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Christiane Rochefort (1917-1998) |
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French writer, social critic, and feminist, who examined in her novels the situation of women and children, female sexuality, and struggle for personal freedom. Rochefort gained international fame with Le Repos du guerrier (1958, Warrior's Rest), which was made into a film in 1962, starring Brigitte Bardot. Les petits enfants du siècle (1961), another widely translated novel, was a commentary on the French government-assistance epoch. Rochefort received Prix du Roman Populiste in 1961 and the Medicis Prize in 1988. "Je suis née des Allocations et d'un joun férié dont la matinée s'étirait, bienheureuse, au son de "Je t'aime tu m'aimes", oué àla trompette douce. C'était le début de l'hiver, il faisait bon dans le lit, vien ne pressait." (in Les petits enfants du siécle, 1961) Christiane Rochefort was born in Paris, but the first years she spent in the province of Limousin, before her family moved to Paris where she lived all her life. During Rochefort's career as a writer, little biographical information was published about her. She was the only child of working-class parents. Her father worked as a telegraph operator. After attending the lycée Fénelon, she studied medicine, psychology, and ethnology at Sorbonne, and worked later as a model, actress, and newspaper correspondent. In addition she tried her hand as an artist. Along with a number of other French public figures, Rochefort signed the Manifesto of the 121 September 1960, formally called the "Déclaration sur le droit à l'insoumission dans la guerre d'Algérie", the statement "respecting and judging justified the refusal to take up arms against the Algerian people." At the Cinémathètique Française, Rochefort cooperated with Henri Langlois, the legendary film archivist. Langlois' concept of film archiving clashed with professionalism of the Cinémathètique and André Malraux, who was the Minister of Culture, tried to impose a new administrator in 1968. Langlois started with his staff and film personalities a counter attack, which they won. At Cannes film festival Rochefort worked as a press secretary for 15 years, but was dismissed in 1968 from her post at Cannes for her "freedom of thought". In the same year the festivals were closed by the events of May 1968; François Truffaut and other prominent directors rallied to stop screenings in support of striking students and workers. However, writing was Rochefort's calling; she published nine novels,
though the Julliard Publishing House rejected the first manuscripts of
Rochefort and Marguerite Duras, too, because they were too
intellectual. Her first book, Cendres et Or, came out in
1956. At that time she was over 40. Rochefort had divorced after a
marriage of four years – accroding to some sources because she though
that a marriage restricts a woman and her creativity. Like Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986), her contemporary, Rochefort was an activist in the French women's movement. She once said in
an interview that her husband forced her to choose between being
married and being a writer; she choose to be a free woman. In August 1970,
with other activists, she lay a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknown
Soldier in the name of "the one more unknown than the unknown soldier,
his wife." Along with de Beauvoir, Catherine Denevue, Maguerite Duras, Gisèle Halimi, Violette Leduc and others, she signed the Manifeste des 343
(the Manifesto of the 343), stating that all those who signed it had
obtined illegal abortion or interruption volontaire de grossesse (IVG,
voluntary termination of pregnancy). Warrior's Rest, published in 1958, just missed receiving the Prix Fémina – after a battle between women jurors, the prize went to Café Céleste of Françoise Mallet-Jorris. Also the Académie Goncourt squabbled over Rochefort's work, but it won a newly created award, the Prix de la nouvelle vague (Prize of the New Wave). The book was a huge success, sold 600,000 copies, and broke the conventional view that it is impossible for a woman to depict male erotic fantasies. Warrior's Rest is an anarchistic and sadomasochistic story, based partly on Orpheus and Eurydice. It concerns Geneviève Le Theil, a young Parisienne, and Jean-Renaud Sarti. Renaud is an alcoholic former soldier, he has lost his hope after the bombing of Hiroshima. Ten years later he tries to kill himself in a small-city hotel. Geneviève finds him accidentally, saves his life and becomes Renaud's lover, having with him her first orgasms. Renaud is violent, he beats her and separates her from her family and friends. They travel to Switzerland and Italy. She is going to have a child by him and Renaud wants to marry her. He insist on trying to rehabilitate himself by going to the clinic he calls the Great Washing Machine. Rochefort herself identified with Renaud, the male antihero, not with Geneviève or Rafaële, to whom Geneviève is attracted. The story was adapted into screen in 1962 under the title Love on a Pillow and directed by Roger Vadim, starring Vadim's ex-wife Brigitte Bardot in their fourth film. In the comedy Bardot bestows her pleasures on young man, hoping to divert his intended suicide. During the filming Bardot announced that she intends to retire from the screen. A stage version from 1961, starring Ralf Vallone, was a flop. Marlene Dietrich, who had an affair with Vallone, was under consideration for the role of Geneviève that went to Françoise Prévost. Vallone had adapted the novel for the stage, too. Les Petits enfants du Siècle (Children of Heaven) received the Prix du Roman Populiste (the Populist Prize). Rochefort's second novel satirized the French government's post-war policy of providing family allowances in order to increase the national birth-rate. The story started with the words "I was born of the family subsidies..." Rochefort focused on a working-class family living in a huge project on the outskirts of Paris. Philippe is a television-installation man. Josyane Rouvier, the narrator, is a tough working-class girl. She has grown up in a housing project and has gone through an adolescent sex affair with an elder man. She becomes pregnant by a nice young man, Philippe, whom she genuinely loves, but plans to produce children in order to acquire consumer goods. Rochefort's view is pessimistic: the novel ends with Josyane succumbing to romantic love and continuing the cycle of child production, following the fate of her mother. "Whether or not one agrees with Miss Rochefort's black-and-white view of the Benevolent State, her talent is unarguable," wrote the Village Voice (September 6, 1962). "In "Children of Heaven" there is bite and sharp satire, and - as M. Rouvier would say about his second-hand Citroen - it holds the road well." Rochefort's novels were often simultaneously ironic and confessional. The first-person narrator of La porte du fond
(1988) makes part of her life "to be a pain in the arse
to as many people as possible." Rochefort depicted the struggles
of social outcasts and sexual minorities, and contrasted conventional
language and attitudes with innovative use of slang and colloquialisms.
