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The Governesses
In a large country house shut off from the world by a gated garden, three young governesses responsible for the education of a group of little boys are preparing a party. The governesses, however, seem to spend more time running around in a state of frenzied desire than attending to the children’s education. One of their main activities is lying in wait for any passing stranger, and then throwing themselves on him like drunken Maenads. The rest of the time they drift about in a kind of sated, melancholy calm, spied upon by an old man in the house opposite, who watches their goings-on through a telescope. As they hang paper lanterns and prepare for the ball in their own honor, and in honor of the little boys rolling hoops on the lawn, much is mysterious: one reviewer wrote of the book’s “deceptively simple words and phrasing, the transparency of which works like a mirror reflecting back on the reader.”
Written with the elegance of old French fables, the dark sensuality of Djuna Barnes and the subtle comedy of Robert Walser, this semi-deranged erotic fairy tale introduces American readers to the marvelous Anne Serre.
"Each sentence evokes a dream logic both languid and circuitous as the governesses move through a fever of domesticity and sexual abandon. A sensualist, surrealist romp."—Kirkus
Written with the elegance of old French fables, the dark sensuality of Djuna Barnes and the subtle comedy of Robert Walser, this semi-deranged erotic fairy tale introduces American readers to the marvelous Anne Serre.
"Each sentence evokes a dream logic both languid and circuitous as the governesses move through a fever of domesticity and sexual abandon. A sensualist, surrealist romp."—Kirkus
108 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1992
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December 15, 2022
if this were published a hundred years ago, this view of women's sexuality would have been risqué and daring.
but it was the '90s, so it's just annoying.
this is a book about three, well, governesses, who are often f*cking and even more naked.
but in reality, it is a novella-length excuse to have the most insane style i have ever read. if you can handle prolific instances of the words "thatch" and "slit" and "member" and "his sex" (guh) you're a better reader than i.
because i was gagging like a sitcom reaction GIF.
i had no sense of these girls, of their lives, of the people around them. even worse, i know the latter two were thematically intended but that didn't make it a pleasure to read...do you know how hard it is to make anything i can say in a pretentious manner not a positive for me? all i have is my pretentiousness.
this book made me lose everything.
this is a world of sex-obsessed creeps doing amoral sh*t elegantly (so slightly better than real life for that last one.
the ending is cool but also kind of nonsensical in context - throughout the rest of the book, the governesses exist as perceptions, but by many people. they are always flat, always the net weight of others' assumptions, but each of these caricatures is brought about by the needs of the person doing the perceiving.
does that make sense? i'm kind of tipsy. i didn't want to write this review.
bottom line: turns out not every book that's trying very hard is good! who knew.
but it was the '90s, so it's just annoying.
this is a book about three, well, governesses, who are often f*cking and even more naked.
but in reality, it is a novella-length excuse to have the most insane style i have ever read. if you can handle prolific instances of the words "thatch" and "slit" and "member" and "his sex" (guh) you're a better reader than i.
because i was gagging like a sitcom reaction GIF.
i had no sense of these girls, of their lives, of the people around them. even worse, i know the latter two were thematically intended but that didn't make it a pleasure to read...do you know how hard it is to make anything i can say in a pretentious manner not a positive for me? all i have is my pretentiousness.
this book made me lose everything.
this is a world of sex-obsessed creeps doing amoral sh*t elegantly (so slightly better than real life for that last one.
the ending is cool but also kind of nonsensical in context - throughout the rest of the book, the governesses exist as perceptions, but by many people. they are always flat, always the net weight of others' assumptions, but each of these caricatures is brought about by the needs of the person doing the perceiving.
does that make sense? i'm kind of tipsy. i didn't want to write this review.
bottom line: turns out not every book that's trying very hard is good! who knew.
April 7, 2019
Who had inseminated Laura? Heaven only knows. An audacious suitor? A stranger? The elderly gentleman across the way, breathing into his spyglass as though it was a pipette? The eldest of the little boys? The possibilities, alas, were legion and the investigation Madame Austier had entrusted to the little maids turned up nothing. Laura denied having been impregnated by anyone. She had woken up one morning certain that she was expecting a child, and that’s all there was to it.
Les Fugitives is one of my favourite of the UK’s wonderful small independent press scene, one with a very specific remit: to publish "Short, new writing by award-winning francophone female authors previously unavailable in English or in the UK.” There 2017 release Blue Self Portrait and 2018’s Now Now Louison were among my favourite novels of each year.
The 2019 release The Governesses, translated by Mark Hutchinson from Anne Serre’s 1992 debut Les Gouvernantes, is another wonderful book: an erotic fairy tale, barely 100 pages long, but every sentence finely honed, a credit to author, translator and publisher. The story tells of three governesses who work in a large country house and grounds for Monsieur and Madame Austeur, hired by the former:
When they hired the governesses the house had been peaceful. A bit too peaceful, perhaps.
...
It was chaos he needed. He was there to govern opposing forces, to conjure up sweet sounds and muffle shrill ones, to lead the orchestra with his baton, to blow on the embers and put out fires, to dispel darkness and raise the sun. Instead, here he was with a Madame Austeur who’d become an open book to him, obedient to his dreams, leaving him with nothing further to desire.
The day the governesses walked into the garden, Monsieur Austeur was standing behind the net curtains in the salon, keeping an eye out for their arrival. They advanced in single file: first Inès in a red dress, weighed down with hat boxes and bags, then Laura in a blue skirt, and, bringing up the rear, Eléonore, who was waving a long riding crop over the heads of a gaggle of little boys. He was amazed: it was life itself advancing. He rubbed his hands together and began jumping up and down in the salon. Into the garden they came, and with them a whole bundle of memories and desires, a throng of unfamiliar faces clutching at their dreams, their future children, their future sweethearts, the interminable cohort of their ancestors, the books they had read, the scents of flowers they had smelled, their blond legs and ankle boots, their gleaming teeth.
The Governesses can at times be serene and calm, but at other times their sexually voracious appetite leads them to offered men pressed up against the gates to the garden a bottom or a breast, a mouth or a few hands and if any stranger is foolish enough to wander into the garden he will be tackled head-on, licked, bitten and devoured in a ladylike manner.
It’s obvious there’s a secret in their past. Nothing out of the ordinary perhaps, but something that has molded their character and shaped the way they move, the sound of their voices, their dreams, their habit of roaming around the garden with their hands pressed to their temples. The presence of that secret somewhere between the heart and the womb could also be said to have deprived them of free will, but then who can be said to possess free will? The governesses are like those clockwork toys that start walking when you wind a key in their back. Each morning, a key turns in their slim, aristocratic backs, and away they go, clapping their hands, rolling hoops, devouring strangers, spinning round, three little turns, each faster than the last. Every evening, they come home tired and a little more gentle. It’s at times like these that you can talk to them and be heard. For a few hours, the machinery has wound down. At times like these they don’t understand a thing about their gargantuan appetite. It horrifies and shames them. At times like these, they dream of being someone else and think it possible. They’d just need to jump around less, wear pale dresses perhaps, and change hairstyles. They vow to imitate Madame Austeur, to go out with her tomorrow gossiping about womanish things as they saunter past the clipped rosebushes, gathering up the wilted petals. Yet when tomorrow comes, they leap out of bed with a wicked gleam in their eye, grab their red dresses, break a window, lash out at the maids, run over to the gates, race across the lawns, sense an unfamiliar form hiding behind a dark tree, go over and start to pursue him, get dirty and tear their clothes.
Although the narrator is keen to emphasise the innocence of their 'sport': That said, there’s nothing venal or flighty, nothing in the least bit unsavory, about the governesses. No unfortunate rumor has ever tarnished their reputation.
The set-up of the house is very stylised, with different groups, each playing their defined role. Monsieur and Madame Austeur (and their largely off-stage children), the 3 governesses, their wards the hordes of 'little boys', the 'little maids' who staff the house, all watched over by the 'elderly gentleman' in the neighbouring property through his telescope. And, in a largely closed system, those who come in from the outside seeking the governesses, the strangers, seeking pleasure only to be used and discarded. Indeed even the (unidentified) narrator and the reader play out their part.
What’s strange, even miraculous in a way, is that when you stay on your own side of the fence you manage to get on much better than in circumstances where you have to step out of your own skin, as it were, and inhabit someone else’s world; or, conversely, when someone gets it into their head to pay you a visit and comes in through the passageway you’re not so sure you wanted to unlock for them.
