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L'Obéissance
Le couple serait le point de départ de ce pacte monstrueux qui autorise la pire cruauté à se nourrir de la soumission silencieuse. À l'échelle de la planè extorsion, torture, mise à mort.Comment des enfants se laissent-ils assassiner en souriant ? Comment une mère et une fille peuvent-elles à la fois se haïr et s’aimer ? De ces thèmes si souvent occultés, Suzanne Jacob tire un roman puissant, habilement construit, à l’ écriture généreuse et miséricordieuse. Ce livre est un manifeste amoureux contre la mort... Yann Plougastel, L’Événement du jeudiUn livre fort, troublant, un des plus convaincants que Suzanne Jacob ait écrits. Gilles Marcotte, L’actualitéDans ce roman riche de formes et de contenus [...] on redécouvre avec émotion que l’art et la morale ne sont pas des valeurs incompatibles. Réginald Martel, La Presse
- GenresFrance
249 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published August 30, 1991
3 people are currently reading
60 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 11, 2016
I'm really not enjoying this, and I think I know at least part of why. It's flashing me back to my college days, sitting in seminars with the humorless womyn-y more feminist than thou vagina-necklacce brigade, who frowned and disapproved of everything except this type of narrative, which I have come to think of as womb-y prose.
The ingredients are as follows.
1. There must be an absolute commitment to dead seriousness at all times. Whatever happens, it's always the worst case scenario, and it's never appropriate to play, crack a joke, or take any joy or pleasure in life. I think at the outside, you might be permitted to use the word "joy" for fleeting moments of consciousness raising with other womyn who understand your pain and release it with you through narrative.
2. Narrative is for the telling and healing of traumas, which are legion. It is not for the telling of anything else, happy, fun, light, enjoyable, nor, and this is perhaps the most important, is it for play. You can release your trauma, therapy style, through narrative. Womby prose is itself this kind of narrative, and it often contains inset narratives that circle around the recounting of some trauma which is then released (if never fully healed, as we must continue to suffer in our collective victimhood) through the act of narration. Therapy can be had anywhere, it is your right, and your due, and you may take it from the reader who is one of only two types.....
3. The reader who believes and affirms you in the spirit of womynhood, or the reader who oppress you with phallogocentric norms and doubt.
4. You are permitted, indeed, encouraged, to experiment with form, but only as a means of breaking and resisting the phallogocentric norms of standard narrative (or of other forms of experimentation which might be practiced by male writers, and are not acceptable). You may not do it for the joy of doing it, and you may not pass go, exit the gender normative idea that there is woman's writing and man's writing, and that women cannot write in a male style unless they are somehow oppressed and in need of a good consciousness raising. We concede absolutely that language belongs to man, and make no attempt to fight for it in our own right. Play is, once again, firmly excluded.
5. Your characters, who should mostly be women, should have "real" experiences, for which read always traumatic experiences. Happy, well adjusted experiences are not real, and may mean that you are in need of consciousness raising. Grittier = realer (see Elena Ferrante on this, and she doesn't even have the formal experimentation that might earn her that second star). A self-involved and annoying female character is empowering and healing herself. A self-involved and annoying male character is a symptom of larger structures of misogyny. No character is ever simply an individual person, flawed and original; it's very important that they all symbolize a class, a struggle, a gender, or an identity.
6. It's fine, even encouraged, to have absolutely hysterical reactions to trivial events, but it is not fine to use the word hysterical about them. (This is why I could not finish The Door: a woman who is cowed to this extent by her own maid does not interest me. Or perhaps she could, if there were any sort of acknowledgment that this kind of behavior is a hysterical over reaction to everyday life on the part of someone who is unable to cope with even basic events and minor interactions with other people.) In this book, a bad dream and a bad client are much more upsetting than an unfaithful husband and a brain tumor. I simply cannot access this hierarchy of values, I think the women portrayed do, in fact, need some kind of therapy, I don't think that this therapy has the makings of art, and, most importantly, I grow weary of the implication that I am somehow not a proper woman because I am not stymied by life in these absolutely ridiculous ways.
