Translated into English from the French by Robert M. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln: Selling what no one wants or needs, Victor takes delivery of a barrel of mysterious powder promptly christened "white spirit" for its ability to bleach the black arms of the workers handling the shipment. Constant's mordantly funny novel is at once a brilliantly imagined and rambunctious inquiry into environmental havoc, our close ties to our primate cousins, adulterated religion, the mystique of whiteness, and the persistence of racism, and a piquant tale of survival and longing.
Almost every paragraph contains an original and elaborate word construction that never rings false. Wing, who has translated two previous novels by Constant, deserves recognition for her work. With prose both dark and rollicking, Constant chronicles colonialism's terrible absurdities and reverberating effects on both Africans and Europeans.
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University of Oklahoma Press, Norman: The Governor's Daughter is an extraordinary tale of innocence adrift in a monstrous world. Set just after World War I in the French penal colony in Cayenne, French Guiana, it is the story of Chrtienne, the seven-year-old daughter of the colony's governor and his obsessively devout wife, whom the convicts acidly call the "Mother of God. Her parents, driven by their desire for sainthood, subject Chrtienne and the prisoners alike to inhuman rigors and coldness.
Denied it by her family, the child finds human contact among the convicts, especially the Chinese murderer Tang. The Governor's Daughter is one of the most acclaimed French novels of recent years. A finalist for the Prix Goncourt in , it is Paule Constant's sixth novel. Betsy Wing is a translator and author.
Winner of the Prix Goncourt in , this book is the work of one of France's most celebrated and interesting novelists writing at the height of her powers.
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It is fiction that leads readers through fascinating chambers of life where autobiography is constantly reimagined. A darkly comic novel about four women aging less-than-gracefully, Trading Secrets takes us to an academic conference in Kansas where, in an encounter between Aurore, a French woman, and her American counterpart, Gloria, the differences between their two cultures become sharply apparent. The result is a bitingly funny portrait of painfully complex, psychologically damaged individuals, all of whom have been, in some sense, "colonized.
As Paule Constant herself has said: Paule Constant is the author of seven novels, including The Governor's Daughter Nebraska , which was a finalist for the Prix Goncourt in Margot Miller teaches French at the University of Maryland. Through extended character studies that reveal each woman's life history, Constant suggests that they may all be different aspects of an everywoman, victimized by relationships and bad choices.
A somber but engaging work that provides keen insight into the feminist psyche. It explores the interrelationships of four women who meet at a scholarly feminist conference held at Kansas college.
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Eating is a very necessary operation, but one which is not agreeable to the eye. According to her it was not every woman who could with impunity be at table in the presence of a lover; the first distortion of the face, she said, would be enough to spoil all. Gross meals made for the body merely ought to be abandoned to bourgeoises , and the refined woman should appear to take a little nourishment merely to sustain her, and even to divert her, as one takes refreshments and ices. Wealth did not suffice for this: Her dinners, without any opulence, were celebrated and sought after.
Soon after followed the commotions of the Fronde, which put a stop to social intercourse, and threw the closest friends into opposite ranks. The Countess de Maure, whose husband was the most obstinate of frondeurs , remained throughout her most cherished friend, and she kept up a constant correspondence with the lovely and intrepid heroine of the Fronde, Madame de Longueville.
Though her projects were not realized, her conciliatory position enabled her to preserve all her friendships intact, and when the political tempest was over, she could assemble around her in her residence, in the Place Royal, the same society as before. A religious retirement, which did not exclude the reception of literary friends or the care for personal comforts, made the most becoming frame for age and diminished fortune. Here, with a comfortable establishment, consisting of her secretary, Dr.
Valant, Mademoiselle de Chalais, formerly her dame de compagnie , and now become her friend; an excellent cook; a few other servants, and for a considerable time a carriage and coachman; with her best friends within a moderate distance, she could, as M. But she was much more than this: It is into her ear that Madame de Longueville pours her troubles and difficulties, and that Madame de la Fayette communicates her little alarms, lest young Count de St. Paul should have detected her intimacy with La Rochefoucauld. It is light and pretty, and made out of almost nothing, like soap, bubbles.
The collections of Valant contain papers which show what were the habitual subjects of conversation in this salon. Theology, of course, was a chief topic; but physics and metaphysics had their turn, and still more frequently morals, taken in their widest sense. Morals — generalizations on human affections, sentiments, and conduct — seem to have been the favorite theme; and the aim was to reduce these generalizations to their briefest form of expression, to give them the epigrammatic turn which made them portable in the memory.
