by Annie Ernaux
In 1951-1952, I am in fifth grade with Mademoiselle L, whose reputation as an ogress is well known to all the girls before they reach her class. Back in fourth grade we would hear her shouting and beating the desks with her ruler through the flimsy partition. When we leave school for lunch and at the end of the day, no doubt because of her booming voice, she is assigned to stand there by the front entrance, barking out the names of the young ones sitting on benches in the playground, whose parents are waiting outside. She is short—when term started I was already taller than her—flat-chested, restless, of indefinite age, with a gray chignon, a round face and spectacles with magnifying lenses that make her eyes look enormous. Like the other lay Sisters, she wears a blue and black striped cape over her smock in winter. If the lesson requires no writing, she makes us sit with our arms crossed behind our backs, heads held high, eyes staring straight ahead. She is forever threatening to send us back to fourth grade and, if we can’t solve a math problem, she keeps us in detention until we find the right answer. Only stories about God, saints and martyrs seem to move her, bringing tears to her eyes. The other subjects, spelling, history and arithmetic, are taught without love, with harshness and vehemence; we are expected to toil over them with a view to passing the examination organized in our diocese by the episcopate, echoing the one that grants access to junior high school in the state system. She is feared by parents, who praise her severity, directed against all pupils without exception. The girls are proud of saying that their teacher is the most formidable figure in school, as if it were some torment they silently endure. This doesn’t stop us from resorting to the usual tricks to evade her authority: talking with our hand in front of our mouth or behind our raised desk, writing words on an eraser and passing it round and so on. Occasionally her shouts and demands are met by a wave of inertia; although triggered by the slower students, it ultimately spreads to the other girls, the ones eager to please her. She bursts into tears, sitting at her desk, and we must ask to be forgiven, one after the other.
The question of whether or not I liked Mademoiselle L is irrelevant. She was the most educated person I knew. She was a different class of woman, quite unlike my aunts or my mother’s customers. She was the living embodiment of authority and could guarantee the excellence of my scholastic being every time I reeled off a poem or handed in a faultless dictation. I always measure myself against her, rather than my classmates: I must know everything she knows by the end of the year. (This was linked to the longstanding belief that teachers knew nothing more than what they taught us; hence the profound respect and fear felt for those who taught “senior classes” and the contempt felt for those whose classes we had left behind and therefore whom we had surpassed.) When she silences me to give the others a chance to reply or when she tells me to explain the grammatical structure of a sentence, I become her ally. In my mind, her determination to hunt down the slightest of my academic failings is a means of elevating me into her own world of perfection. One day she criticized the way I wrote the letter “m,” the first down stroke slightly curved on the inside, like an elephant’s trunk, snickering, “it looks dirty.” I said nothing but blushed. I knew what she meant and she knew that I knew: “You do your ‘ms’ like a man’s penis.”
That summer I sent her a postcard from Lourdes.
(As I describe my educational background in 1952, the Communion photograph is gradually becoming more familiar. The solemn face, the unblinking gaze, the faint smile, proud rather than wistful—these features are growing less blurred. The “text” brings the picture into focus, in the same way that the photograph illustrates my writing. Now I can see the good little girl who goes to private school, enjoying the power and ideology of a world symbolizing truth, progress and perfection, a world which, in her eyes, she would never fail.)
(I can now “visualize” the classroom from the seat I was assigned in late December or thereabouts: I sat in the first row on the left—starting from Mademoiselle L’s desk—alone at a bench made for two, next to its twin, occupied by Brigitte D, her domed forehead hidden by thick black wavy hair. Turning round, sideways, I can picture the rest of the classroom: light areas with figures vaguely moving around, dressed in different smocks, faces with many sharp details—their hairstyle, their lips (Françoise H’s were chapped, Eliane L’s flabby), their complexion (Denise R had freckles)—without being able to capture the whole scene. I can hear their voices and a few sentences I have come to associate with them, often quite incongruous: “Can you speak Javanese?” Simone D wants to know. There are also dark areas where I can identify no one because I have forgotten the names.)
There were other classifications that mattered besides my report card, the kind that eventually develop within any close-knit community, conveyed by “I like” or “I don’t like” so-and-so. First a distinction was to be made between the “show-offs” and the others, between the girls who “gave themselves airs” because they got asked to dance at parties or spent their summer vacation by the sea, and those who didn’t. Being a show-off is a physical and social trait belonging to the younger, prettier girls from the town center, whose parents are usually traveling salesmen or storekeepers. Among those who aren’t show-offs are the daughters of farmers; these older girls, many of whom are repeating their grade, are either boarders or else day students who cycle over from some nearby village. The things they could boast about—the land, the harvesters, the farm hands—fail to make an impression, like anything else to do with the country. Anything associated with “the sticks” is held in contempt. “This ain’t no farmhouse!” is an insult.
