A Life of Her Own: A Countrywoman in Twentieth-Century France / Edition 1

by Émilie Carles

Overview

Published in France in 1977 as Une Soupe aux Herbes Sauvages, this autobiography of a peasant woman reared in the stony insularity of a tiny Alpine village reveals the unfolding of a formidable person. Carles, born in 1900, writes of her life in the mountains coountry of southern France as comprising "so many different things, funny or tragic, picturesque or cruel." She takes the reader into her beloved Claree Valley where she as a young child in a motherless family labored alongside her father in the fields; it is where her schooling began and where she recognized her intelligence as the key to the outer world. Primitive village life and the patriarchal though loving structure of her family are background for Carles's full, nonconformist life as teacher, farmer, mother, feminist and political activist. The memoir brings to life a captivating woman

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813516417
Publisher:	Rutgers University Press
Publication date:	03/01/1991
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Avriel H. Goldberger is Professor of French and Chair of the department at Hofstra University. She is the author of many articles on French literature and of Visions of a New Hero. Her edition and translation of Corinne, or Italy (the first new English edition of the work in nearly a hundred years) was also published by Rutgers University Press

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Translator's Note
Preface

Part ONE:
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18

Part TWO:
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
 Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32

Afterward
Glossary

Editorial Reviews

Published in France in 1977 as Une Soupe aux Herbes Sauvages, this autobiography of a peasant woman reared in the stony insularity of a tiny Alpine village reveals the unfolding of a formidable person. Carles, born in 1900, writes of her life in the mountains coountry of southern France as comprising ``so many different things, funny or tragic, picturesque or cruel.'' She takes the reader into her beloved Claree Valley where she as a young child in a motherless family labored alongside her father in the fields; it is where her schooling began and where she recognized her intelligence as the key to the outer world. Primitive village life and the patriarchal though loving structure of her family are background for Carles's full, nonconformist life as teacher, farmer, mother, feminist and political activist. The memoir brings to life a captivating woman. Photos not seen by PW. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Originally published in France as Une Soupe aux Herbes Sauvages (1977), this is the memoir of a mountain peasant born at the turn of the century who was lucky and persevering enough to finish school, work in Paris, attend the Sorbonne, and become a schoolteacher. Carles married an intellectually inclined housepainter, and they returned to her village in the Alps of southeastern France to raise their family. Her tales demonstrate some of the political and social conflicts of modern French life, and her descriptions of her childhood and adolescence in a rigidly conservative patriarchal society are especially moving. Unfortunately, her later stories in the rest of the book become more mundane and less engaging. Not a necessary purchase.-- Gwen Gregory, U.S. Courts Lib., Phoenix, Ariz.

Library Journal