The Years

by Annie Ernaux

The fact of having read Simone de Beauvoir was of no use except to confirm the misfortune of having a womb.

“I have no ideas at all. I don’t try to explain my life anymore” and “I’m a petite bourgeoise who has arrived.” She feels she has deviated from her former goals, as if her only progress in life were of the material kind. “I’m afraid of settling into this quiet and comfortable life, and afraid to have lived without being aware of it.”

“Out of extreme narcissism, I want to see my past set down on paper and in that way, be as I am not” and “There’s a certain image of women that torments me. Maybe orient myself in that direction.”

Between what happens in the world and what happens to her, there is no point of convergence. They are two parallel series: one abstract, all information no sooner received than forgotten, the other all static shots.

At every moment in time, next to the things it seems natural to do and say, and next to the ones we’re told to think—no less by books or ads in the Métro than by funny stories—are other things that society hushes up without knowing it is doing so. Thus it condemns to lonely suffering all the people who feel but cannot name these things. Then the silence breaks, little by little, or suddenly one day, and words burst forth, recognized at last, while underneath other silences start to form.