Occasionally the Governesses threaten to leave, often going to far as to back their bags and walk out of the house, but they never pass through the gates (and in one telling scene where they do attend a nearby society wedding, they are much diminished in confidence and physical appearance outside of their familiar world):
What is the point of parting? To live? And to live where exactly? In a livelier household than their present home? Yet someone in that far-off place would start to resemble Monsieur Austeur, someone else the elderly gentleman, the strangers, the suitors. . . . Everywhere you’d have the same gates, the same gardens, the same world woven with the same threads connecting a face to a secret room, another face to a second room, and all those scenes they’ll never be able to forget but have nevertheless forgotten.
It is at that point in the narration that, as the quote which opens my review suggests, Laura falls pregnant - almost the opposite of an immaculate conception given the number of potential suspects. Initially this threatens to disrupt the set-up, and change Laura, but she soon returns to her old-self and her son becomes just one of the many little boys.
But one of the novel's point seems to be that the governesses, for all their apparent control over the men in the story, lack autonomy (the 'clockwork toys' of an earlier quote), and exist mainly in the male gaze. And when the elderly gentleman decides to turn his telescope elsewhere, their world starts to disintegrate.
A wonderful novel. I fear the publication date may not be conducive to a Man Booker International listing: the MBI allows books published up until the end of April in theory, but expects final proofs months before, and I know this has caused small publisher, who tend not to sit on novels, problems in the past. But otherwise I would say this is definite shortlist material. 4.5 stars - rounded down to 4 as it is perhaps a little insubstantial.
Les Fugitives is one of my favourite of the UK’s wonderful small independent press scene, one with a very specific remit: to publish "Short, new writing by award-winning francophone female authors previously unavailable in English or in the UK.” There 2017 release Blue Self Portrait and 2018’s Now Now Louison were among my favourite novels of each year.
The 2019 release The Governesses, translated by Mark Hutchinson from Anne Serre’s 1992 debut Les Gouvernantes, is another wonderful book: an erotic fairy tale, barely 100 pages long, but every sentence finely honed, a credit to author, translator and publisher. The story tells of three governesses who work in a large country house and grounds for Monsieur and Madame Austeur, hired by the former:
When they hired the governesses the house had been peaceful. A bit too peaceful, perhaps.
...
It was chaos he needed. He was there to govern opposing forces, to conjure up sweet sounds and muffle shrill ones, to lead the orchestra with his baton, to blow on the embers and put out fires, to dispel darkness and raise the sun. Instead, here he was with a Madame Austeur who’d become an open book to him, obedient to his dreams, leaving him with nothing further to desire.
The day the governesses walked into the garden, Monsieur Austeur was standing behind the net curtains in the salon, keeping an eye out for their arrival. They advanced in single file: first Inès in a red dress, weighed down with hat boxes and bags, then Laura in a blue skirt, and, bringing up the rear, Eléonore, who was waving a long riding crop over the heads of a gaggle of little boys. He was amazed: it was life itself advancing. He rubbed his hands together and began jumping up and down in the salon. Into the garden they came, and with them a whole bundle of memories and desires, a throng of unfamiliar faces clutching at their dreams, their future children, their future sweethearts, the interminable cohort of their ancestors, the books they had read, the scents of flowers they had smelled, their blond legs and ankle boots, their gleaming teeth.
The Governesses can at times be serene and calm, but at other times their sexually voracious appetite leads them to offered men pressed up against the gates to the garden a bottom or a breast, a mouth or a few hands and if any stranger is foolish enough to wander into the garden he will be tackled head-on, licked, bitten and devoured in a ladylike manner.
It’s obvious there’s a secret in their past. Nothing out of the ordinary perhaps, but something that has molded their character and shaped the way they move, the sound of their voices, their dreams, their habit of roaming around the garden with their hands pressed to their temples. The presence of that secret somewhere between the heart and the womb could also be said to have deprived them of free will, but then who can be said to possess free will? The governesses are like those clockwork toys that start walking when you wind a key in their back. Each morning, a key turns in their slim, aristocratic backs, and away they go, clapping their hands, rolling hoops, devouring strangers, spinning round, three little turns, each faster than the last. Every evening, they come home tired and a little more gentle. It’s at times like these that you can talk to them and be heard. For a few hours, the machinery has wound down. At times like these they don’t understand a thing about their gargantuan appetite. It horrifies and shames them. At times like these, they dream of being someone else and think it possible. They’d just need to jump around less, wear pale dresses perhaps, and change hairstyles. They vow to imitate Madame Austeur, to go out with her tomorrow gossiping about womanish things as they saunter past the clipped rosebushes, gathering up the wilted petals. Yet when tomorrow comes, they leap out of bed with a wicked gleam in their eye, grab their red dresses, break a window, lash out at the maids, run over to the gates, race across the lawns, sense an unfamiliar form hiding behind a dark tree, go over and start to pursue him, get dirty and tear their clothes.
Although the narrator is keen to emphasise the innocence of their 'sport': That said, there’s nothing venal or flighty, nothing in the least bit unsavory, about the governesses. No unfortunate rumor has ever tarnished their reputation.
The set-up of the house is very stylised, with different groups, each playing their defined role. Monsieur and Madame Austeur (and their largely off-stage children), the 3 governesses, their wards the hordes of 'little boys', the 'little maids' who staff the house, all watched over by the 'elderly gentleman' in the neighbouring property through his telescope. And, in a largely closed system, those who come in from the outside seeking the governesses, the strangers, seeking pleasure only to be used and discarded. Indeed even the (unidentified) narrator and the reader play out their part.
What’s strange, even miraculous in a way, is that when you stay on your own side of the fence you manage to get on much better than in circumstances where you have to step out of your own skin, as it were, and inhabit someone else’s world; or, conversely, when someone gets it into their head to pay you a visit and comes in through the passageway you’re not so sure you wanted to unlock for them.
Occasionally the Governesses threaten to leave, often going to far as to back their bags and walk out of the house, but they never pass through the gates (and in one telling scene where they do attend a nearby society wedding, they are much diminished in confidence and physical appearance outside of their familiar world):
What is the point of parting? To live? And to live where exactly? In a livelier household than their present home? Yet someone in that far-off place would start to resemble Monsieur Austeur, someone else the elderly gentleman, the strangers, the suitors. . . . Everywhere you’d have the same gates, the same gardens, the same world woven with the same threads connecting a face to a secret room, another face to a second room, and all those scenes they’ll never be able to forget but have nevertheless forgotten.
It is at that point in the narration that, as the quote which opens my review suggests, Laura falls pregnant - almost the opposite of an immaculate conception given the number of potential suspects. Initially this threatens to disrupt the set-up, and change Laura, but she soon returns to her old-self and her son becomes just one of the many little boys.
But one of the novel's point seems to be that the governesses, for all their apparent control over the men in the story, lack autonomy (the 'clockwork toys' of an earlier quote), and exist mainly in the male gaze. And when the elderly gentleman decides to turn his telescope elsewhere, their world starts to disintegrate.
A wonderful novel. I fear the publication date may not be conducive to a Man Booker International listing: the MBI allows books published up until the end of April in theory, but expects final proofs months before, and I know this has caused small publisher, who tend not to sit on novels, problems in the past. But otherwise I would say this is definite shortlist material. 4.5 stars - rounded down to 4 as it is perhaps a little insubstantial.
October 26, 2025
Der Blick als Ort des Begehrens.
Sehnst du dich danach, gesehen zu werden? Als Subjekt in Erscheinung zu treten?
Durch den Blick des Anderen garantiert zu sein?
Wie abhängig bist du von diesem Blick? Bannt er dich regelrecht? Wie autonom bist du dann in deiner Subjektivität? Wie viel Macht hat das Bild des Anderen von dir über dich? Spiegelst du sogar dieses Bild des Anderen, nur um zu sein – zu existieren?
Welch Quell der Lust diese paradoxe Gefangennahme sein kann, bespielt dieses Buch.
Und gespielt wird viel.
Auch Anne Serre spielt mit dem Leser und seiner Imago.
„Gerade haben sie ein Geheimnis geteilt, das die langweiligen Winterstunden beleben, den hohen schwarzen Bäumen frische, springlebendige Säfte einflößen und unter dem Eis einen wonnevollen Frühling erahnen lassen wird. Fortan wissen die kleinen Jungen, dass es das tamburinklingende Leben gibt und sie nur ihr Ohr an den Boden zu pressen brauchen, um zu hören, wie es schlägt und sein Recht fordert.“
Die Gouvernanten werden wie mythische Wesen eingeführt und beschrieben. Die Sprache Serres hat eine traumhafte, halluzinatorische Anmut. Der Text verführt zu einer transzendenten Lesart, sich selbst in dieser mythischen Oberfläche zu spiegeln und sinnlich zu zerfließen. Als wäre das triebhafte Erwachen ein ekstatischer Naturzustand. Das Drama der Abhängigkeit wird ästhetisch verklärt.
