the novels of Anne-Marie
rency. Like the other manifestati
ered silly and provincial, a critic
Copernican shock: "L'univers pou
the suppleness that such a situat
new set of cultural norms. She pr
now. She deliberately copies out
texts, including a maxim from H
years later from the narrative pe
trite as anything found in Le Tou
after all, a difficult game to w
change at any point, leaving one
gotten the knack of it, has achie
along comes a book by Philipp
L'Expirience des limites. Mon ddco
question que de m~taphysique et

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64 FRENCH REVIEW

Watching over h
rins, realizing tha
cease to be. The p
her father's dea
arisen a distance
erary history an
passes the time h
will palliate that
feminist, deeply
porary literature
dimension of aut
with regard to Er
Just as surely, Er
her come to ter
between her life
apprenticed for so
dramatically insu
the letters she e
home, as if that p
some sort of corre

Ma mere m'&criva
chez nous espero
nos amis de Gran
vieux. Elle ne sava
tournures qui lui
aurait ete plus dif
signait. Je leur re
ressenti toute re
tance. (89-90)

Her mother, like

cannot use her qu
neither can she m
remaining to her
which, according
derstated, declara
This strategy, h
eschewal of "styl
meiosis is noneth
broader represen
the task of telling
his life resists te
tributes nothing
he cannot truly be
write a novel in w
that project, she

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ERNAUX'S UNDERSTATEMENT 65

describing some of her fathe

sketched that
ear portrait much
tion of ordinary life had not b
of literature, Ernaux is instit
deplores, a situation that beco
her own writing to that of h
corrigeais aussi des devoirs,
parce que je suis payee pour
impression que le luxe, sentim
In short, Ernaux finds herse
culture, unable to come to ter
in which they clash:
Voie etroite, en &crivant, entr
dere comme inferieur, et la
gne. Parce que ces faqons de
mais aussi les barrieres hum
"ce n'est pas assez bien chez n
et l'alienation. Impression, bien
cette contradiction. (54)

Armed with a set of literary

for her father's
dis life, Ernaux
as she may, she is nonetheless
lentement. En m'efforqant de
un ensemble de faits et de ch
mesure la figure particuliere
There is then a strange and
work in La Place. What Ernau
father. For she comes to see t
sober realization that words,
them miserably: "J'&cris peut
(84). La Place is the story, rat
Kiinstlerroman which, recount
also as the guarantor of defin
that story must also be tak
Ernaux's meiotic strategy. Fo
rhetoric, "meiosis" has anothe
state of a disease in which th
of Ernaux's work may be re
chronicle of a disease common
ing, uneven experiments of Les
La Femme gelde, Ernaux finds
will resonate with assurance a
sense of place.

UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO, B

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 66 FRENCH REVIEW

Notes

'For the sake of economy, in discussing La Place I shall speak of the narrator as "Ernaux."

2See Institutio Oratoria VII iii 50: "We must also avoid tEt'toxo;, a term applied to mea-
greness and inadequacy of expression, although it is a fault which characterizes an obscur
style rather than one which lacks ornament" (III, 239).
3See for example Frank Stella, speaking of his own work: "Maybe that's the quality o
simplicity. When Mantle hits the ball out of the park, everybody is sort of stunned for
minute because it's so simple. He knocks it right out of the park, and that usually does it"
(Glaser 164). See also the sculptor and performance artist Robert Morris: "Simplicity o
shape does not necessarily equate with simplicity of experience. Unitary forms do no
reduce relationships. They order them" (228).
4See Gregory Battcock: "An outstanding characteristic of Minimal Art is its clarity" (32).
5See for instance Robert Morris: "The quality of intimacy is attached to an object in a
fairly direct proportion as its size diminishes in relation to oneself. The quality of publicness
is attached in proportion as the size increases in relation to oneself" (230).
6See E. C. Goossen on minimalist plastic art: "Increasingly the demand has been for an
honest, direct, unadulterated experience in art, (any art), minus symbolism, minus mes-
sages, and minus personal exhibitionism" (169).
7See Frances Colpitt: "Minimalism attempted, above all, the subversion of the artisti
'style"' (133). My reading of the oppositional character of Ernaux's writing has bee
informed by the theoretical model proposed by Ross Chambers in Room for Maneuver.
8Both books were recognized by the literary establishment in the form of prestigious
prizes. Les Mandarins was awarded the Prix Goncourt in 1954, and La Place won the Pr
Renaudot in 1984.

Works Cited

Abrams, M. H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. 3rd ed. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
1971.

Baker, Kenneth. Minimalism: Art of Circumstance. New York: Abbeville Press, 1988.
Barth, John. "A Few Words About Minimalism." New York Times Book Review 28 Dec. 1986:
1-2, 25.
Battcock, Gregory, ed. Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology. New York: Dutton, 1968.
"Introduction." Battcock 19-36.

Chambers, Ross. Room for Maneuver: Reading (the) Oppositional (in) Narrative. Chicago: U of
Chicago P, 1991.
Colpitt, Frances. Minimal Art: The Critical Perspective. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1990.
Day, Loraine. "Class, Sexuality and Subjectivity in Annie Ernaux's Les Armoires Vides." Con-
temporary French Fiction by Women: Feminist Perspectives. Eds. Margaret Atack and Phil
Powrie. Manchester: Manchester U P, 1990. 41-55.
Dupriez, Bernard. Gradus: les procedds litteraires. Paris: Union Generale d'Editions, 1984.
Ernaux, Annie. Les Armoires vides. Paris: Gallimard, 1974.
Ce qu'ils disent ou rien. Paris: Gallimard, 1977.
La Femme gelee. Paris: Gallimard, 1981.
La Place. Paris: Gallimard, 1983.
Une Femme. Paris: Gallimard, 1987.
Passion simple. Paris: Gallimard, 1991.
Journal du dehors. Paris: Gallimard, 1993.
Glaser, Bruce. "Questions to Stella and Judd." Ed. Lucy Lippard. Battcock 148-64.
Goossen, E. C. "Two Exhibitions." Battcock 165-74.
Morris, Robert. "Notes on Sculpture." Battcock 222-35.

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ERNAUX'S UNDERSTATEMENT 67

Quintilian. The Institutio Oratoria.

Saltzman, Arthur M. "To See a Wo
Minimalism." Contemporary Litera
Sanders, Carol. "Stylistic Aspects
(1993): 15-29.

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