La femme de Gilles

I'd actually checked this out from the library once before, but ended up returning it before I got around to reading it. I decided to make another attempt for Women in Translation month. And woo, did I have a lot of feelings about it once I'd read it. In fact, I'd spent too much time thinking and talking about this book at the time that I was convinced I'd written a review long before I actually did.

This is one of those books where you (or I guess me) spend a lot of time wanting to give pretty much every character a good, vigorous shake. "What are you doing?" I wanted to yell at them. "How do you foresee your current course of action turning out?" I suppose that's to be expected in a book where, within the first twenty pages, the main show more character realizes her husband is having an affair with her sister and decides to pretend she doesn't know and just carry on normally until he comes to his senses?

But of course, it doesn't take very long to realize that none of her other choices are any good anyway. Her sister is terrible, her mother (though she doesn't know the full circumstance) babies her sister. A priest assigns her prayers of penitence and cautions against rebelling against His plans. And though Elisa spends endless time analyzing, buffering, and trying to manage Gilles's emotional state, it's soon clear that Gilles does not see Elisa as a person with any interiority at all -- she is merely what she does for him.

Of course I rooted for Elisa to rebel, to run away, but how could she? The final ending, sickening as it was, was also a kind of relief.

Both the Introduction and Afterword were incredibly helpful for contextualizing and processing this painful little story. As much as it hurt, I'm glad I gave it a second chance. A powerful novel. show less

Elisa is beautiful young woman who is sweet and giving to her husband, and yet one day, without warning, he sees her younger sister Victorine licking trading stamps and begins thinking of her sexually. Gradually the two begin having an affair, tormenting the hell out of Elisa, though Gilles is also tormented as Victorine toys with him. Elisa begins playing a very careful game of chess to try to get her husband’s attention back, and the humiliating lengths she’ll go to do this are somewhat depressing. She simply hopes the madness of the affair will pass, putting on a brave face, while the reader cringes.

Bourdouxhe’s writing is incredibly lean, with actions and thoughts are conveyed in an economy of words, and she’s very strong show more with the endings to her chapters. An example of this is chapter 11, where Elisa lays next to her sleepless husband, knowing him to be possessed by desire for her sister, and, because she wants to help him, “All at once Elisa felt bold enough, and with a tender, anonymous hand, she gently relieved him of his desire” – it’s a stunning sentence, both for its explicitness in 1937, and for its simplicity.

I also loved the introduction by Elisa Albert, who explains “we still like our women self-abnegating. Self-blaming. Self-whatevering. Self-fill-in-the-blank-ing (Just not self-pleasuring, hell no). Placid, at any rate. Or maybe, maybe, just kind of mewling prettily over in a corner. Dare to raise the mewling to a moan, a dirge, or, heaven forbid, a scream? Complainer, shut up! Bitch, get on some meds. We still like our women woman enough to bear their sorrows stoically, silently, heroically.” She puts the book, interestingly enough, a half of century after ‘Anna Karenina’, and half a century before Nora Ephron’s ‘Heartburn’. Well worth reading. show less

It was only recently I became aware of the writing of Madeleine Bourdouxhe – Kat at Mirabile Dictu wrote about this novel recently – and I immediately ordered a copy. Around the same time, I happened to see tweets about another Madeleine Bourdouxhe novel also being re-issued by Daunt books.

There may be a couple of mild spoilers in the review below – although the majority of what I talk about is revealed in the blurb of this edition and happens with the first part of the novel.

With a little bit of research, I discovered that Madeleine Bourdouxhe had been a Belgian woman born in 1906. She lived in both France (particularly Paris) as well as Belgium and worked for the Belgian resistance during the Second World War. La Femme de Gilles show more was Madeleine Bourdouxhe’s first novel, her writing career interrupted by the war. It seems that as well as that other novel – soon to be reissued by Daunt books there was a collection of short stories published in the 1980’s, I believe there are a couple of other novels too, although I don’t know if they are available in English – perhaps they will be in the fullness of time. I can only hope.

This beautifully written, sensual novella concerns the love a young wife has for her husband. Elisa, is a young working class wife, her husband Gilles; a factory worker, is her absolute world. She has two small daughters, twins, and is expecting her third child. The novel opens with Elisa anticipating her husband’s return, there is no doubting her continued passion for her husband, theirs is certainly not merely a day to day existence of chores and exhaustion. Elisa’s happiness is so soon to be over – as the novel opens she is content with her children, her kitchen, the domestic tasks she undertakes everyday while she waits for her man to come home to her. She is a woman in love, happy, sexually fulfilled.

“This always happens a few minutes before Gilles gets back. Overcome by the thought of his return her body, drowning in sweetness, melting with languor, loses all its strength. She imagines rushing towards him, clasping him in her arms – but whenever she sees him actually appear in the doorway, sees the big muscular body and the corduroy work-clothes, she feels weaker still.”

Gilles is happy in his life too, he has been offered a transfer to a French factory – which could give him and Elisa a good life – but neither of them want to accept the move – happy as they are in each other and their young family. However, neither Elisa or Gilles are aware just how fragile their relationship is. Nearby live Elisa’s parents and her younger sister Victorine. Victorine is young, lovely and selfish, she has little conscience and her awareness of her own beauty gives her a sense of entitlement to the attention she loves. Victorine is a constant visitor to her sister’s house, helping with the children and domestic chores.

