SOURCE: David, Nicolette. “The Violence of Writing in Nathalie Sarraute's Les Fruits d'or and Disent Les Imbeciles.” French Studies: A Quarterly Review 54, no. 2 (April 2000): 163-76.

In the following essay, David analyses two of Sarraute's texts using Melanie Klein's psychoanalytical theories regarding the role of aggression and envy in the behavior of children to demonstrate that violence is an integral part of Sarraute's language and text.

The world of savagery inhabited by Nathalie Sarraute seems to invite a Kleinian reading. The psychoanalyst Melanie Klein (1880-1960) developed a body of theory out of her empirical observations of children's behaviour, in which she highlighted the role of aggression and the pivotal role of envy in constituting object relations.¹ In focusing upon Sarraute's status as a pioneer of the nouveau roman, principally engaged with exposing the processes involved in writing, critics have failed to address the violence inflicted upon the body in...