Annie Ernaux - Exteriors

1

"In actual fact, I realize that I have put a lot of myself into these texts, far more than originally planned - memories and obsessions subconsciously dictating my choice of words and the scenes I wished to freeze."

• By using the first-person narrative, Annie Ernaux’s interiors are never absent, even when she is recording her interaction or perception of the exteriors.

• Once the writer begins to write, letting their self-judgment influence how readers perceive the objective external world, the writer is no longer simply an observer or recorder.

• Due to this presence of ‘I’, she can’t be content with being a mere observer. She attempts to deconstruct her exteriors, but what remains after the deconstruction is a panoramic view of the ‘I’. The ‘I’, and everything that comes with the ‘I’ — desire and consciousness — cannot be easily deconstructed; the only possible thing she and the reader can achieve with them is a vague understanding. The more intensely she attacks and dissects the exteriors, the more that the dark mist from her interiors rises, indecent, raw, yet moving. In the middle of the black mist is her desire and death, both very closely connected with the female body.

2

"I find myself longing for coats, blouses, handbags; in other words. I see myself dressed in a twirling succession of coats and blouses. Black coats, for instance, despite the fact that I already have a black car coat. (But it's not the same, it's never the same; tiny differences between the items we crave and the ones we own: the collar, the length, the material, etc.) I succumb to a strange condition in which I want all sorts of clothes for myself, regardless of shape or colour, in which I am seized with an overriding compulsion to buy a coat or a handbag. Once I am outside, the longing subsides.

Strolling in the department stores along the Boulevard Haussmann, vaguely looking for clothes. The feeling of numbness, visited by a series of fantasies which flare up and fade — a Challock jumper, a Carroll cardigan, a demure pleated dress; images of me file by, in blue, in red, with a V. reck, continually forming and drifting apart. I feel I am being assaulted by shapes and colours, torn apart by these bright things, scores of them, which we wrap around our bodies.

When I emerge onto the dark, damp pavement I realize that in fact I didn't need a jumper, or a dress, or anything."

• Similar to the ‘I’, the female body, or feminine qualities, are never absent in her writing. She writes about her yearnings for clothes in the hypermarket, her attitude towards lingerie, and how even men should own them.

• Sometimes, when reading her interpretations of every little social interaction between the people in her exteriors, the reader feels uneasy because of her brutal honesty.

• She spills out everything from her consciousness and unconsciousness (even the parts that might weaken her image as a powerful feminist, such as she was furious because a person in the elevator was aiming for her handbag, rather than her body), which is a dark whirlpool. She was too honest: her sentences, those that might sound obscene, caustic, or disturbing, those that seem to be only possibly coming from daydreams one has while strolling down the street were also slipped out of her pen and spoken aloud to the reader on paper, to the point where the reader also felt assualted, a feeling similar to that induced in her interiors by the shapes and colours of clothing.

3

• But the offense, the uneasiness, the authenticity, is what makes Annie Ernaux great. Apart from desire, she is also completely honest with death.

• The exteriors reflect the insecurities of the interiors, causing death to be everywhere in the writing—changes in the metro system, dusty books in the library, even seeing couples buying meat makes her think they will be like that until death. Death is always a part of the exteriors, and its presence is amplified when it reaches the interiors.

• Over the years, everything in her community seems to have changed, yet nothing significant has changed, forming a subtle circularity. True, the exteriors have changed in objective, naturalistic, physical terms. But have the interiors changed, or is it subtly altered, or influenced by the exteriors? Perhaps such a change, even if it exists, is undetectable.

• Others — other objects, persons— are a part of her exteriors, participating in her interiors: reflecting her past, existing in her present, and attending to her future (certain things are very predictable, like the arrival time of the train, or the presence of beggars at the station). Similarly, ‘I’ am also a part of others' exteriors. No true interaction is necessary; a certain collective sense of consciousness already exists.

• In any case, drawing herself so close to the exteriors, really grasping a feel of life, and merging the 'I' with the 'E' is already a kind of victory.