Although Rochefort resisted being categorized, she once stated that "I
belong more to the poètes maudits, the marginal nonconformist writers." (Textualizing the Future: Godard, Rochefort, Beckett and Dystopian Discourse by Julie Anne Monty, dissertation, 2006, p. 81) Central themes in her work - in the spirit of sexually free 1960s
- were repression of female sexuality and
creativity in contemporary society. Lesbian relationships represent a
potential challenge to patriarchal norms and the nuclear
family."Sexuality is a way of raising consciousness," she wrote after
the publication of Printemps au parking (1969), in which the two male central characters, apparently heterosexual, have a liberating homosexual affair. ('Sexuality, Politicization, May 1968: Situating Christiane Rochefort's Printemps au parking' by Michael Lucey, A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 12.3. 2001, p. 33) Les stances à Sophie (1963, Cat's Don't Care for Money) borrowed its storyline from an obscene medical students' song and followed it from a female point of view. Céline, the narrator, leaves his old way of life after meeting her husband's best friend's wife Julia and enters into a lesbian relationship with her. Rochefort suggests that marriage is little more than an institutionalized form of (unpaid) prostitution. "The novel is mostly a criticism of middle-class, upwardly mobile male attitudes, ego, competitiveness, and insensitivity" said Jennifer R. Waelti-Walters (Damned women: Lesbians in French Novels, 1796-1996, 2000, pp. 122-123). Les stances à Sophie, which has been filmed twice, became very popular in France. Rochefort's first fantasy book, Une rose pour Morrison (1966), was written
in twenty-four days, in a state of trance. This work
more experimental in its style than her earlier novels. Archaos ou le Jardin étincelant
(1972) was an utopian fantasy, which explored the theme of female
power. Achaos, a lost kingdom in central Europe, is a threat to its
neighbours because it allows sexual freedom to its women. All
references to the land, its philosophy and lifestyle has been
eliminated from the official chronices - like the lost Atlantis (meaning the daughter of Atlas), it is a hole in the history. According to
Archaosite philosophy, works of love are better than those of riches
and wars. The king has opened the Royal Castle to all women who need a
refuge from their husbands, boyfriends, or parents. Princess Onagre,
twin sister of King Govan, has founded a convent dedicated to the
enjoyment of the present and to meditation. Besides novels, Rochefort published short stories and essays, appeared in Bernard Pivot's legendary television program, Apostrophes, and translated into French writings by her partner, the Israeli artist, columnist, playwrigt and novelist Amos Kenan. She also translated John Lennon's En flagrant délire (In His Own Write) with Rachel Misrahi. In the early seventies, Rochefort wrote several articles for the feminist paper Le Torchon brûle. Except Marguerite Duras, Virginia Woolf and Natalie Sarraute, many of her favorite writers were American: William Faulkner ("a kind of master, a teacher"), Saul Bellow, J.D. Salinger. (Textualizing the Future: Godard, Rochefort, Beckett and Dystopian Discourse by Julie Anne Monty, dissertation, 2006, p. 83) Ma Vie revue et corrigée par l'auteur (1978) was Rochefort's account of her own life. In Les enfants d'abord (1976), a collection of essays, she saw children as the oppressed class. The theme continued in last work, La Porte du fond, a story of incest. The book received Prix Médicis award, and was translated into several languages, including Finnish. Written in confessional style, the writer approached her subject from the feminist point of view. Rochefort died on April 24, 1998.
Selected works:
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