SOURCE: Gelfand, Elissa Deborah. “Women Prison Authors in France: Twice Criminal.” Modern Language Studies 11, no. 1 (1980-81): 57-63.

In the following essay, Gelfand compares the writings of women prisoners to the work of canonized male writers such as Villon, Sade, and Wilde, suggesting that the themes and tone of their texts counter the “power-centered” male texts that generally constitute the genre of prison literature.

The following quotes by some well-known students of prison literature will give an idea of the qualities long expected of and thought inherent to important prison texts:

(Albert Camus): Si l'âme est assez forte pour édifier, au coeur du bagne, une morale qui ne soit pas celle de la soumission, il s'agira, la plupart du temps, d'une morale de domination. Toute éthique de la solitude suppose la puissance.¹

(Victor Brombert): (en prison, on fait un) rêve de liberté et de transcendance … les ‘ailes...