A Frozen Woman [Paperback]

Annie Ernaux (Author), Linda Coverdale (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 8, 1996

A Frozen Woman charts Ernaux's teenage awakening, and then the parallel progression of her desire to be desirable and her ambition to fulfill herself in her chosen profession - with the inevitable conflict between the two. And then she is thirty years old, a teacher married to an executive, mother of two infant sons. She looks after their nice apartment, raises her children. And yet, like millions of other women, she has felt her enthusiasm and curiosity, her strength and her happiness, slowly ebb under the weight of her daily routine. The very condition that everyone around her seems to consider normal and admirable for a woman is killing her. While each of Ernaux's books contain an autobiographical element, A Frozen Woman, one of Ernaux's early works, concentrates the spotlight piercingly on Annie herself. Mixing affection, rage and bitterness, A Frozen Woman shows us Ernaux's developing art when she still relied on traditional narrative, before the shortened form emerged that has since become her trademark.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"My whole story as a woman: going down a flight of stairs, and hanging back at each step." Always a perceptive writer, French author Ernaux has outdone herself in this sharply painful story of a woman's aspirations slowly picked apart by reality. The narrator is a young woman who isn't so much frozen as caught?between the demands of her body and her mind, between what she can see for herself and what she is told, between being a wife/mother and being an individual. Ernaux's followers will recognize the narrator from Cleaned Out, A Man's Place and A Woman's Story, the daughter of a lower-middle class couple who run a combination grocery and cafe. Her unconventional mother encourages reading and studying at the expense of clean baseboards. For the narrator, adolescence brings the pressures of wanting to be wanted and comparing herself with a pernicious image of feminine perfection so unlike her own noisy, blowzy mother. As she gets older, that image is replaced by another fantasy: the romantic model of a man who will respect her and treat her as an equal. Marriage, a child, a move, a big job for her husband, and in the end, she is a woman who "has never sat waiting on a bench for the afternoon to go by and the child to grow up." It's as though Ernaux has eavesdropped on the cathartic imaginary battles every woman has waged with her parents, her husband, her kids, herself. And while she is acutely self-aware, her writing is never self-pitying. "Ten years later, I will be the one in a silent, sparkling kitchen, with flour and strawberries: I have stepped into the picture, and it's killing me."
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

In this autobiographical novel, the acclaimed author of Simple Passion (LJ 9/15/93) portrays her life up to age 30. As a child, the narrator observed how her mother ran the business and her father was househusband. As a university student, she marries and has a child, then finds it difficult to complete her studies, frustrated that her husband has cast her in the role of servant. Ernaux acutely portrays the women in her heroine's life, dividing them according to their interest in being the "desirable" wife and mother or in being more liberated, with the narrator clearly preferring the latter role. This outstanding book clearly expresses a young girl's confusion and a young woman's trapped feeling. Highly recommended for public and academic libraries.?Ann Irvine, Montgomery Cty. P.L., Md.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Seven Stories Press (October 8, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 188836338X
• ISBN-13: 978-1888363388
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #522,950 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #37 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > French
  • #41 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Arts & Literature > Authors

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Frozen Woman a hot topic, June 11, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: A Frozen Woman (Hardcover)

I heard Maya Angelou once say good writing makes the reader think "I could have written that" because the text so accurately depicts common feelings. Ernaux has more than accomplished that in A Frozen Woman. Her description of the journey a young woman makes from independence and freedom to a stifled married-with-children life hits almost too close to home. The text is also written in a way that the reader seems to be as surprised at how much life changes for the narrator as the character is herself. I could not help but think of Reviving Ophelia while reading this book, tracing the metamorphosis of adventurous girls into frozen women

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A recommended read, December 12, 2000

By 

B. Harwood (Ontario, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Frozen Woman (Paperback)

I read this book in one sitting and found it fascinating. It was translated from French, but flows very well. I wonder what period in time this book is meant to reflect. The book seems autobiographical, and as the author was born in 1940, I assume that this is the era that character is experiencing - a time in which most women were expected to be happy to give up a career in exchange for marriage and children.

A Frozen Women is a interesting study of one woman's protest at being urged into becoming a wife and mother, a role for which she has no respect or desire. If this book had reflected the 90's or later (which I believe it does not), it would not have rung true, as today's women, for the most part, have more choices than they used to.

I really found myself feeling empathy with the main character, as even today, women are still often expected to bear the brunt of household and child rearing duties - jobs that don't seem to be highly respect or appreciated, and are often less than fulfilling. The main character's feelings of resentment and powerlessness have probably been experienced by many women, both in the past and present, especially women who desire an even partnership in marriage.

The ending left me waiting for more, however, and I wonder if Ernaux will be continuing what seems to be an autobiographical tale of a woman who dreams of liberation and equality.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating memoir, May 22, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: A Frozen Woman (Paperback)

I recommend this book to everyone--women who fear marriage, women who are eager to marry, happily married women, unhappily married women, men of all sorts. It provides a fascinating, convincing portrayal of a loveless marriage, of how class affects our lives in a very real way. The book is focused, terrifying, depressing, vivid, energetic--everything you want in a memoir. If you're an empathic person, you'll admire this book.