Die Sprache ist eine formale Abwehrgeste, um die Leere der Subjektivität – den Mangel – zu verschleiern.
Die Erzählstimme ist allerdings auktorial, gleichgültig, distanziert. Der kalte Ton steht in scharfer Ambivalenz zu den affektiven, erotischen und ornamentalen Bildern und Szenen. Er ist die Stimme des Analytikers.
Ich denke, diese Disharmonie des Textes lässt manchen daran zweifeln, wie ernst er gemeint ist, oder sorgt zumindest für Verwirrung, wie das Buch zu nehmen sei.
Wenn ihr es ertragt, nehmt es als Hinweis darauf, dass wir hier beinharten psychologischen Realismus lesen, der eine schmerzhafte Erkenntnis zutage fördert.
Aber zuerst – let’s play games!
Es war einmal ein Ehepaar, das sich im Laufe der Zeit voneinander entfernte. Sie wird immer stiller, weniger lebhaft.
„Am Ende belogen sie einander ohne Unterlass. Das war ihr neues Leben geworden. Sie sahen einander nur ungern still in die Augen, aber es war ein Leichtes, das zu vermeiden, und so wichen sie diesem letzten Hindernis bald mühelos aus. Ihr Leben glich in jeder Hinsicht dem früheren, nur unter umgekehrten Vorzeichen. Zu diesem Zeitpunkt flammte ihre Liebe sogar wieder auf – es war eine solche Erleichterung, nicht mehr kämpfen zu müssen.“
In dieser Phase werden die drei Gouvernanten eingestellt.
Monsieur Auster symbolisiert für diese das Gesetz des Hauses.
„Nicht, dass er ihnen jemals etwas verwehrt, aber allein seine Anwesenheit verfügt über eine eigentümliche Macht.“
Indem sie von Monsieur Auster begrenzt werden, erwacht ihr Begehren. Sie benötigen aber seinen Blick und können nur spielen, sein Gesetz zu verlassen, indem sie vorgeben, ihre Stellung aufzugeben und gemeinsam das Haus zu verlassen. Das liest sich dann so:
„Einfach, um das Haus ein wenig aufzurühren, das ihren Ausschweifungen zum Trotz nichts von seiner geradezu apollinischen Strenge einbüßt. So bekommen sie überdies Gelegenheit, Madame Austeur weinen zu sehen und sich am Anblick eines völlig kopflosen Monsieur Austeurs zu weiden, was ihnen ein besonderes Vergnügen ist.“
Die Austers wiederum benötigen das Spiel, um sich zivilisiert zu erleben.
Und Monsieur Auster natürlich, um sein Machtzentrum zu behaupten, da seine Frau ihm dies ja verwehrt.
„Aber selbst seine einstigen Nachtwachen waren nicht mehr gefragt. Niemand war mehr auf ihn angewiesen, um wieder friedlich auf seine Umlaufbahn gelenkt zu werden. Seine Fürsorge wurde nicht mehr gebraucht. Im Haus hatte sich der Mittelpunkt verlagert.“
Selbst die Kinder werden in dieses Spiel des Blickes des Anderen verwoben.
Hier wird deutlich, dass der Blick von außen internalisiert wird. Man inszeniert eine Freiheit der Autonomie, da man sich als Subjekt selbst nur durch den Blick von außen denken und spüren kann.
Darum tun die kleinen Jungen in Gesellschaft von Monsieur und Madame Austeur so, als wären sie frei und hätten das Bündnis von sich aus gewählt. In etwa so wie bei den Hausmädchen, aber aus anderen Gründen. Diese Komödie spielen sie ganz bestimmt nicht für Monsieur und Madame Austeur, sondern für die Blicke von außen, also für sich selbst.
Diese Struktur des Begehrens legt das Buch zyklisch an. Die Natur spielt für Anne Serre hierbei eine unterstützende Rolle. Es kreist um ein leeres Zentrum, das sein geschlossenes Symbolfeld wiederholt. Das, was begehrt wird, wird nie erreicht – und somit fallen sämtliche Spiele und Lustwandlungen in Stille und Inaktivität zurück, und der Zyklus beginnt von Neuem.
Serre veranschaulicht den Wechsel von Passivität und Aktivität durch intensive Szenen.
Natürlich springt die sexuelle Energie der drei Gouvernanten einen direkt an.
Ein kleiner Zusammenschnitt:
„Ihre nackten Arme sind zerkratzt, ihre Beine nass vom Regen, ihre Röcke voller Gerüche. Es kommt nicht alle Tage vor, dass hier gejagt wird. Allzu oft fehlt es an Wild. Dieses wird nach allen Regeln der Kunst gepackt, geleckt, gebissen, verschlungen werden. Und wenn er sich restlos verausgabt hat, werden sie von ihm ablassen. Nackt wie ein Säugling wird er auf der salbeigrünen Wiese daliegen, und sie, ja sie werden Erinnerungen für winterliche Abende gesammelt haben, an denen sie sich hinter ihren Fenstern so lange und so verzweifelt nach der Ankunft eines Fremden sehnen.
… Darauf folgen köstliche Orgien, auch wenn sie niemals zugeben würden, dass sie sich dermaßen verführen lassen. Mit der Zeit werden sie aber von ihrem Verlangen überwältigt.
… Wenn sie sich zu dritt in Gelb hüllen, ist mit allem zu rechnen. Das ist die Farbe des Wahnsinns, die Farbe, die sie von ihrem Ich befreit, die Farbe, in der sie sich nackt fühlen, zur Schau gestellt, gebannt. In Gelb sieht man sie nur bei Nacht am Gartentor oder an den Tagen ausufernder Raserei. Gelb macht sie toxisch und grausam. An solchen Tagen bewaffnen sie sich mit kleinen Dolchen, nähren eine Natter an ihrem Busen und mähen die hohen Gräser im Garten ab wie die Herzkönigin die Köpfe ihrer Gärtner. Schon mancher hat es bitter bereut, ihnen an einem solchen Tag begegnet zu sein. Schmal und klingenscharf, wie sie waren, trampelten sie ihn nieder und bissen ihm jegliches Begehren ab. Danach blieb er keuchend auf der Wiese zurück.“
Na, verführen diese Passagen nicht dazu, die Gouvernanten als befreite, emanzipierte Wesen zu denken? Zumal das Setting an das 19. Jahrhundert erinnert.
Oder liest es sich für euch schon zu drüber? Die Überkodierung – „Farben des Wahnsinns“, „Raserei“, „Herzkönigin“ – machen daraus einen theatralisch-mythologischen Maskenball.
Die Damen bestehen aus reinem Trieb.
Was folgt?
„Doch kaum hatten sie den hilflosen Fremden verschlungen, wurden sie wieder zu drei armen kleinen Gouvernanten. Wären sie sich nicht so einig gewesen, hätten sie vor lauter Verzweiflung womöglich Selbstmord begangen. Nach erfolgter Eroberung kehrten sie in die geräumige Leere ihrer Behausung zurück.
… Wenn man sich nicht voneinander lösen kann, bedeutet das nicht zwangsläufig, dass man gescheitert ist. Warum sollten sie auseinandergehen? Um zu leben? Und wo? In einem Haus, in dem mehr Trubel herrscht als hier? Aber auch dort würde jemand die Züge von Monsieur Austeur annehmen, jemand anders die des greisen Herrn, der Fremden, der Heiratskandidaten … Überall dasselbe Gartentor, überall derselbe Park, überall dieselbe Welt, gewoben aus denselben Fäden.
… Wenn sie müßig sind, fühlen sie sich dem Urgrund viel näher, als wenn sie entschlossen handeln. Dennoch nötigt sie ein dumpfes Schuldgefühl, von Zeit zu Zeit aktiv zu werden.
… sich in Tagträumen verlieren.“
Ein ewiger Kreislauf, der sie ständig zurückwirft.
Woran liegt das? Ihre Jagd ist nur ein Rädchen im Symbolspiel. All das, was sie tun, verändert nichts. Die Leere bleibt.
Ich möchte nicht alles spoilern, insofern lasse ich die Passagen ihrer Wanderungen und „Scheinaktivität“ aus, die eindrücklich geschildert werden.
Ich lese es als eine Form der Hysterie – das Bedürfnis nach Anerkennung, das verfehlt wird.
Hinter der Maske ist nichts.
Eigentlich kann eine hysterische Struktur die symbolische Ordnung destabilisieren und verschieben.
Nur sind die Gouvernanten unreflexiv angelegt.
