SOURCE: “Marguerite Duras: Women's Language in Men's Cities,” in Women Writers and the City: Essays in Feminist Literary Criticism, edited by Susan Merrill Squier, The University of Tennessee Press, 1984, pp. 35-44.

In the following essay, Rava examines the attempts of Duras's female characters to create a linguistic voice and presence for themselves in the predominantly male urban milieu.

In the works of Marguerite Duras, the city inaugurates a conflict between the female search for authentic speech and the male linguistic domination. While Duras's work covers many genres, themes, and forms, her settings have frequently been cities: Duras uses those specific locations as starting points for an exploration of human relationships which concentrates on intensely charged dialogues between a limited number of characters. In Duras's earlier novels, using urban backdrops, she explores the particular difficulties a woman faces in adapting herself to the language men have created.¹ The city...