This book is not the worst, and certainly it's not Suzanne Jacob's fault that this whole set of generic expectations exists. But I like my play, I like my formal experimentation, I am quickly bored by misery porn, I don't respect anyone who is this incompetent at life, woman or man (depicting them being distinct from endorsing them as heroes), and I resent, frankly, the insult to my entire sex on the part of my so-called feminist sisters. I will take a thousand Thomas Pynchons over another Suzanne Jacob, and no commitment to reading women because they are woman will make me change my mind. I am convinced that women are capable of bringing it at the highest levels of art, and I will not grade lesser efforts up because of some misguided ideas about sisterhood.
The ingredients are as follows.
1. There must be an absolute commitment to dead seriousness at all times. Whatever happens, it's always the worst case scenario, and it's never appropriate to play, crack a joke, or take any joy or pleasure in life. I think at the outside, you might be permitted to use the word "joy" for fleeting moments of consciousness raising with other womyn who understand your pain and release it with you through narrative.
2. Narrative is for the telling and healing of traumas, which are legion. It is not for the telling of anything else, happy, fun, light, enjoyable, nor, and this is perhaps the most important, is it for play. You can release your trauma, therapy style, through narrative. Womby prose is itself this kind of narrative, and it often contains inset narratives that circle around the recounting of some trauma which is then released (if never fully healed, as we must continue to suffer in our collective victimhood) through the act of narration. Therapy can be had anywhere, it is your right, and your due, and you may take it from the reader who is one of only two types.....
3. The reader who believes and affirms you in the spirit of womynhood, or the reader who oppress you with phallogocentric norms and doubt.
4. You are permitted, indeed, encouraged, to experiment with form, but only as a means of breaking and resisting the phallogocentric norms of standard narrative (or of other forms of experimentation which might be practiced by male writers, and are not acceptable). You may not do it for the joy of doing it, and you may not pass go, exit the gender normative idea that there is woman's writing and man's writing, and that women cannot write in a male style unless they are somehow oppressed and in need of a good consciousness raising. We concede absolutely that language belongs to man, and make no attempt to fight for it in our own right. Play is, once again, firmly excluded.
5. Your characters, who should mostly be women, should have "real" experiences, for which read always traumatic experiences. Happy, well adjusted experiences are not real, and may mean that you are in need of consciousness raising. Grittier = realer (see Elena Ferrante on this, and she doesn't even have the formal experimentation that might earn her that second star). A self-involved and annoying female character is empowering and healing herself. A self-involved and annoying male character is a symptom of larger structures of misogyny. No character is ever simply an individual person, flawed and original; it's very important that they all symbolize a class, a struggle, a gender, or an identity.
6. It's fine, even encouraged, to have absolutely hysterical reactions to trivial events, but it is not fine to use the word hysterical about them. (This is why I could not finish The Door: a woman who is cowed to this extent by her own maid does not interest me. Or perhaps she could, if there were any sort of acknowledgment that this kind of behavior is a hysterical over reaction to everyday life on the part of someone who is unable to cope with even basic events and minor interactions with other people.) In this book, a bad dream and a bad client are much more upsetting than an unfaithful husband and a brain tumor. I simply cannot access this hierarchy of values, I think the women portrayed do, in fact, need some kind of therapy, I don't think that this therapy has the makings of art, and, most importantly, I grow weary of the implication that I am somehow not a proper woman because I am not stymied by life in these absolutely ridiculous ways.
This book is not the worst, and certainly it's not Suzanne Jacob's fault that this whole set of generic expectations exists. But I like my play, I like my formal experimentation, I am quickly bored by misery porn, I don't respect anyone who is this incompetent at life, woman or man (depicting them being distinct from endorsing them as heroes), and I resent, frankly, the insult to my entire sex on the part of my so-called feminist sisters. I will take a thousand Thomas Pynchons over another Suzanne Jacob, and no commitment to reading women because they are woman will make me change my mind. I am convinced that women are capable of bringing it at the highest levels of art, and I will not grade lesser efforts up because of some misguided ideas about sisterhood.
June 23, 2019
Amateurs de lecture légère et de romans de plage, passez votre chemin!
Ce livre aborde des thèmes difficiles qui ne seront pas du goût de tous les lecteurs. Cependant, j'ai trouvé que le sujet de la violence familiale était traité de façon particulièrement juste et pertinente.