Die Zitate zeigen, dass sie lieber resignativ und ergeben in ihre Rolle zurückfallen und zynisch schließen, in der sinngemäßen Bemerkung: „Es hat ja eh keinen Sinn, überall dasselbe.“
Die Damen leben in einem entgrenzten Begehren ohne Sprache. Sie erzeugen Lärm – ohne neues Wissen.
Und jetzt kommen wir zum grandiosen Kniff des Buches.
Ich habe eine Figur bisher ausgelassen: den „perversen“ alten Sack im Nachbarhaus mit seinem „lüsternen“ Fernrohr.
Um euch nicht den Spaß zu nehmen, bleibe ich ab hier sehr vage und vermeide weitere Zitate.
Sein Blick ist der entscheidende! Denn er ist reflexiv. Die passive, einsame Distanz hinter einer Scheibe bewegt etwas. Und seine Geschichte – so paradox sie angelegt ist – ist die, die eine schmerzhafte Erkenntnis zutage fördert.
Das, was strukturiert, eine unabhängige Subjektivität ermöglicht, ist die Verzweiflung, nicht am Leben teilzuhaben.
Nicht durch die Illusion und Imago verzehrt zu werden, die symbolische Vitalität nicht zu verlieren, erkaufe ich mir durch Entsagung: gesehen zu werden.
Freiheit ist die Existenz im Mangel – jenseits des Blicks – ohne Erlösung zu begehren, im Wissen:
Ich bin kein Bild.
Einsam, aber (relativ) frei.
Sehnst du dich danach, gesehen zu werden? Als Subjekt in Erscheinung zu treten?
Durch den Blick des Anderen garantiert zu sein?
Wie abhängig bist du von diesem Blick? Bannt er dich regelrecht? Wie autonom bist du dann in deiner Subjektivität? Wie viel Macht hat das Bild des Anderen von dir über dich? Spiegelst du sogar dieses Bild des Anderen, nur um zu sein – zu existieren?
Welch Quell der Lust diese paradoxe Gefangennahme sein kann, bespielt dieses Buch.
Und gespielt wird viel.
Auch Anne Serre spielt mit dem Leser und seiner Imago.
„Gerade haben sie ein Geheimnis geteilt, das die langweiligen Winterstunden beleben, den hohen schwarzen Bäumen frische, springlebendige Säfte einflößen und unter dem Eis einen wonnevollen Frühling erahnen lassen wird. Fortan wissen die kleinen Jungen, dass es das tamburinklingende Leben gibt und sie nur ihr Ohr an den Boden zu pressen brauchen, um zu hören, wie es schlägt und sein Recht fordert.“
Die Gouvernanten werden wie mythische Wesen eingeführt und beschrieben. Die Sprache Serres hat eine traumhafte, halluzinatorische Anmut. Der Text verführt zu einer transzendenten Lesart, sich selbst in dieser mythischen Oberfläche zu spiegeln und sinnlich zu zerfließen. Als wäre das triebhafte Erwachen ein ekstatischer Naturzustand. Das Drama der Abhängigkeit wird ästhetisch verklärt.
Die Sprache ist eine formale Abwehrgeste, um die Leere der Subjektivität – den Mangel – zu verschleiern.
Die Erzählstimme ist allerdings auktorial, gleichgültig, distanziert. Der kalte Ton steht in scharfer Ambivalenz zu den affektiven, erotischen und ornamentalen Bildern und Szenen. Er ist die Stimme des Analytikers.
Ich denke, diese Disharmonie des Textes lässt manchen daran zweifeln, wie ernst er gemeint ist, oder sorgt zumindest für Verwirrung, wie das Buch zu nehmen sei.
Wenn ihr es ertragt, nehmt es als Hinweis darauf, dass wir hier beinharten psychologischen Realismus lesen, der eine schmerzhafte Erkenntnis zutage fördert.
Aber zuerst – let’s play games!
Es war einmal ein Ehepaar, das sich im Laufe der Zeit voneinander entfernte. Sie wird immer stiller, weniger lebhaft.
„Am Ende belogen sie einander ohne Unterlass. Das war ihr neues Leben geworden. Sie sahen einander nur ungern still in die Augen, aber es war ein Leichtes, das zu vermeiden, und so wichen sie diesem letzten Hindernis bald mühelos aus. Ihr Leben glich in jeder Hinsicht dem früheren, nur unter umgekehrten Vorzeichen. Zu diesem Zeitpunkt flammte ihre Liebe sogar wieder auf – es war eine solche Erleichterung, nicht mehr kämpfen zu müssen.“
In dieser Phase werden die drei Gouvernanten eingestellt.
Monsieur Auster symbolisiert für diese das Gesetz des Hauses.
„Nicht, dass er ihnen jemals etwas verwehrt, aber allein seine Anwesenheit verfügt über eine eigentümliche Macht.“
Indem sie von Monsieur Auster begrenzt werden, erwacht ihr Begehren. Sie benötigen aber seinen Blick und können nur spielen, sein Gesetz zu verlassen, indem sie vorgeben, ihre Stellung aufzugeben und gemeinsam das Haus zu verlassen. Das liest sich dann so:
„Einfach, um das Haus ein wenig aufzurühren, das ihren Ausschweifungen zum Trotz nichts von seiner geradezu apollinischen Strenge einbüßt. So bekommen sie überdies Gelegenheit, Madame Austeur weinen zu sehen und sich am Anblick eines völlig kopflosen Monsieur Austeurs zu weiden, was ihnen ein besonderes Vergnügen ist.“
Die Austers wiederum benötigen das Spiel, um sich zivilisiert zu erleben.
Und Monsieur Auster natürlich, um sein Machtzentrum zu behaupten, da seine Frau ihm dies ja verwehrt.
„Aber selbst seine einstigen Nachtwachen waren nicht mehr gefragt. Niemand war mehr auf ihn angewiesen, um wieder friedlich auf seine Umlaufbahn gelenkt zu werden. Seine Fürsorge wurde nicht mehr gebraucht. Im Haus hatte sich der Mittelpunkt verlagert.“
Selbst die Kinder werden in dieses Spiel des Blickes des Anderen verwoben.
Hier wird deutlich, dass der Blick von außen internalisiert wird. Man inszeniert eine Freiheit der Autonomie, da man sich als Subjekt selbst nur durch den Blick von außen denken und spüren kann.
Darum tun die kleinen Jungen in Gesellschaft von Monsieur und Madame Austeur so, als wären sie frei und hätten das Bündnis von sich aus gewählt. In etwa so wie bei den Hausmädchen, aber aus anderen Gründen. Diese Komödie spielen sie ganz bestimmt nicht für Monsieur und Madame Austeur, sondern für die Blicke von außen, also für sich selbst.
Diese Struktur des Begehrens legt das Buch zyklisch an. Die Natur spielt für Anne Serre hierbei eine unterstützende Rolle. Es kreist um ein leeres Zentrum, das sein geschlossenes Symbolfeld wiederholt. Das, was begehrt wird, wird nie erreicht – und somit fallen sämtliche Spiele und Lustwandlungen in Stille und Inaktivität zurück, und der Zyklus beginnt von Neuem.
Serre veranschaulicht den Wechsel von Passivität und Aktivität durch intensive Szenen.
Natürlich springt die sexuelle Energie der drei Gouvernanten einen direkt an.
Ein kleiner Zusammenschnitt:
„Ihre nackten Arme sind zerkratzt, ihre Beine nass vom Regen, ihre Röcke voller Gerüche. Es kommt nicht alle Tage vor, dass hier gejagt wird. Allzu oft fehlt es an Wild. Dieses wird nach allen Regeln der Kunst gepackt, geleckt, gebissen, verschlungen werden. Und wenn er sich restlos verausgabt hat, werden sie von ihm ablassen. Nackt wie ein Säugling wird er auf der salbeigrünen Wiese daliegen, und sie, ja sie werden Erinnerungen für winterliche Abende gesammelt haben, an denen sie sich hinter ihren Fenstern so lange und so verzweifelt nach der Ankunft eines Fremden sehnen.
… Darauf folgen köstliche Orgien, auch wenn sie niemals zugeben würden, dass sie sich dermaßen verführen lassen. Mit der Zeit werden sie aber von ihrem Verlangen überwältigt.
