Violette Leduc (1907–1972)
Author of The Bastard
About the Author
Violette Leduc had been publishing works of an autobiographical nature in France since 1945. But, aside from the enthusiastic support of Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre and certain other intellectuals, she had gone unnoticed until the publication of La Batarde (1964) propelled her to fame---in show more part, no doubt, for "the candor in the totally uninhibited descriptions of [her] Lesbian loves. . . . This, the story of [her] first forty years, is a courageous confession and a work of art, . . . a weird mixture of burning, naive, lucid, and unadorned sincerity . . . and of poetic inner monologue" (Henri Peyre, SR). (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: Unattributed photo found at culture-et-debats.over-blog.com
Works by Violette Leduc
La terre est trop courte 1 copy
Golden Buttons 1 copy
Leduc, Violette Archive 1 copy
Caça ao amor 1 copy
Associated Works
Im Zeichen der Venus. Frauen schreiben erotische Geschichten ( Anthologie). (1985) — Contributor — 1 copy
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Leduc, Violette
- Birthdate
- 1907-04-07
- Date of death
- 1972-05-28
- Gender
- female
- Nationality
- France
- Birthplace
- Arras, Pas-de-Calais, Hauts-de-France, France
- Place of death
- Faucon, Vaucluse, France
- Places of residence
- Valenciennes, France
Paris, France - Education
- Collège de Douai, France
Lycée Racine - Occupations
- novelist
autobiographer
secretary - Organizations
- Plon publishers
- Short biography
- Violette Leduc was born the illegitimate daughter of a domestic servant and was raised in Valenciennes. Her education was interrupted by World War I, but after the war she attended boarding school. In 1926, she moved to Paris and and enrolled in the Lycée Racine. She failed her baccalaureate exam, and began working as a telephone operator and secretary at Plon, a publishing firm. Leduc became part of the Existentialist circle that included Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Nathalie Sarraute, and Maurice Sachs. They encouraged her writing and she became a successful novelist. Many of her books were sexually explicit and considered shocking in their day. Leduc also published a controversial autobiography entitled "La Bâtarde" (The Bastard) in 1964, which became a bestseller. She died at age 65 of breast cancer.
Members
Reviews
La Bâtarde by Violette Leduc
Perfect
An achingly sad short story of a woman in her 60s living in an attic flat in Paris. She is both lonely and hungry but her mind is playful. She spends her small amount of money on a Metro ticket, rather than the food she needs, surviving on the coffee beans she counts out and a quarter of a sugar cube dissolved in water. Then, searching for an orange on a Parisian night she finds a fox fur and this brings comfort. Written as a stream of consciousness, the words are dense and packed with meaning. She observes life around her and fills her days watching and wandering.… (more)
Violette Leduc's life seems to have been shaped by her consciousness of her origins as an "unwanted child" — her mother was the classic sad case of a young domestic servant made pregnant by the son of her employers. Violette's absent father paid for her to go to boarding school, but she then experienced another kind of rejection when she realised that her mother had built a new life for herself whilst she was away at school.
This novel takes up that theme of fear of rejection in the life of the narrator, Thérèse: after she has been brutally separated from her school-dorm lover Isabelle, and discovered that the cosy relationship she used to have with her single mother is also gone for good, she takes refuge in new relationships with Cécile and Marc, both of which start to crumble away under the pressure Thérèse puts on them, until Thérèse finds herself alone and pregnant, on the way to becoming her own mother.
A very edgy, nervous sort of novel, but one that's full of powerful writing that draws you into seeing the world from Thérèse's difficult and frightened viewpoint.
The publisher wouldn't print the original opening chapter, which contained a rather graphic description of the boarding-school love affair, so that part is only hinted at as back-story in the novel as it appeared in 1955. Leduc reworked the "pornographic" chapter up for separate publication as a standalone novella Thérèse et Isabelle, which — ironically, perhaps — was later adapted for cinema by a director who turned out to specialise in soft porn.… (more)
This novel takes up that theme of fear of rejection in the life of the narrator, Thérèse: after she has been brutally separated from her school-dorm lover Isabelle, and discovered that the cosy relationship she used to have with her single mother is also gone for good, she takes refuge in new relationships with Cécile and Marc, both of which start to crumble away under the pressure Thérèse puts on them, until Thérèse finds herself alone and pregnant, on the way to becoming her own mother.
A very edgy, nervous sort of novel, but one that's full of powerful writing that draws you into seeing the world from Thérèse's difficult and frightened viewpoint.
The publisher wouldn't print the original opening chapter, which contained a rather graphic description of the boarding-school love affair, so that part is only hinted at as back-story in the novel as it appeared in 1955. Leduc reworked the "pornographic" chapter up for separate publication as a standalone novella Thérèse et Isabelle, which — ironically, perhaps — was later adapted for cinema by a director who turned out to specialise in soft porn.… (more)
Beautiful and sad stream-of-consciousness story of a prematurely-old poor woman in one of the largest and most affluent cities in the world. Saying that Paris is a character in the story is cliché but apposite, as the main character invests her perceptual world of things with feelings and numen. The sadness of the story resides in the reader as observer, the main character manifesting acceptance and a fragile indomitability of spirit, psychological defenses not far from delusion.
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Statistics
- Works
- 20
- Also by
- 4
- Members
- 1,165
- Popularity
- #22,062
- Rating
- 3.7
- Reviews
- 27
- ISBNs
- 92
- Languages
- 8
- Favorited
- 6