Annie Ernaux: Avenging the Past in Happening

Society teaches you to hide your failures, but burying the past often hands power to the people who oppressed you. When you keep a traumatic event private, you protect the system that caused your pain. Annie Ernaux grasped this brutal reality long before the world recognized her literary genius. In 1963, she faced a dangerous, illegal abortion in France. She survived the procedure and refused to let the memory die. Her memoir, Happening, rejects the poetic metaphors writers usually use for female pain. She instead wields cold, hard facts to expose the struggle of the working class. This work goes beyond simple storytelling. She engages in a calculated act of vengeance against a world that tried to erase her history.

The Internal War of Class Migration

Moving between social classes looks like success on the outside, yet it frequently creates a permanent internal war. You leave one world behind, but you never fully belong to the new one. Annie Ernaux calls herself an "internal migrant." She grew up in Lillebonne, France, surrounded by a working-class environment. Her parents ran a combination café and grocery store. They worked with their hands and struggled to make ends meet. This setting defined her early view of the world.

She eventually moved into the bourgeois world of higher education and intellectualism. This transition did not bring her peace. It brought a sharp tension between her origins and her current status. She felt she had betrayed her roots by entering a world that looked down on manual labor. Literature often felt like a separate continent to her. It stood in opposition to her social environment. She had to bridge these two worlds without losing herself in the process.

The "internal migrant" status fueled her desire to write. She wanted to vindicate her working-class roots. Who is Annie Ernaux? Annie Ernaux is a French author and Nobel Prize winner who writes about her personal history to expose broader social truths. She uses her writing to redress social inequality. She viewed her education not just as a privilege, but as a tool to "avenge her people."

The Legal Trap of 1963

Laws often claim to protect morality, but they frequently force citizens into life-or-death gambles. In 1963, France operated under strict laws that banned abortion. This legal reality did not stop the procedure; it only made it dangerous. Statistics from the pre-1975 era estimate that between 300,000 and one million illegal abortions occurred annually in France. The law created a vast underground network of "backstreet" procedures.

Annie Ernaux found herself trapped in this network at age 23. She was still a student. Pregnancy threatened to end her ambitions and mark her with social failure. The stigma surrounding unwed pregnancy in the 1960s overtook every other aspect of her life. She viewed the pregnancy not as a potential child, but as a barrier to her future.

The medical community offered no help. In fact, doctors often played a complicit role in the suffering of women. Some doctors prescribed medication to "bring back periods." In reality, these drugs often strengthened the embryo to prevent a miscarriage. This deception trapped women further. Annie Ernaux described the experience as a life-or-death battle. The survival of the woman remained uncertain throughout the ordeal. She lacked anatomical knowledge regarding the placenta, which heightened the danger. Desperation drove her to use a knitting needle. This image remains one of the most shocking symbols of that era.

Memory Against the Flames

We tend to trust written records as the ultimate truth, yet physical memory often outlasts paper. People try to destroy evidence of their shame, hoping the truth disappears with the documents. In 1970, Annie Ernaux's mother burned her daughter's diaries from 1963. She wanted to erase the shame of the abortion. She attempted to purify the past by destroying the written record.

The destruction of the diaries forced Annie Ernaux to rely on a different kind of archive. She turned to her body. Her physical memory held the truth that the flames could not touch. The body became the archive. She recalled the visceral sensations of the event rather than relying on written dates or entries.

This loss led to a unique method of memory retrieval. She described the process as "projecting a film." She visualized the atmosphere of the past rather than reading specific text. The lack of internet in the 1960s meant that the female body remained a total mystery to many young women. This isolation intensified the memory. The destruction of the diaries failed to silence her. The truth survived the fire and eventually fueled her writing.

The Weapon of Flat Writing

Emotional language often comforts the reader, while objective language forces them to confront the horror. Many writers use metaphors to soften painful topics. Annie Ernaux rejects this approach completely. She developed a style known as "flat writing," or écriture plate. This style avoids metaphors and overt emotion. She adopts an objective tone to describe harrowing events.

She believes that using artistic flourishes would betray her working-class subjects. A poetic description of an illegal abortion would hide the brutality of the reality. She wanted to capture the "inferior race" concept she found in Rimbaud’s work. Rimbaud influenced her to write about class without shame. What is Annie Ernaux's writing style? Annie Ernaux uses a "flat" objective style that strips away emotion to present facts with brutal honesty.

She shifted her focus from "writing well" to "writing truth." Brutal language became necessary to capture the reality of her experience. She wanted to shatter societal taboos around female bodies. The writing serves as a political act. It forces the reader to look at things they would rather ignore. She refuses to let the reader look away.

Publishing the Unspeakable

Publishing a memoir decades later does not distance the author from the pain; it sharpens the focus. Annie Ernaux published her first book, Cleaned Out, in 1974. This marked her shift from teaching to writing. However, the specific memoir about her abortion, Happening (L’Événement), did not appear until 2000.

The gap in time allowed her to process the event with absolute clarity. She describes the experience as defined by total shock. The reality of the abortion looked nothing like her expectations. She faced a violence comparable to war crimes. The silence surrounding these procedures horrified her. She feared historical erasure. If she did not write it down, the suffering of thousands of women would disappear.

Annie Ernaux merges her individual life into the collective consciousness. She transforms her personal pain into universal intelligibility. Her story is not just about one woman. It represents the experience of a generation. She wanted to use a specific sentence to unlock the writing. The phrase "avenge my people" guided her. She used her book to break the silence that protected the status quo.

From Text to Visual Reality

Visual media removes the safety buffer of imagination that text provides. When you read a book, you can pause or imagine scenes in a softer light. A film forces you to see the director's vision. The film adaptation of Happening, directed by Audrey Diwan, confronts the viewer with an unbearable reality. Annie Ernaux noted that the visual medium makes it harder to look away than the text.

The film won the Golden Lion at Venice, confirming its power. Diwan chose a 4:3 aspect ratio to create a sense of claustrophobia. The square frame traps the character, mirroring her situation. The director used no voiceover. This absence forces the audience to experience the isolation of the pregnant woman.

Diwan decided against nostalgia. She refused to soften the 1960s aesthetic. She focused on the harsh reality of the era. Is the movie Happening based on a true story? Yes, the film creates a direct visual adaptation of Annie Ernaux's memoir about her illegal abortion. The director realized that the "female gaze" term could be limiting. She wanted to show the body as a mystery and the isolation as a physical force.

The Vigilance of Legality

Achieving a legal right creates a false sense of security that the battle is over forever. In 1975, the Simone Veil law legalized abortion in France. This ended the "backstreet" era for many women. However, legality does not guarantee access or permanent safety. Annie Ernaux emphasizes that legality does not mean the struggle ends.

She points to examples in the USA and Poland where rights have rolled back. Vigilance remains required. The French Constitution recently amended its text to enshrine abortion as a guaranteed freedom. This move responds to the global threat against reproductive rights.

Annie Ernaux won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2022. The committee recognized her collective and personal writing style. Her work stands as a testament to the need for documentation. She proves that writing can protect rights. She fights against the "period return" lies and the silence of the past. Her work ensures that the horror of the pre-1975 era remains visible.

Fighting the Erasure of History

Annie Ernaux demonstrates that memory acts as a political force. She took the shame that society placed on her and turned it into a mirror for that same society. Her flat writing style strips away the comfort of denial. By documenting the specific details—the knitting needle, the destroyed diaries, the complicit doctors—she prevents the past from dissolving. Annie Ernaux teaches us that we must write the truth to keep our freedom.