“Desire takes hold suddenly, out of nowhere. Gilles saw a little red mouth opening every few seconds to let the narrow tongue pass through, saw it licking a small square of paper lightly caressed by two fingers. He was dumbfounded, unable to move. He’d often felt spontaneous desire when looking at Elisa, a desire that surged up in him gently, pleasantly. That was different. This time his whole body was seized by a great wave of panic, and he thought his head would burst with blood.”

One day, Gilles becomes aware of Victorine in a way he never has been before, aware of her brother-in-law’s attention, Victorine takes advantage of it, playing up to his moment of madness. The two begin a passionate affair. The viewpoint switches to that of Gilles – his hopeless, rather pathetic transfixion, his pursuit of the fickle, vapid Victorine – is unpleasant to witness.

Suddenly, Elisa becomes aware of what is going on, senses it in the atmosphere of the room – and the knowledge which so completely devastates her, she feels she must keep to herself. Elisa is terrified that confronting her husband will make him leave. So one winter evening, heavily pregnant, she leaves her little girls sleeping and follows Gilles through the snow. The reader feels completely Elisa’s anguish – the loneliness of her situation, we are enraged on her behalf, as she continues with her daily routine as if nothing is wrong.

“There is that long sequence of days when she anxiously awaits Gilles’ return, days when she is always on the lookout for whatever affection he still feels for her, however small, days when she discovers that he hasn’t been seen at the place where he told her he was going. And there are the nights, indistinguishable from each other, when Gilles is asleep but her suffering keeps her wide awake.”

Elisa keeps her silence, living through weeks of misery – until Gilles speaks to her. Elisa loves him so much she wants to help him, she sees his unhappiness, the misery, verging on madness that comes from loving Victorine. Elisa plans to help the man she loves, heal, so that in time he can come back to her. Elisa becomes Gilles confident – she allows him speak to her of her sister, his pursuit of her, his unhappiness at not knowing where is, who she is with, the torments of his obsession – and as she sits listening to her husband day after day, Elisa is hurt again and again, but must disguise the fact. Gilles – blind to all but his own wretchedness is oblivious to the hurt he is causing – but Elisa endures all for his sake, she believes she can return her family to the happiness they had enjoyed before.

La Femme de Gilles is a wonderful little novel, beautiful and quietly devastating, it has also made me want to read everything by Madeleine Bourdouxhe that I can get hold of. show less

Beauty of Hope and Despair
Review of the Melville House paperback (2014) reissue of the first English language translation by Faith Evans (Lime Tree 1992) of the 1937 French language original.

La Femme de Gilles in its English language edition has a title that is intentionally not translated. That is in order for it to retain its double meaning in French of either The Wife of Gilles or The Woman of Gilles. It can thus be considered to be about both the wife and the lover of the male character.

The story though is told from the wife, Elisa's, point of view. Although she is very sensitive to the nuances of the changes in her husband's manner when he takes a lover, her mostly passive reaction to that and even a gradual conspiratorial alliance show more makes us begin to cringe in embarrassment and pity for her. Somehow though, Elisa's character becomes ennobled by her faith and hope. For all the despicable and weak character and actions of Gilles, it does finally begin to seem that Elisa's strategic plan will win out after all.

It is this back and forth drama and tension of hope and despair which drives this beautifully written portrait of a woman attempting to save her marriage and family. Added to this original 1992 translation by Faith Evans is a new 2014 introduction by writer [author:Elisa Albert|217759] and a new 2014 Afterword by the translator.

I read La Femme de Gilles as part of my subscription to the inaugural 2020 Shakespeare and Company Lost Treasures curated selection. 4 books of the expected 12 have been delivered as of March 2020.

Trivia and Links
La Femme de Gilles is one of the books in the Best 100 Women in Translation list which was voted on last year during Women in Translation (WIT) month. It will eventually be one of the group reads in the Goodreads Best 100 WIT group where each of the books are being read in turn. show less

I wonder how many people would not have lived the part of one character or another in this brief discourse on betrayal? The husband who suddenly discovers an overwhelming passion for his sister-in-law. The sister-in-law who takes what she can from this whilst insolently uncaring about the devastation she wrecks. And the central character herself, the wife, who suddenly realises from the most trivial of information, that her husband and her sister are at it.

Rest here:

https://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpress.com/2015/01/07/la-femme-de-gilles-by-mad...

I wonder how many people would not have lived the part of one character or another in this brief discourse on betrayal? The husband who suddenly discovers an overwhelming passion for his sister-in-law. The sister-in-law who takes what she can from this whilst insolently uncaring about the devastation she wrecks. And the central character herself, the wife, who suddenly realises from the most trivial of information, that her husband and her sister are at it.

Rest here:

https://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpress.com/2015/01/07/la-femme-de-gilles-by-mad...

I wonder how many people would not have lived the part of one character or another in this brief discourse on betrayal? The husband who suddenly discovers an overwhelming passion for his sister-in-law. The sister-in-law who takes what she can from this whilst insolently uncaring about the devastation she wrecks. And the central character herself, the wife, who suddenly realises from the most trivial of information, that her husband and her sister are at it.

Rest here:

https://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpress.com/2015/01/07/la-femme-de-gilles-by-mad...