Echoes of Annie Ernaux in Marie Darrieussecq's Le bébé

Jj e bebe (2002), by Marie Darrieussecq, a candid and touching portrayal of a mother's 0^ first nine months with her newborn son, instantly evokes a sorority of women writers. The depiction of a career and writer who suddenly finds herself a stayat-home mom recalls the kinds of career versus family, public versus personal thematics characteristic of so many female authors some who became mothers and others who did not. While writers from George Sand to Marie Cardinal struggled to combine writing and motherhood, others, like Simone de Beauvoir, renounced maternity entirely. Darrieussecq's focus on the first nine months of the mother's life with her child also recalls other women's texts that portray the maternal -fi li al bond during the months of pregnancy. These include the Italian Oriana Fallaci's Lettera a un bambino mai nato {Letter to a Child Never Born, 1975) and the Canadian Nancy Huston's Journal de la creation (1990). We also call to mind texts that treat abortion, such as Annie Ernaux's Les armoires vides (1974) and L 'evenement (2000). Darrieussecq also associates herself with other female authors because of her style. Her sober, straightforward writing in Le bebe differs from the effusive, complicated style of her best-seller about a who metamorphoses into a sow, Truismes ( 1 996). It is also stylistically distinguishable from many of her early works including Naissance des fantomes (1998) and Le mal de mer (1999), which, along with Truismes owe much to science fiction.1 This kind of stylistic transformation recalls Annie Ernaux, who traveled from the complex, descriptive style of Les armoires vides to the sober, uncomplicated style that has characterized her works since La place (1983). While Ernaux has maintained her minimalist style in recent publications, Darrieussecq returns to an intricate prose in the futuristic White (2003). While several critics have discussed Darrieussecq's debt to Duras, none, to my knowledge, has written of the influence of Ernaux. I posit that with Le bebe, the young writer creates a text reminiscent in form, tone, and most importantly, style to many of Ernaux's works since La place. I will focus on a comparison of Ernaux's femme (1987) and Darrieussecq's Le bebe, for, studied together, these texts reflect a rich example of stylistic similarity. In addition, they share a thematic bond. An initial echo of Ernaux lies in Darrieussecq's title. With the simple, unspecified substantive Le bebe, we have a general nominal category, similar to those found in Ernaux's titles La place, La honte (1997), L'evenment, and L'occupation (2002). The latter titles do not refer to people in the literal sense, but they are generally associated with people symbolically La place with the father, for example, and L 'evenement with the lost child. With femme, we do have a reference to a person, but the indefinite article points to one among many the daughter's way of claiming the importance of not only her mother, but of so many ordinary women forgotten by History. Interestingly, Ernaux's title could serve as an unspoken subtitle for Darrieussecq's text the woman in Le bebe, the infant's mother, is a character of equal importance to the baby.2 Both femme and Le bebe employ the journal format and the first-person autobiographical mode, allowing for introspection and observation. Stars divide Le bebe into short sections, as if only small pieces of writing could be composed during the writer's few private moments: Une ecriture structuree par sa propre contrainte, les

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