Another classification that haunts me from October to June is the gradual metamorphosis of the girls’ bodies which, until then, were all childishly innocent. There are the little girls, with skinny thighs and short skirts, ribbons and clips in their hair, and the big girls sitting at the back of the classroom, often the older ones. I watch out for changes in their physical appearance and dress—a blouse billowing out, nylon stockings for going out on Sunday. I try hard to make out a sanitary pad underneath their dress. It is their company I seek in order to learn about sexual matters. In a world where neither parents nor teachers refer to what is obviously a mortal sin, a world where one is continually spying on adult conversation to glimpse snatches of the secret, only the older girls can pass on information. Their very bodies have become a silent source of knowledge. Who was it who said to me, “if you were a boarder, we’d go to the dorm and I’d show you my sanitary napkin full of blood.”
The image of a young girl suggested by the photograph taken in Biarritz is deceptive. In Mademoiselle L’s class, although I am among the tallest, I am flat-chested and show no signs of puberty. That year I am anxious to start having my period. Every time I see a new girl, I wonder if she has started to menstruate. I feel inferior because I haven’t started my period yet. In fifth grade, I resented these physical disparities more than anything else.
I did everything I could to look older. If it hadn’t been forbidden by my mother and condemned by the private school, I would have gone to church in stockings and high heels, with painted lips, at the age of eleven and a half. My permed hair was the only touch of sophistication I was allowed. In spring 1952, for the first time, my mother agreed to let me have two dresses with knife pleats that hugged my hips and a pair of shoes with wedge heels, barely a few centimeters high. She said no to the wide, black stretch belt which fastened with two metal clips and which accentuated the waistline and buttocks of many girls and women that summer. I remember how I longed for that belt and how much I missed not having it all summer.
(Drawing up a rapid inventory of the year 1952, as well as the images I have, I can remember the songs Ma p’tite folie and Mexico, the black stretch belt, my mother’s blue crepe dress, the one with red and yellow flowers, and a manicure set in black plastic—as if only material objects could account for the passing of time. The clothes, advertisements, songs and movies that come and
go over a year or even a single season help us re-arrange our feelings and desires into some kind of chronological order. To be sure, the black stretch belt marks the awakening of my desire to seduce men, of which I can find no trace before, just like the song Miami Beach Rhumba reflects my yearning for romance and faraway lands. In his writings, Proust suggests that our memory is separate from us, residing in the ocean breeze or the smells of early autumn—things linked to the earth that recur periodically, confirming the permanence of mankind. For me and no doubt many of my contemporaries, memories are associated with ephemeral things such as a fashionable belt or a summer hit and therefore the act of remembering can do nothing to reaffirm my sense of identity or continuity. It can only confirm the fragmented nature of my life and the belief that I belong to history.)
Somewhere above the class, forming an inaccessible group, were the “senior girls”—the name used by the staff to designate students attending high school, from sixth grade to twelfth grade. The senior of these senior girls would switch classrooms between lessons and we could see them walking down the corridors with bulging briefcases. They made no noise in class and never played, conversing in small groups, standing under the lime trees or leaning against the chapel wall. I seem to recall that we spent all our time watching them and that they never even glanced at us. They were a model for us, an image to which we aspired both inside and outside of school. Because of their pubescent bodies and especially their knowledge—vast and mysterious, ranging from Latin to algebra, glimpsed on prize-giving day—I was convinced that they could feel only contempt for us. Having to enter a ninth grade classroom with a confession note filled me with terror. I could feel their eyes staring at the pathetic fifth grade pupil who had dared interrupt the imperial process of learning. After I had left the room, I was surprised not to have been greeted by a deafening chorus of sniggers and catcalls. I had no idea that some of the older girls were struggling to keep up, repeating the grade once or in some cases twice. And assuming I had known it, I would still have thought them superior: even those girls knew a lot more than I did.
That year, before afternoon class resumed, I would look out for one of the senior girls in seventh grade, searching for her in the playground lineup. She was frail, with a narrow waist, shoulder-length curly black hair masking her forehead and ears, a round face, soft and milky. I may have noticed her because we had the same red leather zip-up bootees when the fashion was to wear black rubber snow boots. It never occurred to me that she might notice me or speak to me. I enjoyed studying her—her hair, her bare, rounded calves—and overhearing her conversation. All I wanted to know was her first name and the street she lived in: Françoise Renout or Renault, route du Havre.
As far as I can recall, I didn’t have any friends at school. I never visited any of the other girls and none of them came to my home. Besides, we just didn’t meet outside of school, except when we shared the same route. Traveling to and from school was the only opportunity we had to form friendships. I walked part of the way with Monique B, the daughter of a local farmer; in the morning she would leave her bicycle with her aging aunt, with whom she would also have lunch, and would pick it up in the evening. Tall and flat-chested like me, she had chubby cheeks and thick lips, with traces of food around the edges. She worked desperately hard to achieve mediocre results. When I went round to her aunt’s house to pick her up at one o’ clock, we would start by telling each other what we had just eaten.
As I was the only girl in the family and the neighborhood to have a private education, there was no one, apart from my classmates, with whom to share my school secrets.
