The Public Becomes Personal: From Ernaux's Passion simple to Journal du dehors

Drawing on an interview in April 1997 with contemporary French writer Annie Ernaux, this article analyzes the interplay between female narrators and quotidian spaces in Passion simple (1991) and Journal du dehors (1993). Ernaux's writing career, spanning nearly thirty years, develops continually from depictions of physical spaces and the gestures or attitudes these spaces prescribe. Ernaux's spaces are not neutral; each bears the strong markings of a specific social class and gender. As this study illustrates, a radical shift exists between the author's 1991 and 1993 texts. Here, she distances herself from the traditional domestic space, as depicted in Passion simple, and concentrates on movement with the French capital and its environs in Journal. This shift leads to an inquiry into her narrators' compatibility with possible versions of the literary figures of the flâneur, as recorder of the modern city, and of the urban female wanderer, the flâneuse, as bourgeois shopper or prostitute. It also demonstrates the extent to which the author draws consistently on her personal preoccupations while expanding her scope to include a more journalistic approach to (auto)biographical texts. This article is available in Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature: http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol29/iss1/9 The Public Becomes Personal: From Ernaux's Passion simple to Journal du dehors Michelle Scatton-Tessier University of North Carolina-Wilmington For the first time, I took possession of the space I have been wandering nevertheless for twenty years. (Annie Ernaux, La vie exterieure: 1993-1999) During our interview, contemporary French writer Annie Ernaux stated that she had never reflected upon the ways which her domestic spaces have influenced her writing.' Indeed, she associated certain spaces with specific social norms, but she could not comment on the extent to which these spaces influence her writing process. Annie Ernaux's writing, which spans nearly thirty years, includes consistently extensive detailed descriptions of her parents' over-theshop apartment and her own domestic spaces, past and present. Her texts develop from depictions of physical spaces and the gestures and attitudes these spaces prescribe; they intertwine detailed descriptions of women's movement and interactions in public and private. A close analysis of these descriptions exposes the author's emphasis on the interplay between women and quotidian spaces such as a house, subway, school, supermarket and store. Ernaux's spaces are not neutral. Each bears the markings of a social class and gender. Certain recits, such as Les armoires vides (1974), La place (1984) and later La honte (1997), emphasize working-class and bourgeois domestic living spaces in her native rural town of Yvetot (Normandy). Other texts, such as Passion simple (1991), Journal du 1 Scatton-Tessier: The Public Becomes Personal: From Ernaux's Passion simple to Jour Published by New Prairie Press 136 STerTCL, Volume 29, No. 1 (Winter 2005) dehors (1993), and later texts taking place uniquely in the environs of Paris, highlight the narrator's urban mobility and daily interactions with her suburb (Cergy) and the capital. The most radical shift in Ernaux's focus on women and space comes between Passion simple and Journal du dehors.2 This shift leads to an inquiry into her narrators' compatibility with possible versions of the literary figure of the urban female wanderer, the flaneuse, as bourgeois shopper and roaming observer.' No other of Ernaux's texts depicts the narrators' direct interplay with living space as much as Passion simple (Passion) in which almost the entire narrative takes place in her suburban home. This text illustrates most clearly women's active appropriation and physical marking of territory, both consciously and unconsciously.4 The narrator's interplay with her house exemplifies the ways in which living space remains in constant movement, despite its static appearance, and the extent to which it reflects (or clashes with) the female inhabitant's current vision of self. The domestic, then, exists only through the ways in which its female inhabitants live in and interact with it. This is true for all types of housing (this may be extended to include frequented public spaces as well). The habitat-female inhabitant relationship is reciprocal. As Ernaux's Les armoires vides or La honte demonstrate, a too small, poorly equipped or dirty space (or clothing) may reflect a negative self-image back on the inhabitant, creating a disparity between her self-image and the image her space projects. The narrator's remodeling, renovating, leaving and even cleaning of her domestic space are illustrative of ways in which female inhabitants modify and adapt to their living spaces. Passion's narrator identifies strongly with her house to the extent that she appears to view it as a second layer of protection (after clothing). Her lodging is a direct reflection of her self-image; it provokes positive, as well as negative, feelings throughout the narrative.' Passion is the first of several works to take place solely in environs of Paris. It is also the author's first text to be devoted almost entirely to life in a conventional bourgeois house rather than an apartment, above-theshop lodging or university residence; the principal background for Passion is the author's domestic space, her house in the ville-nouvelle of Cergy-Pontoise. Ernaux's next published work, Journal du dehors (Journal) shifts 2 Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature, Vol. 29, Iss. 1 [2005], Art. 9 http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol29/iss1/9 DOI: 10.4148/2334-4415.1597