Subtitle: A Countrywoman in Twentieth-Century France
Author: Émilie Carles
Subject: Literary Studies/Womens Studies
Cloth ISBN 0-8135-1641-2
Pages: 232 pp. 17 b&w illus.
Description:
Translated and with an introduction by Avriel H. Goldberger
"[Carles] projects the calm strength of character, the sturdy health that stands up to all tests, and an astonishing capacity for joy. In a rural world with faith in nothing but God and authority, she is feminist, anarchist, and pacifist.. . . She refuses to accept the conditions of life as predetermined, she refuses to submit. And she does battle in the name of an ideal that nothing will ever breach. A mixture of ardor and candor, revolt and irony, ideals and realism."--L'Express
"Do not expect a nice little collection of picturesque tales when you pick up this [book]. . . . At the close of her life, Émilie Carles has taken up her pen as it it were a sword: to fight prejudice, to attack the rich and powerful, to pitch into those who think they know all the answers."--Le Monde
"Vivid, moving, dense with history. . . . This book will be a great hit."--Bonnie Smith, author of Confessions of A Concierge
"A moving memoir, sensitively translated . . . managed with the skill of a novelist."--Marilyn Gaddis Rose,
A Life of Her Own was published in France as Une Soupe aux Herbes Sauvages in l977 and became a runaway bestseller there and in Europe. Émilie Carles (1900-1979) was born into the rigidly conservative patriarchal world of a poor and isolated peasant community in the High Alps of southeastern France. Her autobiography is the tale of a world that has largely disappeared and of the one that emerged to take its place. A woman who loved life and who was determined to make something of her own, Carles is an impressive storyteller as well. Her account reflects the turbulent history of the twentieth century from the viewpoints of the many roles she played in it--teacher, farmer, feminist, pacifist, political activist. Despite serious obstacles to entering the education system, Carles managed to become a teacher, in part to free others as she herself had been freed by education. By the end of World War I, she became a pacifist through horror at the mutilation and death of a staggering number of young men. In similar fashion, she became an independent-minded leftist in lifelong revolt against the conditions she--and, later, her husband too--dealt with in the impoverished communities where they lived and worked.
Carles looks at her life and the world with a clear eye. As a close observer of her community and its witty commentator, she reveals a marvelous sensitivity to the comedy of everyday life. Her story is moving, grim, and often tragic, but it is never sentimental. The tone of her memoir reflects the strength and joy she brought to a fight against ignorance and intolerance, a fight for peace and justice sustained to the end of her long life. As a result, the book enhances our sense of the capacity of the human spirit, of the unique value of our individual selves in the context of the natural world, whose beauty she sees as a precious gift. This is a remarkable book about a remarkable woman.
Avriel H. Goldberger is Professor of French and Chair of the department at Hofstra University. She is the author of many articles on French literature and of Visions of a New Hero. Her edition and translation of Corinne, or Italy (the first new English edition of the work in nearly a hundred years) was also published by Rutgers University Press
