B2+/C1 | Literature: Mother Figures - l'image de la mère à travers des œuvres majeures du 20ème siècle | In-Person

About this Class

La figure de la mère et la relation à la mère sont des éléments fondamentaux de l'expérience humaine — c'est pourquoi ce thème occupe une place si importante dans la littérature.
Interestingly, the realization of that crucial relationship, and its prevalence as a conversation topic only developed gradually in Western culture, as family relations became more spontaneous, social structures were increasingly questioned and the emergence of psychoanalysis, at the beginning of the 20th century, provided revolutionary concepts for exploring relationships.

French 20th century literature offers fascinating moments in that broad cultural history. Proust's masterpiece À la recherche du temps perdu famously opens with the narrator's somewhat addictive relationship with his mother, and later portrays his grand-mother as his soulmate—both fictional characters based on Proust's actual mother. Opposite this fusional model within the comforts of the haute-bourgeoisie, we have the raw interactions and communication dead ends experienced by scholar Annie Ernaux with her working-class mother, depicted in an almost anthropological yet poignant style (Une femme). With Marguerite Duras, as always, we reach the sublime limits of both language and passions, with a mentally ill mother Marguerite loves and wishes to murder in the same sentence (Un barrage contre le Pacifique ; l'Amant). Similar themes of violence and incommunicabilité appear in the iconic son-mother relationship painted in l'Étranger d'Albert Camus, where possible dysfunctions in the narrator's relation with his mother are placed at the center of a homicide case. Finally, we return to unconditional love within the cocoon of the intellectual bourgeoisie, with Colette's Sido, a text written by the scandalous author as a homage to her mother, Sidonie. In this mémoire autobiographique, we find that this unconventional mother always raised her daughter as her greatest treasure and as a prodigy, calling her by endearments such as "mon petit bijou tout en or"...