SOURCE: Kritzman, Lawrence D. “Ernaux's Testimony of Shame.” Esprit Créateur 39, no. 4 (winter 1999): 139-49.

In the following essay, Kritzman evaluates Ernaux's treatment of shame in La honte, noting how effectively the author portrays the emotion and its fragmenting effect on self-identity.

Annie Ernaux's La honte (1997) is a semi-autobiographical work in which the author explores how a traumatic memory is stored and frozen in the mind.¹ Her reflection is built on the assumption that memory can never be truly authenticated since traumatic experience precludes direct access to testimony. “Il n'y a pas de vraie mémoire de soi” (37). Consequently her attempt to remember things past, the adolescent youth of the summer of 1952 as “little Annie D,” constitutes a quest for understanding unimpeded by the imposition of an artificial reality. “Naturellement pas de récit, qui produirait une réalité au lieu de la chercher” (38). Based on the premise that...