… Wenn sie sich zu dritt in Gelb hüllen, ist mit allem zu rechnen. Das ist die Farbe des Wahnsinns, die Farbe, die sie von ihrem Ich befreit, die Farbe, in der sie sich nackt fühlen, zur Schau gestellt, gebannt. In Gelb sieht man sie nur bei Nacht am Gartentor oder an den Tagen ausufernder Raserei. Gelb macht sie toxisch und grausam. An solchen Tagen bewaffnen sie sich mit kleinen Dolchen, nähren eine Natter an ihrem Busen und mähen die hohen Gräser im Garten ab wie die Herzkönigin die Köpfe ihrer Gärtner. Schon mancher hat es bitter bereut, ihnen an einem solchen Tag begegnet zu sein. Schmal und klingenscharf, wie sie waren, trampelten sie ihn nieder und bissen ihm jegliches Begehren ab. Danach blieb er keuchend auf der Wiese zurück.“
Na, verführen diese Passagen nicht dazu, die Gouvernanten als befreite, emanzipierte Wesen zu denken? Zumal das Setting an das 19. Jahrhundert erinnert.
Oder liest es sich für euch schon zu drüber? Die Überkodierung – „Farben des Wahnsinns“, „Raserei“, „Herzkönigin“ – machen daraus einen theatralisch-mythologischen Maskenball.
Die Damen bestehen aus reinem Trieb.
Was folgt?
„Doch kaum hatten sie den hilflosen Fremden verschlungen, wurden sie wieder zu drei armen kleinen Gouvernanten. Wären sie sich nicht so einig gewesen, hätten sie vor lauter Verzweiflung womöglich Selbstmord begangen. Nach erfolgter Eroberung kehrten sie in die geräumige Leere ihrer Behausung zurück.
… Wenn man sich nicht voneinander lösen kann, bedeutet das nicht zwangsläufig, dass man gescheitert ist. Warum sollten sie auseinandergehen? Um zu leben? Und wo? In einem Haus, in dem mehr Trubel herrscht als hier? Aber auch dort würde jemand die Züge von Monsieur Austeur annehmen, jemand anders die des greisen Herrn, der Fremden, der Heiratskandidaten … Überall dasselbe Gartentor, überall derselbe Park, überall dieselbe Welt, gewoben aus denselben Fäden.
… Wenn sie müßig sind, fühlen sie sich dem Urgrund viel näher, als wenn sie entschlossen handeln. Dennoch nötigt sie ein dumpfes Schuldgefühl, von Zeit zu Zeit aktiv zu werden.
… sich in Tagträumen verlieren.“
Ein ewiger Kreislauf, der sie ständig zurückwirft.
Woran liegt das? Ihre Jagd ist nur ein Rädchen im Symbolspiel. All das, was sie tun, verändert nichts. Die Leere bleibt.
Ich möchte nicht alles spoilern, insofern lasse ich die Passagen ihrer Wanderungen und „Scheinaktivität“ aus, die eindrücklich geschildert werden.
Ich lese es als eine Form der Hysterie – das Bedürfnis nach Anerkennung, das verfehlt wird.
Hinter der Maske ist nichts.
Eigentlich kann eine hysterische Struktur die symbolische Ordnung destabilisieren und verschieben.
Nur sind die Gouvernanten unreflexiv angelegt.
Die Zitate zeigen, dass sie lieber resignativ und ergeben in ihre Rolle zurückfallen und zynisch schließen, in der sinngemäßen Bemerkung: „Es hat ja eh keinen Sinn, überall dasselbe.“
Die Damen leben in einem entgrenzten Begehren ohne Sprache. Sie erzeugen Lärm – ohne neues Wissen.
Und jetzt kommen wir zum grandiosen Kniff des Buches.
Ich habe eine Figur bisher ausgelassen: den „perversen“ alten Sack im Nachbarhaus mit seinem „lüsternen“ Fernrohr.
Um euch nicht den Spaß zu nehmen, bleibe ich ab hier sehr vage und vermeide weitere Zitate.
Sein Blick ist der entscheidende! Denn er ist reflexiv. Die passive, einsame Distanz hinter einer Scheibe bewegt etwas. Und seine Geschichte – so paradox sie angelegt ist – ist die, die eine schmerzhafte Erkenntnis zutage fördert.
Das, was strukturiert, eine unabhängige Subjektivität ermöglicht, ist die Verzweiflung, nicht am Leben teilzuhaben.
Nicht durch die Illusion und Imago verzehrt zu werden, die symbolische Vitalität nicht zu verlieren, erkaufe ich mir durch Entsagung: gesehen zu werden.
Freiheit ist die Existenz im Mangel – jenseits des Blicks – ohne Erlösung zu begehren, im Wissen:
Ich bin kein Bild.
Einsam, aber (relativ) frei.
February 27, 2019
A bizarre, sui generis, but enjoyable little 'surrealist fable', that can be read in just an hour or two. Although the translation seems exquisite, I am not QUITE sure of the point or intent ...is the 'elderly gentleman' with the telescope God? Are the governesses forces of pure nature - or indicative of the hazards of unbridled passion? Who knows...
December 10, 2020
They came to know quite a few strangers. A surprising number, in fact, for three governesses locked up in the dark night of a garden. Living as they did, they could easily have never met a soul. But either the stranger would lose his way in the garden, or else, coming in out of curiosity, he would take a step too far, and, with a little click, the golden gates would close behind him.
This book is published by Les Fugitives, a small publisher “dedicated to publishing short works by award-winning francophone female authors previously unavailable in English”.
It is translated by Mark Hutchinson.
The book is (as described) in the back cover – a “warped, erotic fairy tale of a novella”: three governesses look after a group of small boys in a large gated country house, overseen, together with a group of “little maids” by Monsieur and Madame Austeur and observed through a telescope by an “elderly gentleman”.
Their life there is a mixture of formalised although ever shifting relationships between the four groups in the house (Austeurs, governesses, little maids, young boys); and informal, predatory relationships with passing men.
The book is also I think a reflection on the male gaze and male subjugation of women’s lives.
The little boys and the duties of the governesses to care for them reflects I think the way in which female independence and abandon is sacrificed to motherhood (something made explicit when one of them has a child).
Monsieur Austeur sees the household as very much revolving around him as master of the house – he sits up late at night waiting for everyone to sleep and to keep order and is concerned when there is any hint of a lack of fidelity to his perceived hierarchy:
“Had the governesses been more thoughtful, they might have shown him more respect. But what a fool he had been to count on their support …….. And to think that he’d expected them to rally round at the first puff of smoke from his cigar! That whatever the circumstances, whatever the temptations, it was to him that they would turn, him they would support with their powerful young love”
And the voyeuristic elderly gentleman similarly sees the role of the governesses as to revolving around his telescope, again bitterly resenting any sense that the sexual abandon of the Governesses (on which he spies) is not ultimately for his own distraction
“It was a bit worrying. What if the other two were to marry and leave the house, or like Laura, give birth to a child – what would become of him and his midnight vigils. Would they simply abandon him one day, after all the joy and hope they had given him?”
A theme chillingly reinforced at the end when he decides to turn his telescope and gaze away from the house and the governesses fade into non-existence.
A powerful and haunting novella – although one which I found a little too abstract and insubstantial to be a great book.
Also one I think which suffered from me reading it as a I was reflecting on one of my favourite novels of 2019 and one which covers some similar themes with much greater literary ingenuity, depth and complexity as well as someone who is married to a Monsieur Auster: Siri Hustvedt’s Memories of the Future.
March 31, 2024
2.5 stars
This wasn’t bad, per se, even though I was going to give it two stars until the penultimate paragraph. It just seemed to be nothing at all.
Three gorgeous governesses wander around an estate party planning, dancing naked, and seducing (“raping” might be a better word) passing men. They’re all really beautiful and look good in a range of different coloured dresses and everyone is really obsessed with them.
I considered leaving it aside but a) I was on holiday and this was the book I brought, b) it was only 100 pages and c) it had BLURBS.
Blurbs such as: “…the scene recalls the chilling, somewhat theatrical erotic descriptions of Pierre Klossowski (who??) … the kind of French writing going back to the Marquis de Sade and, more generally, the eighteenth-century psychological novel.” (John Taylor, TLS)
And: “The Governesses is a systems novel, in the guise of a postmodern fairytale.” (Alexandra Kleeman)
And: “a slim and sensuous fairy tale that reads like something born from an orgy between Charles Perrault, Shirley Jackson and Angela Carter (Lauren Friedlander).
I still have no idea what this book is about. I’m fairly sure it is not a systems novel. It is definitely not the Marquis de Sade either. Shirley Jackson had actual characters (and actual things happened to them), and Carter was hinting at unplumbed psychological depths.
Is Serre saying something? I have absolutely no idea. As another review commented, it would be one thing if this were a novel from the 19th century or the 1920s, it would hint at unspoken things in women’s psyches. But it was published in 1992. Did we need three indistinguishable horny governesses in 1992?
Great last few paragraphs however.
This wasn’t bad, per se, even though I was going to give it two stars until the penultimate paragraph. It just seemed to be nothing at all.
