Histoires de ventre: The Menopausal Body in Marie Darrieussecq's Truismes

ABSTRACT

Marie Darrieussecq's Truismes (1996) reinvented the metamorphosis narrative prompting rich interpretations during the past two decades; however, no critic has yet explored the significance of menopause (a uniquely human transition) to understanding this transformation. In fact, the narrator-protagonist's body experiences menopausal symptoms from hot flashes and weight fluctuation to alterations of hair and skin. Only when she visualizes her womb and experiences menopause does she metamorphose into une vieille truie. This article surveys the historical and social perceptions of menopause in France that Darrieussecq exposes in her fiction. It then explores how this work writes and confronts this “passage out of womanhood,” overturning historically established preconceptions of female aging. Rather than representing the menopausal body as a barren space devoid of interest, Truismes finds fertile ground on which to allow women to discover inner worth and creativity worthy of sharing and even publishing.

KEYWORDS:

• Aging
• body
• Marie Darrieussecq
• France
• menopause in fiction
• metamorphosis narrative
• Truismes

Notes

1. See Rodgers and Payot for a detailed publication and reception history of Truismes. Unsurprisingly, this success was accompanied by severe criticism. Critic Pierre Jourde stated, “Truismes est une petite crotte desséchée” (128) and suggested that Darrieussecq “devrait changer de métier” (Jourde 135).

2. Numerous literary critics including Jeanette Gaudet, Gill Rye, Shirley Jordan, and Anat Pick have responded to the metamorphosis of the autodiegetic narrator's body into a sow and have generated rich analyses of this novel's concretization of the metaphors of the female body and their relation to female and human identity. Multiple layers of intertextuality, ranging from Ovid's Metamorphosis to Kafka's Metamorphosis to Orwell's Animal Farm, have not escaped the attention of critics either, who have commented at length on the impact of gender on the metamorphosis narrative. No critic thus far has closely examined the significance of the narrator's initial physical transformations while in human form and their implications for contemporary perceptions of the female reproductive body.

3. Until recently, the majority of researchers believed that menopause was a uniquely human event, as it does not appear to occur in other mammalian species. Researchers Margaret Walker and James G. Herndon argued in the article “Menopause in Nonhuman Primates?” that menopause is in fact evident in a number of primate species; however, this observation has not been widely accepted in the scientific community. British biologists Dan Frank and Darren Croft have suggested that some whales (pilot whales and killer whales) also experience menopause.

4. Some other expressions used throughout the centuries include: la cessation des mois (ou règles), le retour d'âge (l'âge du retour), and le déclin de l'âge (Gardanne, Dissertation v). In the seventeenth century, the expression “la boutique est fermée” also referred to a woman who could no longer bear children.

5. The hysterography allowed gynecologists to begin to radiographically visualize the uterus in vivo and localize deformities, vaginal atrophy, scarring, and physiological changes associated with sterility and menopause (Sicard 218).

6. According to Lansac et al.'s Gynécologie pour le praticien (2007), “L'arrêt des règles correspond à une perte de la fonction de reproduction par disparition des follicules primordiaux du parenchyme ovarien et par modification des sécrétions stéroïdiennes. Cette définition d'un instantané est de plus en plus souvent remplacée par le terme de période ménopausique (ou climatérique) ce qui inclut la périménopause où la femme est encore réglée et la postménopause où la femme ne l'est plus, tout fonctionnement cyclique ayant disparu. L'âge de survenue est compris entre 45 et 55 ans en France, en moyenne 52 ans” (Lansac et al. 368).

7. According to the July 29, 1994, law, L.2141-2, 2 and 3, of the “Code de la Santé Publique, issu de la loi dite “de bioéthique” n° 94-654: “[L'assistance médicale à la procréation] a pour objet de remédier à l'infertilité dont le caractère pathologique a été médicalement diagnostiqué. […] L'homme et la femme formant le couple doivent être vivants, en âge de procréer, mariés ou en mesure d'apporter la preuve d'une vie commune d'au moins deux ans et consentant préalablement au transfert des embryons ou à l'insémination” (my emphasis).

8. In Graffigny's October 3, 1742, letter to Devaux, for example, she described realizing her misinterpretation of symptoms of (peri)menopause, or “le temps critique,” as signs of cancer: “Depuis 24 heure que j'ai eté saignée, je n'ai senti nule de ces douleurs, qui etoient continuelles, et je decide, aussi bien qu'Orgon, que ce n'est point un cancer, mais de ces accidents qui repondent au tems critique ou il semble que je vais etre, sans cependant en avoir eu de marques seures” (380–81).

9. Noëlle Châtelet is frequently cited as an actress, Lionel Jospin's sister, and the widow of renowned philosopher François Châtelet. However, she has been successfully publishing prize-winning works since the late 1980s. La dame en bleu and La femme coquelicot are on Editions Stock's list of most translated works.

10. Since the publication of Truismes, several women writers have reimagined the experience of the menopausal body in their fiction. Both Louise Lambrichs's À ton image (1998) and Marie NDiaye's Mon cœur à l'étroit (2007), for instance, contemplate the menopausal body as it transgresses legal, scientific, and medical boundaries and understanding and work to redefine this body from a sterile space to a site of extraordinary production.

11. L'Oréal, for example, markets “Activa Cell” as: “Un ferment aquatique qui aide à réduire les signes du vieillissement en atténuant les lignes fines, révélant une peau renouvelée. Améliore l'élasticité de la peau, procure une peau radieuse et des pores resserrés.”

12. According to the Trésor de la langue française  “Une grue” is “Vx. Personne (le plus souvent une femme) niaise” and “Pop. Femme facile et vénale; p. ext. prostituée.”

13. In 2004, in a Paris Match article, “Le jour où … j'ai appris que j'étais une fille Distilbène,” Darrieussecq revealed a similar real-life experience. She recounted that her mother took Distilbène, a drug to prevent miscarriage, during her pregnancy. Later, studies revealed malformations and sterility in the daughters of women who took these drugs. Darrieussecq was no exception as she discovered later in life: “Aux hystérographies succèdent les hystéroscopies … Brandissant les radios, le spécialiste qui nous reçoit annonce: ‘A gauche, un utérus normal, à droite le vôtre.’ Effarée, je vois à gauche un joli triangle isocèle prêt à recevoir des enfants, à droite une espèce de tortillon en forme de Y. Durant des années, j'ai rejeté l'idée, mais je suis une handicapée” (146).

14. According to the Trésor de la langue française informatisé, “Vieille truie” is a pejorative expression for a woman who is “grosse,” “malpropre,” and “de mauvaise réputation.” According to the Trésor de la langue française informatisé, “une vieille peau” can mean either “une personne âgée” or “une prostituée.”

15. The client decodes the corporeal indicators of the narrator's first pregnancy and teaches her how to interpret the signs (20). The narrator confirms that her client was childless: “je savais que la cliente n'avait jamais eu d'enfant” (20).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jessica Garcés Jensen

Jessica Garcés Jensen is Assistant Professor of French in the Department of World Languages and Cultures at the University of Southern Indiana. She received her doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania, where she specialized in twentieth-century and twenty-first-century French literature. Her research primarily focuses on first-person narratives of the female reproductive body in French fiction.