SOURCE: Powrie, Phil. “Reading for Pleasure: Marie Cardinal's Les Mots pour le dire and the Text as (Re)Play of Œdipal Configurations.” In Contemporary French Fiction by Women: Feminist Perspectives, edited by Margaret Atack and Phil Powrie, pp. 163-76. Manchester, United Kingdom: Manchester University Press, 1990.

In the following essay, Powrie argues that several critics have suggested erroneous correlations between the main character in Les Mots pour le dire and Cardinal herself. Powrie concludes that the novel is a purely fictional work, which can be utilized by readers to examine parent-child relationships.

The question this essay will try to answer is simple enough: why does Les Mots pour le dire make such compelling reading? Marie Cardinal published it in 1975, and it remains the novel for which she is best known, despite four novels written before, and three written since. Indeed, it is the only novel by her to...