Art

As a writer, Ernaux funnels the events of her life through the lens of art and literature. Throughout I Remain in Darkness, she makes references to various works of art and literature. For instance, she likens her mother to Courbet' s painting, The Origin of the World, which shows a woman lying down with her thighs open, showing her respect for the mother who gave birth to her. At another point Ernaux comments on a Goya painting she saw at the Museum of Fine Arts: "But that's definitely not my mother," Ernaux writes. "Neither is the main character in Lolleh Bellon's play Tender Relations, which I went to see the other night." Ernaux likens another woman in the hospital to the broken down clock in Ravel's opera, The Child and the Enchantment. Another patient recalls to mind Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea, which Ernaux read in high school. All of...