They have the excellent sense and nobility of feeling which we should expect in everything of hers; but they have no stamp of genius or individual character: She also wrote a treatise on Education, which is much praised by La Rochefoucauld and M. Thoughts, which are merely collected as materials, as stones out of which a building is to be erected, are not cut into facets, and polished like amethysts or emeralds.
Many of them have an epigrammatical piquancy, which was just the thing to charm a circle of vivacious and intelligent women: Just as in some circles the effort is, who shall make the best puns horibile dictu! He sends a little batch of maxims to her himself, and asks for an equivalent in the shape of good eatables: The taste and the talent enhanced each other; until, at last, La Rochefoucauld began to be conscious of his preeminence in the circle of maxim-mongers, and thought of a wider audience. Every at once is now convinced, or professes to be convinced, that, as to form, they are perfect, and that as to matter, they are at once undeniably true and miserably false; true as applied to that condition of human nature in which the selfish instincts are still dominant, false if taken as a representation of all the elements and possibilities of human nature.
We think La Rochefoucauld himself wavered as to their universality, and that this wavering is indicated in the qualified form of some of the maxims; it occasionally struck him that the shadow of virtue must have a substance, but he had never grasped that substance — it had never been present to his consciousness. The women generally find the maxims distasteful, but the men write approvingly. These men, however, are for the most part ecclesiastics, who decry human nature that they may exalt divine grace.
The Essays of George Eliot, by George Eliot : II. WOMAN IN FRANCE: MADAME DE SABLÉ.
The coincidence between Augustinianism or Calvinism, with its doctrine of human corruption, and the hard cynicism of the maxims, presents itself in quite a piquant form in some of the laudatory opinions on La Rochefoucauld. It has never permitted him to do the least action for others; and I think that, amid all his great desires and great hopes, he is sometimes indolent even on his own behalf. She not only assisted him, as we have seen, in getting criticisms, and carrying out the improvements suggested by them, but when the book was actually published she prepared a notice of it for the only journal then existing — the Journal des Savants.
This notice was originally a brief statement of the nature of the work, and the opinions which had been formed for and against it, with a moderate eulogy, in conclusion, on its good sense, wit, and insight into human nature. But when she submitted it to La Rochefoucauld he objected to the paragraph which stated the adverse opinion, and requested her to alter it.
She, however, was either unable or unwilling to modify her notice, and returned it with the following note:. Nous autres grands auteurs, nous sommes trop riches pour craindre de rien perdre de nos productions. In this revised form it appeared in the Journal des Savants.
In some points, we see, the youth of journalism was not without promise of its future. Moreover, the persecution of the Port Royalists had commenced, and she was uniting with Madame de Longueville in aiding and protecting her pious friends. Moderate in her Jansenism, as in everything else, she held that the famous formulary denouncing the Augustinian doctrine, and declaring it to have been originated by Jansenius, should be signed without reserve, and, as usual, she had faith in conciliatory measures; but her moderation was no excuse for inaction.
She was at one time herself threatened with the necessity of abandoning her residence at Port Royal, and had thought of retiring to a religions house at Auteuil, a village near Paris. The last was much bolder in her partisanship than her friend, and her superior wealth and position enabled her to give the Port Royalists more efficient aid. Arnauld and Nicole resided five years in her house; it was under her protection that the translation of the New Testament was carried on and completed, and it was chiefly through her efforts that, in , the persecution was brought to an end.
It was by her that Madame de Longueville was first won to the cause of Port Royal; and we find this ardent brave woman constantly seeking the advice and sympathy of her more timid and self-indulgent, but sincere and judicious friend. This gradual, calm decay allayed the fear of death, which had tormented her more vigorous days; and she died with tranquillity and trust.
It is a beautiful trait of these last moments that she desired not to be buried with her family, or even at Port Royal, among her saintly and noble companions — but in the cemetery of her parish, like one of the people, without pomp or ceremony. When between fifty and sixty, she had philosophers, wits, beauties, and saints clustering around her; and one naturally cares to know what was the elixir which gave her this enduring and general attraction. We think it was, in a great degree, that well-balanced development of mental powers which gave her a comprehension of varied intellectual processes, and a tolerance for varied forms of character, which is still rarer in women than in men.