Fifty years ago, she was seen by society as a bohemian and shameless abortionist;
Forty years ago, she was a divorced woman who was labeled "pitiful and pitiful" by the people around her;
Thirty years ago, people were pointing fingers and talking about pornographic people who were thirty years her junior;
And with the opening of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature, at the age of 82, she has become the most talked about person in the world, a successful woman with thoughts and vision.
She is Anne Hernaud, a French writer.
The Nobel Prize's words to Anne were: "Courage and clinician-like acumen reveal the roots, estrangements, and collective constraints of individual memory." ”
All of Anne's written stories revolve around her own life, recording the life of an ordinary woman who is "repressed, unfree, and constantly searching for herself".
It is also the collective memory of contemporary women, and every woman can find resonance in her experience.
The woman being stared at
In France in 1958, Anne was 18 years old, and like other girls, she was constantly under social surveillance.
In those days, the word for a good boy was excellent, and the word for a good girl was kindness, serenity and flexibility.
Everyone is ashamed to talk about sex, sex education is lackluster, and there is nothing more important than the sexual honor of a young girl, whose sexual virginity is equal to her value in the marriage market.
If a girl sleeps with someone before she gets married, no one will want her unless there is a scum, crippled or sick person in the male market.
In short, unwed mothers and men who commit crimes are in the same chain of contempt.
For seventeen or eighteen-year-old girls, the more taboo, the more curious they are.
The ignorance of the body, the teasing of boys, the new ideas of sexual liberation in the library, and the little secrets between girls all make secret sex a taboo fruit with attractive color.
Annie, like other girls, went further and further down the road to flirting with men, and at the age of 18, she became pregnant unexpectedly.
Pregnancy is a disease that only contagigates women, a disease that turns them into housewives without distinction.
Before France repealed the anti-abortion law in 1985, a girl with an unintended pregnancy, if she had an abortion herself, the law would put her in an iron cage of society; If she chooses to give birth to a child, the man's sperm traps her in a mental prison.
In short, a woman's uterus cannot make its own decisions.
When Anne asked the outside world for help, she met a bunch of selfish men:
The male classmate who has always claimed that he is open-minded only wants to have a relationship with her, saying that he helped the male doctor to prescribe her fertility medicine for her to go back to rest, and her sweet-talking boyfriend in the past coldly left her aside, as if everything had nothing to do with her...
For Anne, the initial desire was stronger than shame, and in the end the indifference was more terrifying than pain.
She can only soberly analyze herself, for her from the bottom, if she can't get rid of this child, she can't continue to go to school, and her whole life will be over.
"No woman would have an abortion with pleasure, maybe one day I will have a child, but not at the cost of my whole life, then I will hate that child for the rest of my life..."
So she tried vigorous exercise, stretched the slender iron skewer into her body, went to the black clinic for help, and allowed the thick thing to mess around in her abdominal cavity...
When all this happens, Anne can only experience the unfortunate pain of a woman having a womb like a rabbit:
There is only one thing in the life of a rabbit, hold back the pain and don't scream.
When 343 French women shared their secret experiences of abortion in 1973 and demanded the repeal of the abortion bill;
When more than a dozen states in the United States announced again that they were banning abortion for women in 2022, countless Anne was labeled "degenerate", helpless and silent.
Once upon a time, now, in the future, under the iron fist of social rules, the rabbit who can endure pain has always been there and has been ignored.
Anne was lucky in the end, she was successfully admitted to college, carried the shadow of the past to continue her life, met like-minded classmates, and talked about an open-minded soul love.
Studying is a means and a tool of struggle for her to escape poverty, and everything that is repressed seems to be looking for an outlet to speak, so 22-year-old Anne wrote in her diary:
"If I didn't fulfill my promise to write a novel at the age of 25, I would kill myself."
In today's France, women can choose their children if they wish, and they can not marry if they wish, which would never have been possible sixty years ago.
Anne, 23, had no desire to get married or have children, and she asserted that she would be an incompetent mother.
But the unspoken rule of society as a whole is that the family is a haven from the wind, and the social status of the couple is higher than that of a single man and higher than that of a single woman.
If marriage is a necessary path, she would rather choose a suitable partner, a political science classmate, a middle-class son-in-law who is satisfied in the eyes of her parents, and a happy partner for herself.
Entering marriage with him was the best choice Anne could make under the rules of society and the gaze of her parents.
As Beauvoir said: A woman is not born a woman, but gradually grows into a woman.
Frozen woman
Annie, who had just entered marriage, was also excited and looked forward to the future of that small family.
On their first Christmas, Anne pushed a small cart in the supermarket excitedly searching for ingredients for Chinese New Year's Eve meals, trying to spice up her life.
By the standards of Women's Magazine, Anne is definitely a petty bourgeois wife who reconciles work and childbirth and pays attention to maintaining feminine characteristics, she escapes the poverty of her native family and successfully achieves a class transition through marriage.
But only Anne knows that she still has to worry about her livelihood:
She lives in a house in a big city, with twenty years of heavy loans behind her, and her husband's salary alone is far from enough;
Even if the husband's native family conditions are very good, the in-laws cannot bring any spiritual and material help except that they do not look down on their hillbilly parents.
And faint desires like hanging out and watching a movie disappear with the arrival of the baby.
Marriage, career, children, keep Anne busy in a fixed few places.
