SOURCE: King, Adele. “Marguerite Duras.” In French Women Novelists: Defining a Female Style, pp. 134-63. London: Macmillan, 1989.

In the following essay, King presents an overview of Duras's writing, focusing mainly on her novels.

Woman is desire. … We don't write at all from the same place as men. And when women don't write in the space of desire, they don't write.

(Duras, 1977, p. 102)

Of all twentieth-century French women writers, it is Marguerite Duras who is most often cited as an example of a feminine author.¹ Hélène Cixous, for instance, does not see Nathalie Sarraute as ‘feminine’, places Monique Wittig a bit on the side, but finds that Marguerite Duras produces exemplary texts (Cixous, 1976a, p. 879). Duras has inspired, along with Cixous herself, the most overtly feminine critical readings, if we accept that in feminine readings the critic will be personally engaged, will not be primarily giving a...