SOURCE: "Emerging from the Shadows: Fratricidal Moves in Marguerite Duras' Early Fiction," in Dalhousie French Studies, Vol. 33, Winter, 1995, pp. 113-23.

In the following essay, Mazzola discusses the relationship between gender and familial roles in Duras's fiction.

Brothers form bridges and barriers between mothers and daughters in much of Marguerite Duras' fiction, especially in early novels such as Les impudents (1943), La vie tranquille (1944), and Un barrage contre le Pacifique (1950), all of which foreshadow the tragedy of the two brothers in L'amant (1984). Brother figures, in the guise of husbands and lovers, inform this bridge/barrier motif in these and other books (récits, romans) in which actual brothers are not alluded to directly (Les petits chevaux de Tarquinia [1953]). The allusion to familial ties—all important for Duras' cosmogony—borne by men in general, both absent (dead, missing or silent fathers) and present (secondary male characters such as the caporal in...