French literature Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Elizabeth A. Houlding

Critical Essay by Elizabeth A. Houlding

SOURCE: Houlding, Elizabeth A. “‘L'Envers de la guerre’: The Occupation of Violette Leduc.” In Gender and Fascism in Modern France, edited by Melanie Hawthorne and Richard J. Golsan, pp. 83-100. Hanover, England: University Press of New England, 1997.

In the following essay, Houlding examines feminine and gender issues occupying French intellectuals during the war years based on an examination of Violette Leduc's La Bâtarde.

At night I dreamed that the war was over, that the people with real ability had returned, that I was scurrying like a mangy dog to the refuge of an unemployment bureau. I would wake up soaked with sweat, convince myself with a stammering voice that it was a nightmare, then fall asleep again.¹

Nightmarish images of the liberation of France from Nazi occupation recur frequently in Violette Leduc's autobiographical work, La Bâtarde (1964). At no point in this work does Leduc take part in her...
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