Three gorgeous governesses wander around an estate party planning, dancing naked, and seducing (“raping” might be a better word) passing men. They’re all really beautiful and look good in a range of different coloured dresses and everyone is really obsessed with them.
I considered leaving it aside but a) I was on holiday and this was the book I brought, b) it was only 100 pages and c) it had BLURBS.
Blurbs such as: “…the scene recalls the chilling, somewhat theatrical erotic descriptions of Pierre Klossowski (who??) … the kind of French writing going back to the Marquis de Sade and, more generally, the eighteenth-century psychological novel.” (John Taylor, TLS)
And: “The Governesses is a systems novel, in the guise of a postmodern fairytale.” (Alexandra Kleeman)
And: “a slim and sensuous fairy tale that reads like something born from an orgy between Charles Perrault, Shirley Jackson and Angela Carter (Lauren Friedlander).
I still have no idea what this book is about. I’m fairly sure it is not a systems novel. It is definitely not the Marquis de Sade either. Shirley Jackson had actual characters (and actual things happened to them), and Carter was hinting at unplumbed psychological depths.
Is Serre saying something? I have absolutely no idea. As another review commented, it would be one thing if this were a novel from the 19th century or the 1920s, it would hint at unspoken things in women’s psyches. But it was published in 1992. Did we need three indistinguishable horny governesses in 1992?
Great last few paragraphs however.
March 24, 2019
By turns dreamy and campy — what pitch perfect tone this author has. But beneath the sex romp lurks a healthy dose of materialist philosophy and existential dread.
May 20, 2019
Oddly delightful or delightfully odd?
July 20, 2019
An odd little novella that I read avidly while at the same time having no idea why on earth I was so enthralled. There are clearly subtexts going on in the tale, but I was uncertain what they actually were. There are lots of little anecdotes but almost nothing by way of plot, except in the concluding few paragraphs, where there's a winding-up, and somewhere in the middle, where one of the titular governesses has a baby, paternity unknown. Characterization and continuity seem to have been done with an eye to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle: on one page we're told a governess once spent six years living with a man, on another that it was ten, and so on. The novella seems designed to irritate people who demand simple answers to the complexity of the real world, which is in itself at least quasi-paradoxical because the setting deliberately divorces itself from the real world . . .
Ah, yes, that setting. In the mansion of a country estate somewhere -- we assume it's in France, but that's never specified -- and in an era that's likewise never specified (although there's mention of a car, so we know we're not talking about Renaissance France, however much other circumstances seem to point that way), dwell M. and Mme. Austeur, a troop of unexplained small boys who spend their days rolling hoops, a brigade of "little [house]maids," and the three young governesses Eléanore, Laura and Inès. Also important to the setup is the old geezer who lives in the house across the road (eh? yes, I know) and who watches all the proceedings on the estate through his telescope.
Most of all, he watches the governesses, because they give him quite a lot to watch, ho ho. For the most part completely uninhibited, they often strip off and pose provocatively when they know he's watching, either to entertain him or to taunt him -- who can tell? Also worth the attentions of his telescope are the various instances when a young man wanders unknowing into the estate only to find himself being stalked and multiply ravished by the Bacchantes-like governesses. (This book is determinedly not for younger readers: Be warned.)
Of course, the term "governesses" is a bit of a misnomer here. The three women were originally employed indeed to tutor those little hoop-rolling boys, and sometimes they still do a bit of that, but more recently their job description evolved to include as a primary duty the preparation of unrestrained revelries that seem again to invoke the god Bacchus.
That's more or less the novella, yet any straightforward description cannot hope to convey the hypnotic effect the piece has. (Translator Mark Hutchinson deserves a lot of credit for having managed to maintain, I assume, this effect during the transition into English.) I'm now, as you'll understand, quite interested to read more by Serre, but there doesn't seem to be all that much in English translation. Let's hope the editors at New Directions or elsewhere hear my plea!
Ah, yes, that setting. In the mansion of a country estate somewhere -- we assume it's in France, but that's never specified -- and in an era that's likewise never specified (although there's mention of a car, so we know we're not talking about Renaissance France, however much other circumstances seem to point that way), dwell M. and Mme. Austeur, a troop of unexplained small boys who spend their days rolling hoops, a brigade of "little [house]maids," and the three young governesses Eléanore, Laura and Inès. Also important to the setup is the old geezer who lives in the house across the road (eh? yes, I know) and who watches all the proceedings on the estate through his telescope.
Most of all, he watches the governesses, because they give him quite a lot to watch, ho ho. For the most part completely uninhibited, they often strip off and pose provocatively when they know he's watching, either to entertain him or to taunt him -- who can tell? Also worth the attentions of his telescope are the various instances when a young man wanders unknowing into the estate only to find himself being stalked and multiply ravished by the Bacchantes-like governesses. (This book is determinedly not for younger readers: Be warned.)
Of course, the term "governesses" is a bit of a misnomer here. The three women were originally employed indeed to tutor those little hoop-rolling boys, and sometimes they still do a bit of that, but more recently their job description evolved to include as a primary duty the preparation of unrestrained revelries that seem again to invoke the god Bacchus.
That's more or less the novella, yet any straightforward description cannot hope to convey the hypnotic effect the piece has. (Translator Mark Hutchinson deserves a lot of credit for having managed to maintain, I assume, this effect during the transition into English.) I'm now, as you'll understand, quite interested to read more by Serre, but there doesn't seem to be all that much in English translation. Let's hope the editors at New Directions or elsewhere hear my plea!
December 15, 2018
5+ out of 5.
A late-breaking contender for one of my favorite books of the year. A devilishly delightful read -- Anne Serre, in her first novel in English, has immediately captured my imagination. The translation from Mark Hutchinson is clean and playful, eschewing the density that can often come with a translation from the French (I say this as one proud of his French heritage and ever-in-love with the language). It feels like it could easily be a Yorgos Lanthimos film, and perhaps should be: reality is slippery, the rules of the game seem to be ever-changing, and there is a dark humor to the whole proceedings. It's a little bit of magic, is what it is.
A late-breaking contender for one of my favorite books of the year. A devilishly delightful read -- Anne Serre, in her first novel in English, has immediately captured my imagination. The translation from Mark Hutchinson is clean and playful, eschewing the density that can often come with a translation from the French (I say this as one proud of his French heritage and ever-in-love with the language). It feels like it could easily be a Yorgos Lanthimos film, and perhaps should be: reality is slippery, the rules of the game seem to be ever-changing, and there is a dark humor to the whole proceedings. It's a little bit of magic, is what it is.
December 31, 2018
So I read this slim book on the train to NYC on Christmas Eve Day. It can only be described as a fairy tale. Three young ladies are hired as governesses by a couple searching to enliven their home life. Ines, Laura, and Eleanor are not your typical governesses. In addition to teaching the boys, they are also in charge of parties and they do know how to put on a good party. They also have dalliances with young men through the iron fence or when they "attack" a young man who has mistakenly walked into the estate's garden. The old man across the street gets great pleasure out of watching them through his telescope. As one of the reviewers on the back cover of the book says, the book is "a twisted tale on the battle of the sexes, a Dionysian mystery in sheep's clothing." I thought it was okay but nothing that makes me want to read anything else by this French author.
March 17, 2023
Unfurls with the smooth uncanniness of a dream. Everything feels lucid & coherent—perhaps a bit heightened, but also vaguely familiar—until the moment something is just off enough that the glassy facade shatters, unveiling an abyss of nightmarish unreality.
Think Nightwood , think Two Serious Ladies , even if Serre never quite reaches those heights (who does?). But what it most brought to mind was Wedekind's Mine-Haha: or On the Bodily Education of Young Girls , a parable(?) similarly set in a boarding school that also queasily fuses sequestration in a lush eden with a subversive eroticism & uneasy sense of surveillance—& refuses easy interpretations at every turn.
The ostensible plain-spokeness & simplicity of the language (at least in Hutchinson's translation) places extra emphasis on individual words for meaning, & I became attuned to the slipperiness of signification in a way I don't encounter often outside poetry. The constant application of "devour" to the titular trio's behavior, for instance, had me convinced for a while this might be a vampire tale, perhaps a glimpse into the afterlives of Dracula's three brides. Is it? Most likely, no. But it also seems as possible as any other explanation...
But, little by little, they're overcome with lust. It's no longer enough that he turns up at night, they want him there in the daytime, too. They him all to themselves. They want him with no past and no other life than the love they feel for him.