Le roman, qui s'intéresse d'avantage à l'évolution des personnages et aux relations qu'aux gestes de maltraitance qui sont posés, soulève des interrogations importantes. De quelle façon la violence se perpétue-t-elle de génération en génération? Est-il possible de briser la chaîne? Comment un parent peut-il devenir l'abuseur de son propre enfant? Et surtout, jusqu'où peuvent aller l'obéissance et l'amour d'un enfant envers ses parents, malgré sa propre souffrance? Pourquoi ne se révolte-t-il pas?
Les fragments de vie des divers personnages, en apparence incongrus, prennent tout leur sens au fur et à mesure que l'histoire avance. J'ai apprécié la plume, le ton et la construction du récit. Mais je dois dire que c'était un peu lourd!
LES HAUTS : Des personnages réalistes et une analyse pertinente...
LES BAS : C'est une lecture assez déprimante...
Visitez mon blog : https://chroniquesbookaddict.wixsite....
Suivez-moi sur Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/Les-chroniqu...
Ce livre aborde des thèmes difficiles qui ne seront pas du goût de tous les lecteurs. Cependant, j'ai trouvé que le sujet de la violence familiale était traité de façon particulièrement juste et pertinente.
Le roman, qui s'intéresse d'avantage à l'évolution des personnages et aux relations qu'aux gestes de maltraitance qui sont posés, soulève des interrogations importantes. De quelle façon la violence se perpétue-t-elle de génération en génération? Est-il possible de briser la chaîne? Comment un parent peut-il devenir l'abuseur de son propre enfant? Et surtout, jusqu'où peuvent aller l'obéissance et l'amour d'un enfant envers ses parents, malgré sa propre souffrance? Pourquoi ne se révolte-t-il pas?
Les fragments de vie des divers personnages, en apparence incongrus, prennent tout leur sens au fur et à mesure que l'histoire avance. J'ai apprécié la plume, le ton et la construction du récit. Mais je dois dire que c'était un peu lourd!
LES HAUTS : Des personnages réalistes et une analyse pertinente...
LES BAS : C'est une lecture assez déprimante...
Visitez mon blog : https://chroniquesbookaddict.wixsite....
Suivez-moi sur Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/Les-chroniqu...
March 4, 2025
Je ne m’explique pas pourquoi la note n’est pas plus haute. Je n’étais pas sûre du style d’écriture au début mais j’ai terminé le livre complètement conquise. Évidemment ce n’est pas une lecture légère par les thèmes abordés mais je n’ai pas trouvé que le récit était d’une lourdeur désagréable non plus. Au final, j’ai lu cet ouvrage d’une traite: complètement captivée
July 13, 2020
Intéressant, mais pas mon genre de lecture. Je déconseille à des gens qui lise de la paralittérature. C'est un type de lecture qui demande de la réflexion, de la relecture, bref un livre parfait pour les collégiens et universitaire.
December 6, 2016
Il y a des passages vraiment très forts dans ces livres où l'auteure a le talent de décrire les situation d'oppression et de dérapage pour nous les faire ressentir. C'est presque insupportable. C'est magique.
Par contre, il y a d'autres passages où ça devient simplement du charabia. Et même si on explique plus tard pourquoi ça nous a semblé du charabia, ça n'empêche pas qu'on a passé 30 pages à le lire et à trouver ça long. Il y aurait eu moyen d'accomplir le même effet sans s'éterniser. Par ailleurs, le passage narré par Jean est désespérément long de lâcheté et d'incompréhension (de sa part). On a du mal à s'imaginer qu'il est le tombeur que l'on décrit s'il comprend aussi mal celles qui l'entourent.
Par contre, il y a d'autres passages où ça devient simplement du charabia. Et même si on explique plus tard pourquoi ça nous a semblé du charabia, ça n'empêche pas qu'on a passé 30 pages à le lire et à trouver ça long. Il y aurait eu moyen d'accomplir le même effet sans s'éterniser. Par ailleurs, le passage narré par Jean est désespérément long de lâcheté et d'incompréhension (de sa part). On a du mal à s'imaginer qu'il est le tombeur que l'on décrit s'il comprend aussi mal celles qui l'entourent.
August 12, 2012
Ce livre est tombé à point. Jusqu'à quel point un enfant peut-il se sacrifier pour protéger ses parents? Une belle plume. Touchant
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews