A Frozen Woman

by Annie Ernaux

She teaches me that the world is made to be pounced on and enjoyed, and that there is absolutely no reason at all to hold back.

And I vaguely sense that almost all women’s problems come from men.

l become convinced early on that women are more pious than men: they pack the church on Sundays, while my father waits for Low Sunday to go to confession and take the sacrament at Easter time. He hates the whole business and only goes at all to avoid a huge scene at home.

All in all, I prefer the guilt of hidden transgressions to that atrocious, flaccid moment after confession. Kneeling between the statues of Saint Cecilia and Saint Lawrence, I hate having admitted to the priest that I have committed the sin of pride, that I have stolen plums and sung dirty songs. That nervous tongue wetting thick lips, that fetid curiosity—I just hate myself. Little girls must be transparent to be happy. That’s too bad. Me, I feel I’m better off in hiding.

Twisting and turning before the wardrobe mirror at fourteen, I am already reduced to my appearance in my own eyes; all that is missing is the gaze of the Other.

Maternal authority doesn’t go over as well, however—too much hidden resentment involved.

Our two bookbags lie side by side in the grass, but a life together, forget it. For the first time I’m terrorized by the idea of marriage. I’m beginning to emerge, to disencumber myself.

What do you do with your life? The question has no sex, neither does the answer, and this I naively believe, that year of my bac. I have one motto: don’t ever do anything you’ll regret.

But there’s also the feeling that this freedom resembles a void.

My reflection in the mirror. Satisfactory. But at twenty-two, behind the real face is already the threat of another: imaginary, terrible, with crepey skin and sharper features. Old equals plain equals lonely.

“You’ve plenty of time before you settle down, don’t let her get her hooks into you!” Men’s freedom is very well looked after indeed.

I don’t kick, scream or coldly announce well today’s your turn, I’ve got my La Bruyère to do. Just some pointed allusions, some tart remarks, the foam of a seething resentment that mustn’t be brought out into the open.

I even begin to wonder what such trifles have to do with the problem of freedom, and worse, I think that I’m perhaps less efficient than other women, and a lazy bitch to boot, hankering after the days when I sat around with my feet up, a useless intellectual who can’t even break an egg properly.

it’s almost an art, so I feel that our esthetic attitude frees us from any taint of consumerism.

You know, your problem is you can’t get yourself organized. Organization, the watchword of women everywhere,

but it’s really a method of sticking yourself with the most work possible in the least amount of time without pain or suffering because that would bother those around you. I fall for it all,

My years of apprenticeship come to an end without my noticing it. Habit takes over from there. Inside the home, a series of unobtrusive noises—coffee grinder, saucepans—and outside, a teacher, discreet and sensible, an executive’s wife who wears Cacharel or Rodier. A frozen woman.