-----Review on A Life of Her Own

The book is a narrative by Emilie Carles about an extremely conservative and patriarchal the French village, Val-des-Pres. Written in an easy language, the book is comprised of 32 chapters, each of which is devoted to one theme. All the chapters can be seen as little dots that constitute the social landscape of the village life from the 1910s to the 1970s. Emilie and her family lived through the First World War, the Popular Front government (1936-1938), the “Phony War” (1939-1940), the German Occupation, the postwar era, the Algerian War (1954-1962), the Common Front coalition of the parties of the left, and the beginnings of environmentalism in the seventies.

The most compelling part of the book is how Emilie Carles understood womanhood and how it is different from the tradition. We can sense the firmness early in the book that she wants to be a financially and spiritually independent woman who can play more roles than what the village community expected her to.

In fact, Emilie showed her non-conformist nature early in her life. In Beware the Loose Woman (Chapter 12), Emilie’s sister Marie-Rose got pregnant and wanted to marry the child’s father, Jacques Mercier. Emilie was opposed to the bad marriage but her father didn’t seem to understand what a bad marriage would cause; she writes, “My father listened to me. He seemed to understand and accept what I was telling him, but I sensed his vulnerability. For him, for a man with his ideas, an unwed mother was unbearable. Nevertheless, throughout that Easter Vacation, I was so categorically firm that I was sure there would never be a wedding. The baby, yes: it would be a little Allais boy or girl; the husband, no.”

However, Marie-Rose did marry the malicious Jacques Mercier and this became the largest tragedy in the book. The endless childbearing and spousal rape killed Marie-Rose. Ironically, Jacques Mercier, who had attempted to burn his family to death, was granted custody rights of their kids.

Emilie herself married Jean Carles, a Pacifist and political activist, against objections and raised four kids with him. From the later chapters of the book, we can see that Emilie and Jean shared a lot of intellectual conversations and hold very similar political ideas.

Why did Emilie make her personal choices in such a different way than her sister Marie-Rose? Is it just the rebellious nature of her that makes her so confident about her own choice? No, education also played a huge role. In Learning to Read (Chapter 5), Emilie expressed her passion to learn. “I loved school; I loved to study; I loved reading, writing, learning. I felt at home the moment I started school, and I blossomed.” And school definitely gave her a strong sense of herself. “I grew up at school…and it made all the difference between my brothers and sisters and me.” It came not so surprisingly that Emilie eventually enrolled in Sorbonne for a licence in Italian.

Let’s also examine how other people understand women’s roles in Emilie’ village. Obviously women are not treated as equals of men. The “irresponsible man” Emilie mentioned in A Family Portrait (Chapter 4) kept on getting his wife pregnant until it killed her. She had thirteen children and died in childbirth at the age of thirty-three.

Not fundamentally different than the traditions from the Middle Ages, some woman in the village had a lifetime of uncomplaining submission. Angele in Just As It Was in the Middle Ages (Chapter 8), who had an alcoholic husband, is an example.

Emilie not only worked as a school teacher, but also a farmer, a hotel keeper, a mother at the same time. She even goes beyond those roles to become politically active, despite the limitation of women’s political rights then. In the Golden Age (Chapter 25), Emilie went to the Deputy in the department and told him about the deplorable living conditions many peasants are facing to look for an improvement. But she was denied the change. She was certainly aware of the fact that rich people could buy votes and the election was very much controlled and manipulated by the mayor and his slate themselves. Those who are elected do not feel obliged to serve and represent the people who vote for them. Although women didn’t have the rights to vote at that time, Emilie indirectly participate in this supposed democratic process by changing candidates names on her husband’s votes. At the end of book, she expressed her belief in communism.

Emilie Carles was never afraid of challenging the authorities and constantly fought for her beliefs. She is tough and fiercely intelligent; objections and disapprovals could not stop her constant attempt to fight for the better because she was the only one who is in charge of her own life.