Think Nightwood , think Two Serious Ladies , even if Serre never quite reaches those heights (who does?). But what it most brought to mind was Wedekind's Mine-Haha: or On the Bodily Education of Young Girls , a parable(?) similarly set in a boarding school that also queasily fuses sequestration in a lush eden with a subversive eroticism & uneasy sense of surveillance—& refuses easy interpretations at every turn.
The ostensible plain-spokeness & simplicity of the language (at least in Hutchinson's translation) places extra emphasis on individual words for meaning, & I became attuned to the slipperiness of signification in a way I don't encounter often outside poetry. The constant application of "devour" to the titular trio's behavior, for instance, had me convinced for a while this might be a vampire tale, perhaps a glimpse into the afterlives of Dracula's three brides. Is it? Most likely, no. But it also seems as possible as any other explanation...
But, little by little, they're overcome with lust. It's no longer enough that he turns up at night, they want him there in the daytime, too. They him all to themselves. They want him with no past and no other life than the love they feel for him.
April 22, 2019
Definitely TOO weird for me!
October 26, 2025
Kitsch oder Poesie, das ist mir nach der Lektüre dieses Mini-Romans nicht ganz klar, und das muss ja auch nicht sein. Witzig, erotisch, etwas altmodisch, surreal. Vielleicht eine Parabel auf die Lust in den unterschiedlichen Lebensaltern. Ich hab es gern gelesen.
February 15, 2019
The Governesses is a punky gothic French fairytale flipped upside down, skirts and all. The book is weird in a way that actually feels weird, managing to be raunchy, socially prescient and surprisingly very satisfying.
August 31, 2020
What...?!
September 8, 2025
z thema wiblechi lust in verbindig mit märli als form fingi spannend. aber het mi garni überzügt:((
October 13, 2023
100 Seiten Üppigkeit. Und Frauenfiguren, die Hexen oder Nymphen oder Waldgeister oder Sirenen oder Grazien sind - jedenfalls nicht die Art Gouvernanten, die sonst diese literarische Figur bilden. Hier wird getollt, gehüpft, gefickt. Sehr eigentümlich. Mal transformieren sich die Gouvernanten in monströse Riesinnen, mal in kleine Wesen mit gestutzten Flügeln. Und wenn sie wandern gehen, dann möchte man es ihnen gleich tun: Bäume erklettern, schwimmen, sich suhlen und das alles möglichst nackt und sinnlich.
Der Roman wird zudem von der Frage gerahmt: was ist eigentlich der Unterschied zwischen männlichem und weiblichem Blick beim Lesen? Bin ich als Leserin eher Gouvernante, lüsterner Greis oder Madame Austeur, die zur Ordnung ruft? Ein modernes Lustspiel für Lektüremutige.
„Man kann auch nackt tanzen, nackt trinken und sich plötzlich auf der Vortreppe entblößen, mit Gefuchtel und markerschütterndem Geheul, das alle zum Lachen bringt.“
„Woher die kamen? Schwer zu sagen. Vermutlich hatten sie ihrer Jugend zum Trotz mindestens einen Schicksalsschlag erlebt, wenn nicht mehrere. Darauf lässt ihre Exaltiertheit schließen: ein Übermaß an Freude, an Kummer, eine merkwürdige Inbrunst, zu viel Appetit, zu viel Schweigen.“
„Aber da kommt schon der nächste Tag. Sie springen gut oder schlecht gelaunt aus dem Bett, schnappen sich ihre roten Kleider, schlagen eine Fensterscheibe ein, stürmen zum Gartentor, traktieren die Haushälterin, rennen über den Rasen, erahnen hinter den dunklen Stämmen fremde Gestalten, pirschen sich an sie heran, jagen ihnen hinterher, machen sich schmutzig und tragen Wunden davon.“
„Wenn sie müßig sind, fühlen sie sich dem Urteil viel näher, als wenn sie entschlossen handeln. Dennoch nötigt sie ein dumpfes Schuldgefühl von Zeit zu Zeit aktiv zu werden.“
Der Roman wird zudem von der Frage gerahmt: was ist eigentlich der Unterschied zwischen männlichem und weiblichem Blick beim Lesen? Bin ich als Leserin eher Gouvernante, lüsterner Greis oder Madame Austeur, die zur Ordnung ruft? Ein modernes Lustspiel für Lektüremutige.
„Man kann auch nackt tanzen, nackt trinken und sich plötzlich auf der Vortreppe entblößen, mit Gefuchtel und markerschütterndem Geheul, das alle zum Lachen bringt.“
„Woher die kamen? Schwer zu sagen. Vermutlich hatten sie ihrer Jugend zum Trotz mindestens einen Schicksalsschlag erlebt, wenn nicht mehrere. Darauf lässt ihre Exaltiertheit schließen: ein Übermaß an Freude, an Kummer, eine merkwürdige Inbrunst, zu viel Appetit, zu viel Schweigen.“
„Aber da kommt schon der nächste Tag. Sie springen gut oder schlecht gelaunt aus dem Bett, schnappen sich ihre roten Kleider, schlagen eine Fensterscheibe ein, stürmen zum Gartentor, traktieren die Haushälterin, rennen über den Rasen, erahnen hinter den dunklen Stämmen fremde Gestalten, pirschen sich an sie heran, jagen ihnen hinterher, machen sich schmutzig und tragen Wunden davon.“
„Wenn sie müßig sind, fühlen sie sich dem Urteil viel näher, als wenn sie entschlossen handeln. Dennoch nötigt sie ein dumpfes Schuldgefühl von Zeit zu Zeit aktiv zu werden.“
December 24, 2018
This is the strangest book I have ever read. I thought I would figure out what it was about once I finished it, but no. Every time I think I knew what was going on, something else would happen to make me shake my head in confusion. It's like a science fiction version of Mary Poppins meets Brigadoon meets the Nanny. I still have no idea what this book was about.
April 22, 2019
Weird, surreal, sensual, sexual--this was a pretty fun read though there was little plot to speak of, few if any convos documented, this was a superficial book that explored feelings and ideas but remained vague, even to our main characters.
The pregnancy and childbirth were weird. The ending where our governesses disappear was also weird.
Weird. Weird, weird!
The pregnancy and childbirth were weird. The ending where our governesses disappear was also weird.
Weird. Weird, weird!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 12, 2019
Short and enchanting sensual novella that takes the reader into a landscape of delight that may only exist when there is one who observes. Put the telescope away and poof - were there really three governesses cavorting nude in the woods and lawns?
I hope to obtain the next fairy tale collection from Anne Serre this fall when published in English. Her work is most original.
Library Loan
I hope to obtain the next fairy tale collection from Anne Serre this fall when published in English. Her work is most original.
Library Loan
August 26, 2020
Voyeuristic piffle, but refined and tasteful. Like spun sugar for adults. I kept expecting reality to poke through the gossamer, for the toothless carny to track blood into the funhouse, but in the end this slight story just .
July 8, 2021
1.5 ⭐ rounded up to 2. This was dull, the characters bland and I just couldn't get into it. I managed twenty pages and was rather frustrated with the writing style and I plainly was just bored with it.
April 24, 2023
It struck me, at the end of reading this subversive fairytale, how apt it is that the cover of the book portrays the governesses as three paper cutout silhouettes on sticks or strings. Set in a highly stylised realism, there’s a sense that the governesses are merely illusions perceived by those around them as they rustle their skirts and cavort naked through the garden and the woods beyond, always out of reach for the one(s) perceiving them. The only time we get an intimate glimpse of the governesses as they really are is when one of them, Laura, is suddenly and mysteriously pregnant, a seismic event in the goings-on at the Austeurs that compels her to reveal her innermost thoughts. Yet even in that time Laura is tied to another person—her unborn child—and the moment cannot last. Soon after the child is born, Laura is once again absorbed into the single unit of the governesses and that intimate confidence lost forever.
It’s a short and spiky fable that’s perfectly pitched between uncanny and nearly campy, constantly aware of its own sense of unreality at every turn—an achievement that’s more difficult to pull off than it looks, I reckon. Lucid and pristine on the surface, its sentences veer into dark and dangerous places, like gossamer frocks with daggers hidden beneath the hem.
It’s a short and spiky fable that’s perfectly pitched between uncanny and nearly campy, constantly aware of its own sense of unreality at every turn—an achievement that’s more difficult to pull off than it looks, I reckon. Lucid and pristine on the surface, its sentences veer into dark and dangerous places, like gossamer frocks with daggers hidden beneath the hem.
