SOURCE: King, Adele. “Nathalie Sarraute.” In French Women Novelists: Defining a Female Style, pp. 85-107. London: Macmillan, 1989.

In the following essay, King examines the works of Nathalie Sarraute, noting that the writer did not associate her strong sense of political feminism with her work.

When I write, I am neither man nor woman, cat nor dog. I am not me. … I don't exist.

(Rykiel, 1984, p. 40)

I have never understood how some writers can display their life as they do. … What counts is the books.

(Saporta, 1984, p. 23)

Nathalie Sarraute's strong ‘political’ feminism does not, she has said, have a direct relationship to her creative work. She does not think as a woman, she says, and one must not consider men and women as separate, for this leads to a ‘destructive segregation’. Any definition of l'écriture féminine would include elements found in works by male authors, Proust, for...