She lists the places she frequents throughout the day: preparing breakfast, children's clothes, underwear to wash, lunch, shopping, pediatrician, judo classes for her eldest son and pottery classes for her second son, the post office...
Salaried jobs account for two-thirds of her waking hours, and household chores, including education, account for one-third.
And about herself, she didn't even have time to study, and her dream of writing was far away.
All this was sharply commented by her husband after work: the distribution of time outside the home is uneven, and I went to the store twice in one day, which is too inefficient ...
In that small house, the man who had once married her, the free-thinking college student, was not visible, and in less than 4 years he became a husband, a father and an extremely narcissistic machismo.
Marriage can really change a man, or a man can change his face at will before and after marriage.
Anne's space for activity is getting smaller and smaller, and time is divided more and more regularly by her work schedule; His mind was also confined to the tiny bucket room, worrying about the family's meals, clothing, and illness.
Anne is like a woman who is frozen, family is more of a tired warmth for her, and in herself, she seems to see the shadow of her parents:
They often quarrel because of their hard work, "I don't even have the effort to go to the toilet", "I can't even rest from a cold", and daily complaints have become commonplace;
They curse each other a few times a week "stupid - crazy" "old scoundrel - old bitch", there is no other way for communication between families than quarrel ...
The difference is that the swearing of the previous generation often reconciles after getting along the next day or having one-time love, as if all the hideous scenes are the fantasy of children.
And this messy quarrel occurred much more often in Anne's own marriage than expected.
Higher education and better material conditions do not improve the happiness of marriage, but only make people feel tired more deeply.
Anne often wondered, is that what happiness looks like? No, that's just the servility of marriage.
The mother is still depressed after giving birth to 5 children, and she does not remember any happy images in her mind.
The history of housewives seems to revolve around men, and there is no benefit to them.
"I have no idea anything anymore, I no longer try to explain my life, and even dying at this age is acceptable."
At the age of 35, she recalled her dream she wrote in her diary at the age of 22 and began to think outside of the housewife and family, she wanted to break out of the dull cycle of life and find a living self.
Instead of expecting men and society to change, it is better to carve out a path you want to follow.
She is ready for the pain of divorce, ready to live twice as little, ready to stop at nothing to find a hope for the future.
In the process of breaking with her husband, the bedding and furniture that I had bought with expectation were clearly divided, and with the lawyer's announcement, it became a legal fact.
"I only have one life"
After the divorce, Anne sold the house and furniture she bought with her ex-husband, and had nothing materially.
Although she was struggling at first, a woman's feeling of being born inferior slowly disappeared, and she no longer cared whether she wanted to please people or not.
At the age of 45 in her life, Anne gives people a sense of measured freedom: her ex-husband is far away, her adult son lives elsewhere, she has a lover, and lives unrestrained.
It seems that the marriage is just an episode, and the material and spiritual worries are far away from her.
When Anne renounced all popular moral words and used the standard of pleasure to measure her actions:
She is no longer a nurturer, and when shopping, she no longer needs a small cart, a small basket is enough.
She is no longer a wife, no longer a mother, and the housework is much easier, and when she wants to eat, she puts a tray on her lap directly into the TV and completes it.
She is the center of this circle, from deciding to wash the sheets to the hotel where the vacation is booked, without which the circle cannot function.
It's just that when the children occasionally come home, she will return to the busyness of the past, and more often, she can fulfill her desires perfectly, in addition to work, she can read, watch movies, make phone calls, write love letters and talk about personal affairs, without shame.
She observed her naked body in the bathroom mirror, men became a silhouette of her life, she developed the habit of keeping a condom in her pocket and never wanted to lean on a man again.
It is possible to experience the strong passion of a Russian man, to soberly enjoy with young lads.
When Anne, 58, was with a 29-year-old man, she felt like she had made no mistakes and had no sense of pride, that it was just part of life.
Once Anne was proud of what she did, now Anne is proud of who she is.
As she grew older, Anne had only one belief in her life - "I only have one life", and between the birth that had been determined and the death she would eventually face, it was earned to live for herself one more day.
After the age of 60, her wrinkles are too much to age, and she confidently wears the shorts and T-shirt she liked when she was younger, as if she has won time.
The cancer in that breast, the hair that had been lost due to chemotherapy, and every pain caused by the disease reminded her to do and cherish it.
Any emotion about the past is meaningless, and any worry about the future is superfluous.
As long as you live, everything is possible, everything is fresh.
In short, in Anne's own territory, she can do whatever she wants, and no longer has to accept the scrutiny of society and the attitude of others.
Write at the end:
If Anne Elnor's work had not won the Nobel Prize in Literature, would she have been considered a successful woman?
In a secular sense, maybe not, an 82-year-old old man living alone has too many big and small things to worry about;
From a business point of view, perhaps not, she did not have great wealth in the end, no great pioneering inventions;
But from a woman's point of view, being able to be as brave as Anne Elnor's worldly vision and be free to be herself is already a beacon-like existence.
For Anne Elnaud herself, she just summoned up the courage to live out her dream of writing at the age of 22, and the source of this courage came from the struggle for control of her body at the age of 18 and the struggle for her spiritual control at the age of 40.
A woman's freedom in life is controlled by herself, and this freedom can be addictive.
In an interview after winning the award, a reporter asked Anne Elnor: "Does success make her freer, or less freedom?" ”
Her answer was: "No, success has no impact on me, success means little to me." It has little impact on what I do or how I see myself.
I live to write. ”