Motherhood Makes You Obscene

October 1, 2019 11:49 PM

My mother had green eyes. Black hair. Her name was Marie Augustine Adeline Legrand. She was born a peasant, daughter of farmers, near Dunkirk. She had one sister and seven brothers. She went to teachers college, on a scholarship, and she taught in Dunkirk. The day after an inspection, the inspector who had visited her class asked for her hand in marriage. Love at first sight.

They got married and left for Indochina. Between 1900 and 1903. A sort of commitment, adventure, a sort of desire, too, not for fortune but for success. They left like heroes, pioneers, they visited the schools in oxcarts, they brought everything, quills, paper, ink. They had succumbed to the posters of the era urging, as if they were soldiers: “Enlist.”

--Motherhood Makes You Obscene, by Marguerite Duras, translated from the French by Olivia Baes and Emma Ramadan - the Paris Review

Marguerite Duras:

• Wikipedia
• Goodreads
• Hiroshima, Mon Amour - opening sequence (Youtube)
• The Life and Loves of Marguerite Duras, by Leslie Garis - The New York Times Magazine
• “A Man and a Woman, Say What You Like, They’re Different”: On Marguerite Duras, by Rachel Kushner - New Yorker
• In Love with Duras, by Edmund White - The New York Review of Books
• Duras’s The Lover, thirty years later, by Brian Mastroianni - the Paris Review
• Marguerite Duras, 81, Author Who Explored Love and Sex, by Alan Riding - NYTimes Obituary

posted by flug (6 comments total)

What a different FPP!
posted by growabrain at 12:13 AM on October 2, 2019 [4 favorites]

I happened to pick up a copy of Duras' La Douleur (a mere 20p from a charity shop) at the weekend, & not having read anything of hers before, this post is a well-timed prompt for me to find out more about her - many thanks, flug!
posted by misteraitch at 12:42 AM on October 2, 2019 [1 favorite]

Thanks for sharing this! Motherhood Makes You Obscene is such a fascinating description of a complicated relationship. I'm gonna have to pick up more Duras, too.
posted by storytam at 3:10 AM on October 2, 2019

In college, I played Mister Jo in a production of Duras' Eden Cinema. It was one of the worst theatrical experiences of my entire life.
posted by Faint of Butt at 6:57 AM on October 2, 2019 [1 favorite]

Duras' is one of the greats. Her take on womanhood is always refreshing and boundary pushing. Many of her stories, novels and characters have been made into movies & TV over the years (Hiroshima mon amour & the Lover are likely best known to American audiences) if you're looking for an entry into her oeuvre.
posted by Ashwagandha at 7:59 AM on October 2, 2019 [1 favorite]

Well done, thanks very much for posting. The motherhood essay was fascinating, it reminded me of a bitter, stripped-down version of Colette, zeroing in on the combination of strength and frailty. I was introduced to her work through the film of The Lover, it's amusing to read that she basically disowned not only the film but the book, too. A writer puts something into the world, and it goes wherever it goes and reaches people in ways never expected. For a young person to see that film, then read the book, it's a very powerful expression of sensuality as a land one can inhabit while in the midst of miserable home life.
posted by twentyfeetof tacos at 4:48 PM on October 2, 2019 [1 favorite]