In 1963, twenty-three-year-old Annie Ernaux discovers she is pregnant. In France at the time, abortion was illegal. "Happening," written forty years later, recounts the months during which she hid her pregnancy from her parents, sought help from acquaintances and doctors, and tried in vain to abort with a knitting needle. The story, told in brutal simplicity of facts, shows us a society of taboos and class prejudice, where the heroine's experience becomes an initiation. Drawing on diary entries and memory, meticulously constructing a dual perspective, Ernaux finds new meaning for the lived experience.
The author of some twenty works of fiction and memoir, Annie Ernaux is considered by many to be France’s most important writer. In 2022, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. She has also won the Prix Renaudot for A Man's Place and the Marguerite Yourcenar Prize for her body of work. More recently she received the International Strega Prize, the Prix Formentor, the French-American Translation Prize, and the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation for The Years, which was also shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize in 2019. Her other works include Exteriors, A Girl's Story, A Woman's Story, The Possession, Simple Passion, Happening, I Remain in Darkness, Shame, A Frozen Woman, and A Man's Place.
"Happening" is a perfect illustration of the famous feminist slogan "the personal is political". All of A. Erno's texts that I have read have been incredibly personal. Even when writing about other people, she does not try to distance herself, to paint an "objective" picture. On the contrary, she strives for maximum subjectivity, looking for authenticity in individual experiences.
"Event" is devoted to a specific episode in the life of a young woman. A very personal event, about which it is not customary to talk openly - abortion. There is a lot of corporeality in this text, detailed personal experiences and reflections. But behind this individuality and to some extent triviality of the event - the unwanted pregnancy of a student, the desire to have an abortion - the political situation shines through in full force. The criminalization of abortion in France in the 1960s dramatically affects the heroine's experience.
The main part of the book is devoted to the search for an abortion, the most painful and frank is the description of a clandestine abortion and its aftermath. I remember that I almost threw up, but not from disgust, but from pain and horror.
For the first time in A. Erno's text I read a direct generalizing political statement: "It was the law. It was everywhere. <...> In the utter impossibility of imagining that one day women would be free to make abortion decisions. And, as usual, it was unclear whether abortion was forbidden because it was bad, or whether it was bad because it was forbidden. Everyone judged the law, no one judged the law."
She also touches on the theme of social stratification: the doctor of the hospital where she goes after a clandestine abortion behaves very rudely to her, until he discovers that she is a student, i.e. socially close.
This paradoxical frank convergence of a very, very personal bodily experience with a political situation, previously, it seems to me, uncharacteristic of A. Ernaux's texts and reflects a unique situation. Happening in that brutal and humiliating form could only have happened because of the particularities of the political situation. Reflecting on his parents in "A Place of One's Own", "Woman" and partly "Shame", A. Erno refers to history and politics exclusively as a context or even a background, a way to anchor memories to a timeline. The experience of abortion, however, cannot be conceptualized only "in the context of time." This event is directly conditioned by time and politics.
I note that A. Ernaux distances herself from the feminist agenda in this text. She views the event not through the prism of women's oppression and patriarchy, but more through social stratification and the global injustice of the political system.
I read "Happening" in parallel with M. Bussi's silly detective story "The Plane Without Her" (2012). A. Ernaux and Bussy are both French. One of the important plot elements of "The Plane..." is the heroine's pregnancy, her desire for an abortion and ... her lover's desire to stop the abortion. Which he succeeds in doing thanks to the restoration of the truth. On the one hand, it was nice to learn how the system of medical care in France has changed. The heroine comes to a special center that guarantees the anonymity of female clients, open to anyone who needs it. But how disgusting is the very narrative of the unconditional good, without any reservations, of having a baby for two students who love each other. It's great that in opposition to the subpoena for the unquestioned and criticized happiness of parenthood, we have other brave and frank books that look at childbearing and women's rights to control their bodies differently.
The book is short, frank and seems to be gaining a cult following, so I recommend it to anyone who is not intimidated by the topic of abortion and the physiological nature of the descriptions.
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