SOURCE: Marson, Susan. “Women on Women and the Middle Man: Narrative Structures in Duras and Ernaux.” French Forum 26, no. 1 (winter 2001): 67-82.

In the following essay, Marson contends that a comparison between Une femme and Marguerite Duras's Le Ravissement de Lol v. Stein “provides a terrain for questioning the specificity of women's writing, by asking how they both use and perceive the language of narrative.”

It is hard to imagine two texts more different in style and subject matter than Annie Ernaux's Une femme and Marguerite Duras's Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein, even though they are both narratives written by women and about women.¹ Nearly a quarter of a century separates the two texts: but the period between 1964, when Le Ravissement was published, and 1987, the date of Ernaux's Une femme, corresponds to an era in French cultural and intellectual history during which the concept of a writing specific...