(I remember a game I used to play in the morning on the days when I didn’t have school and would lie in until midday. On the back of a blank postcard—an elderly woman had given me a whole pile of old ones—I write down the surname and Christian name of a girl. No address, just the name of the town pictured on the card. No text in the part set aside for correspondence. The surnames and Christian names are provided by newspapers such as Lisette, Le Petit Écho de la mode and Les Veillées des chaumières. I make a point of using the chronological order in which they were published. Then I cross out some of the names to add new ones and prolong the game. Inventing dozens of addressees gives me intense satisfaction (something akin to sexual desire). Occasionally, not very often, I send myself a card, blank, just like the other ones.)
People say of me, school is everything for her.
My mother relays the religious code and the principles dictated by my school. She goes to Mass several times a week, attends vespers in winter, the Benediction of the Holy Sacrament, the Lenten sermon and the Stations of the Cross on Good Friday. Since her youth, processions and other religious celebrations have always provided her with a legitimate excuse for getting dressed up and being seen in respectable company. She included me in these festivities from an early age (memories of a long walk in search of the statue of Our Lady of Boulogne along the route du Havre) and would promise to treat me to a procession or a visit to Notre-Dame-de-Bonsecours Cathedral as though it were a Sunday picnic in the forest. When there are no customers, in the afternoon, she goes upstairs and kneels at the foot of her bed, before the crucifix hanging just above. In the bedroom I share with my parents are three framed pictures: a huge photograph of Sainte Thérèse de Lisieux, a reproduction of the Holy Face and an engraving of Sacré-Coeur Cathedral; on the mantelpiece, two statues portraying the Virgin, one made of alabaster, the other one coated in a sort of orangey paint that glows in the dark. In the evening, from our respective beds, my mother and I take turns to recite the morning prayers we say in class. We eat no meat, whether steak or sausages, on Fridays. A one-day bus trip to Lisieux—Mass and Communion at the Carmelite chapel, guided tour of the basilica and Les Buissonnets, the house where Sainte Thérèse was born—is the only important summer outing for the whole family.
Just after the war, my mother took part in the pilgrimage to Lourdes organized by our diocese, to attend a thanksgiving service for the Virgin Mary, who had watched over us during the bombings.
For my mother, religion is seen as something noble, to be bracketed with knowledge, culture and a good education. Failing proper instruction, self-advancement starts with going to Mass and listening to the priest’s sermon; it’s a way of opening up one’s mind. She doesn’t always go along with the principles and objectives of the private school, dismissing their ban on books (she buys and reads a great many novels and newspapers, which she passes on to me) and ignoring their call for obedience and self-sacrifice, thought to be detrimental to a successful career. She is wary of the missionary zeal shown by the “Croisées” and other Roman Catholic organizations: a surfeit of religious instruction impinges on spelling and arithmetic. Religion must remain an auxiliary to education, it must never take its place. If I decided to take the veil, it would displease her, ruining all her hopes.
Converting the rest of the world does not interest her or maybe she thinks it inappropriate in the case of a store keeper—just a friendly remark to the local girls who have deserted Mass. My mother’s religion, shaped by her experience in the factory and molded by her fierce, ambitious personality and her work, can be summed up as:
—a highly individualistic approach, a way of seizing every opportunity to ensure material comfort
—a distinguishing feature that sets her aside from the rest of the family and most of the customers from our neighborhood
—a social ambition, showing the snooty bourgeois women from downtown that her religious fervor and generous donations in church have made her a better person
—the cornerstone of her universal quest for perfection and self-improvement, which embraces my own future.
(I find it difficult to convey the full extent to which religion governed my mother’s life. In 1952, for me, my mother was religion. She appropriated the rules of private education, only she made them harsher. Among her favorite recommendations: t
ake the example of (their kind, polite behavior, their diligence) but don’t try to copy (their failings). She was always saying, be an example (by working hard, behaving properly, being polite). And, what will people think?)
The newspapers and novels she passes on to me, along with the Bibliothèque verte books, do not contradict the principles of private education. They all satisfy the prerequisite for authorized reading, which is to be safely read by all: Les Veillees des chaumières, Le Petit Écho de la mode, and novels by Delly and Max du Veuzit. Some books carry a stamp on their cover—“Distinguished by the French Academy”—confirming their compliance with moral standards rather than their literary value. In my twelfth year, I already have the first volumes of the Brigitte collection by Berthe Bernage, which features fifteen titles in all. Presented in the form of a diary, they recount the life story of Brigitte—betrothed, married, mother and grandmother. I shall have the whole collection by the time I’m seventeen. In the foreword to Brigitte Jeune fille, the author writes:
Although Brigitte has doubts and errs she always reverts to the straight and narrow (. . .) because the story wants to be true to life. A soul of noble stock, an elevated soul, strengthened by fine examples, wise lessons, a healthy family background and Christian discipline, that soul may be exposed to the temptation of “living like everybody else” and sacrificing his or her sense of duty to pleasure but ultimately duty will prevail whatever the price. . . . A worthy French woman will always be a woman who loves her family and her country. And who seeks solace in prayer.
Brigitte embodies the model young girl, humble and contemptuous of creature comforts, living in a world where people have drawing-rooms and pianos, frequent tennis courts, visit art shows and sip afternoon tea in the Bois de Boulogne. A world where parents never argue. The book conveys the excellence of Christian moral standards, as well as the excellence of the bourgeois way of life.**