She felt a kind of love for him, a strange, giddying tenderness. Yet it was as if the child had chosen to be born in her rather than she to bear him, and she couldn’t understand the mystery of that choice. Why her, rather than one of the others? What was being asked of her, Laura? They looked into each other’s eyes, she questioning him, he responding to her gaze with the lake of his eyes. There was something ancient about him, as though he had sprung from between her bleeding thighs after a long journey. She felt very small and very young in his presence, ignorant. Didn’t she have something to learn from him? When he looked at her, it reminded her of other gazes: the last glance of a dying man, or the look of a man who loves you and must leave you. It was a farewell, of that she was certain.
December 30, 2018
Piffle, and tiresome, repetitive piffle at that.
March 29, 2019
I can’t recall how this came to appear on my TBR list, but it was on hold at the library and got borrowed automatically, kind of like a man who might get raped by three governesses when walking past the garden gates of the Austeur estate. It’s an odd book, perhaps too ribald for American tastes, and not cohesive enough for literary critics, but I liked it. Like the old man voyeur, I was aroused by the passions of the three governesses. Much is made of the other characters, Monsieur & Madame Austeur, the maids, the boys and the old man and their supposed alliances, however, these are all incidental to the main story which is a novella about the bacchanal life of three women in the prime of their sexual awakening. I love that it is told from the woman’s perspective. I loved their party planning and their care with dressing. I loved the textures of the garden, its nettles, rocks, and thorns that tore and scraped at the naked flesh of the young ladies. In the nude, they might be pursuing male quarry, running through the gardens, climbing trees or sun baking in the grass whilst minding the children. This story is like a sampler tray of Anne Serre delicacies, just enough blithe outrageous behaviour to give you a taste, but not enough to fill you up.
December 7, 2019
A late call for best translated book of the year (though published in France in 1992) is The Governesses by Anne Serre , translated by Mark Hutchinson .
This is right up my street, a novella whose compelling element is to discover exactly what is going on.
Are they, in fact, three young women residing in an opulent and isolated house, or is there something far more uncanny afoot here?
Employed by the frequently absent Monsieur Auster and his timid wife, the governesses have charges, the little boys, who may or may not be the Auster children, un-numbered, unnamed and un-aged. Quite controversially I thought, the London Magazine called them adolescents, which no other review that I read did. I took them for 6 - 10 year olds. This sort of ambiguity is typical of the novel, and is exactly what Serre is trying to achieve.
Is the story about emerging sexuality? The beautiful young governesses frequently cavort naked around the gardens of the mansion. One day a man passes the gates to the house. “It’s not every day you get to hunt in a household like this,” one of the governesses declares, and, soon enough, the young women have sought out their quarry. In another scene, one of them becomes ‘inseminated’, but by whom?
Or rather, is the story about boredom, and isolation?
Whatever it is about, the detached way that its central characters navigate the world suggests something a lot stranger.
There maybe surreal aspects of desire and obsession to the story, but if pushed I’d put it into the ‘horror’ category, with a whiff of witchcraft to strong to ignore in the opulent landscape. It’s difficult to think of anything similar, but (and it’s a gimmick used by publishers I usually try hard to avoid) it’s like a promiscuous We Have Always Lived In The Castle , or a modern day telling of a Shirley Jackson-like fable.
Either way, it’s quite magical and a couple of hours very well spent. The imagery and tone create a world that’s certainly memorable.
This is right up my street, a novella whose compelling element is to discover exactly what is going on.
Are they, in fact, three young women residing in an opulent and isolated house, or is there something far more uncanny afoot here?
Employed by the frequently absent Monsieur Auster and his timid wife, the governesses have charges, the little boys, who may or may not be the Auster children, un-numbered, unnamed and un-aged. Quite controversially I thought, the London Magazine called them adolescents, which no other review that I read did. I took them for 6 - 10 year olds. This sort of ambiguity is typical of the novel, and is exactly what Serre is trying to achieve.
Is the story about emerging sexuality? The beautiful young governesses frequently cavort naked around the gardens of the mansion. One day a man passes the gates to the house. “It’s not every day you get to hunt in a household like this,” one of the governesses declares, and, soon enough, the young women have sought out their quarry. In another scene, one of them becomes ‘inseminated’, but by whom?
Or rather, is the story about boredom, and isolation?
Whatever it is about, the detached way that its central characters navigate the world suggests something a lot stranger.
There maybe surreal aspects of desire and obsession to the story, but if pushed I’d put it into the ‘horror’ category, with a whiff of witchcraft to strong to ignore in the opulent landscape. It’s difficult to think of anything similar, but (and it’s a gimmick used by publishers I usually try hard to avoid) it’s like a promiscuous We Have Always Lived In The Castle , or a modern day telling of a Shirley Jackson-like fable.
Either way, it’s quite magical and a couple of hours very well spent. The imagery and tone create a world that’s certainly memorable.
September 13, 2023
Anne Serres Roman "Die Gouvernanten", den sie schon 1992 geschrieben hat und der jetzt erstmals im Berenberg Verlag auf Deutsch erschienen ist, handelt von den
drei Gouvernanten Éleonore, Inés und Laura, die im Hause Monsieur und Madame Austeur leben. Sie sind für Feiern und Vergnüglichkeiten angestellt, als "Beauftragte für Lustbarkeiten aller Arten" und wohnen im oberen Stockwerk der großen Villa. Der Erziehung der kleinen Jungen, die auch ihre Aufgabe ist, widmen sie nur wenig Aufmerksamkeit. Stattdessen treiben sie wilde Spiele mit fremden Männern, die in den Park kommen und mit dem Nachbarn, der voyeuristisch durch sein Fernrohr ihre Tollheit beobachtet.
Trotz ihrer erotischen Wildheit scheinen sie irgendwie gefangen. Angewiesen auf die Beachtung der Anderen, nicht ganz "Frau" ihres freien Willens und nicht fähig, das Haus zu verlassen und ein eigenes mündiges Leben zu führen, dass sie sich doch so sehr ersehnen.
Eine märchenhafte Szenerie finden die Leser*innen in diesem außergewöhnlichen Text, das große Haus wirkte auf mich wie ein Schloss, der dunkle Park davor, wie der Rosengarten Dornröschens, weltabgeschieden - und doch kommen dann und wann Männer an den Zaun, um die Damen "wachzuküssen". Die Szene im Wald, als die drei Gouvernanten für die Jungen nackt um das Lagerfeuer tanzen, mutet wie ein Traum an, etwas fieberhaft und surreal.
Anne Serre schreibt lust- und fantasievoll über das Gesehen- und Begehrtwerden. Und obwohl das Werk mit 92 Seiten recht schmal ist, entwickelt es zwischen Naturmystik und Sinnlichkeit einen beachtlichen Lesesog. Große Leseempfehlung!
#namethetranslator : Aus dem Französischen von Patricia Klobusiczky
drei Gouvernanten Éleonore, Inés und Laura, die im Hause Monsieur und Madame Austeur leben. Sie sind für Feiern und Vergnüglichkeiten angestellt, als "Beauftragte für Lustbarkeiten aller Arten" und wohnen im oberen Stockwerk der großen Villa. Der Erziehung der kleinen Jungen, die auch ihre Aufgabe ist, widmen sie nur wenig Aufmerksamkeit. Stattdessen treiben sie wilde Spiele mit fremden Männern, die in den Park kommen und mit dem Nachbarn, der voyeuristisch durch sein Fernrohr ihre Tollheit beobachtet.
Trotz ihrer erotischen Wildheit scheinen sie irgendwie gefangen. Angewiesen auf die Beachtung der Anderen, nicht ganz "Frau" ihres freien Willens und nicht fähig, das Haus zu verlassen und ein eigenes mündiges Leben zu führen, dass sie sich doch so sehr ersehnen.
Eine märchenhafte Szenerie finden die Leser*innen in diesem außergewöhnlichen Text, das große Haus wirkte auf mich wie ein Schloss, der dunkle Park davor, wie der Rosengarten Dornröschens, weltabgeschieden - und doch kommen dann und wann Männer an den Zaun, um die Damen "wachzuküssen". Die Szene im Wald, als die drei Gouvernanten für die Jungen nackt um das Lagerfeuer tanzen, mutet wie ein Traum an, etwas fieberhaft und surreal.
Anne Serre schreibt lust- und fantasievoll über das Gesehen- und Begehrtwerden. Und obwohl das Werk mit 92 Seiten recht schmal ist, entwickelt es zwischen Naturmystik und Sinnlichkeit einen beachtlichen Lesesog. Große Leseempfehlung!
#namethetranslator : Aus dem Französischen von Patricia Klobusiczky
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 18, 2019
Note to self: surrealist, allegedly erotic, French fables are likely not my genre. I didn’t do any research before reading this, so I had no idea what to expect and would not have anticipated what this ended up being. Honestly the premise might bear considering, but the execution felt gratuitously vulgar.
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