155:. Her very quotidian life ("the emotional vacuum that overcomes a young educator, once her school career is finished") changes when one of her students, 12-year-old Annette Rieu (whose father died in World War I "because he suffered too much (31)), writes an essay containing the sentence, "The saddest day of my life comes back every week, the day when Mother entertains her friends and I hear the sound of laughter" (25). Until then, Annette had not drawn attention to herself, but the essay prompts a fascination and attraction in the childless and single Marie that she finds hard to control, and her love for the child seems to be reciprocated. Annette blossoms under the attention paid to her, holds the door for her teacher, plucks the most beautiful flowers for her, and waits for her every afternoon after school to say goodbye. Initially reciprocating the child's devotion, Marie herself grows as a person and as a teacher, and is even recommended by a school inspector to transfer to a school in Paris. She declines, and finds it difficult to act on the child's attention and on two occasions even rebuffs her.
196:, called it a "delicate sensitive study in character", though she states in the same breath that it "is manifestly one of those novels which inevitably lose definitely through translation"; and again, "this restrained record of a French provincial school teacher, who yearned for all the elemental joys of a normal environment, is absolutely and essential Gallic, an appealing book even in its English form, but with its informing fire damped and dimmed through transference to an alien tongue". The novel has long been out of print.
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During a vacation, which Marie spends as usual with her grandparents in the country, she receives a letter from
Annette, declaring her love. No longer able to disguise or justify her feelings as maternal, Marie responds by withdrawing her affection. The child, however, falls ill with pneumonia, and
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is the first of three lesbianism-themed novels by Galzy. Lesbian love, according to Waeti-Walters, is a more or less secret alternative to the only two kinds of love women were allowed to express: maternal love and heterosexual love; as a consequence, Galzy's (and other) characters have "no models
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While the novel (and the translation) received some praise in 1930 and 1931, it was never a great success, though it is now appreciated by critics for its study of the main character, Marie, a school teacher struggling with her (lesbian) desire for one of her students. Autobiographical elements
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on the night the child's fever breaks, it is Marie who is with her, instead of
Annette's mother, who thereafter becomes hostile, pulls the child from school, and forces Marie to transfer to another school. Annette does leave a token of love: the name "Marie" carved in her school desk.
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rather than as an autobiography. Another autobiographical element is offered by the dedication in the French edition, to
Mademoiselle Germaine Normand, Galzy's first-grade teacher in high school in Montpellier. Like Galzy, Marie attended the
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The few French and
English reviews at the time of publication were positive. It was called as a "very sad" and "very beautiful" novel, and the translation (by Jacques Le Clerq) was likewise praised. Elizabeth N. Case, writing in the
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and no language for what they are experiencing and no place to situate themselves socially". In Galzy's first such novel, the love between the two women is no more than implicit.
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Critic
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permeating the novel have also been studied; these include the novel's perspective on the school where Marie and her author both worked, the
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Marie Pascal is a single woman who teaches seventh-grade "literature, geography, history, everything" at a small school in a small town in
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in Paris. To deflect the charge of autobiographical fallacy critics present the novel as a
182:(the second and last installment of that award) it was published in English translation by
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Case, Elizabeth N. (9 November 1930). "Romance, Mystery and Short
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in Paris; and the college where they both received their education, the
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The
Forgotten Generation: French Women Writers of the Inter-war Period
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History of
Homosexuality in Europe, Berlin, London, Paris 1919–1939
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Schinz, Albert (1931). "L'année Littéraire Mil Neuf Cent Trente".
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212:(1919), reflects Galzy's experiences as a teacher at the
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123:. Published in French in 1929, it won the 1930
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303:. McGill-Queen's Press. pp. 99–100.
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346:"[The Prix Brentano for 1930]"
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178:in 1929, and since it won the 1930
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163:Publication and critical reception
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297:Waelti-Walters, Jennifer (2000).
324:Wade, Herbert Treadwell (1931).
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369:"Adventuring Among New Books".
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440:Milligan, Jennifer E. (1996).
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232:Jeunes filles en serre chaude
200:Background and interpretation
117:L'initiatrice aux mains vides
475:. U of Virginia P. pp.
467:Hawthorne, Melanie (2000).
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512:Novels with lesbian themes
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358:: 23. 1931.
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