Shame by Annie Ernaux
I have brought to light the codes and conventions of the circles in which I lived. I have listed the different languages that enveloped me, forging the vision I had of myself and the outside world. Nowhere could I fit in that Sunday in June. What happened that day could not be put into words, in either of the worlds that were mine. We stopped being decent people, the sort who don't drink or fight and who dress properly to go into town. Despite a brand-new smock to start the term, my beautiful missal, my top marks and my daily prayers, I would never be like the other girls again. Thad seen the unsee-able. I knew something that the Catholic school and its sheltered environment should have guarded me against, something that implicitly bracketed me with those whose violent, alcoholic nature and mental illness gave rise to stories ending in really, it's sad to see that. I became unworthy of private education, its standards of excellence and perfection. I began living in shame. The worst thing about shame is that we imagine we are the only ones to experience it.
Annie Ernaux wrote a beautiful short book. Shame is an ethnological study of Annie Ernaux's childhood centered around a moment when she was 12, when she witnessed her father trying to kill her mother. Although everything went back to normal, nothing did for her. That moment was her loss of innocence, the onset of her shame. In 86 pages, Ernaux uniquely tells the story about her shame. She focuses on cutting out embellishments and focusing on the core of what happened, without adding her own narrative-twist to pervert the events. Enraux chooses not to “opt for narrative, which would mean inventing reality instead of searching for it." She uses precise language, vivid details, and handpicked memories to craft her own recollection. Some of it seems like a stream of consciousness, but in my own opinion, it's quite particular. Crisp and vulnerable, her writing (for a different book) won her the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Naturally, Shame is an introspective book. I've felt shame before too -- that disgusting, wrenching, de-humanizing feeling. I used to feel ashamed that my mother was overweight. I used to not want her to pick me up, for fear of how people would judge me. I used to feel shame that the food I brought to school smelled. I used to not want to bring my pappu or chicken and rice. I used to feel ashamed that I was falling behind in math, that I needed a tutor to help my brain wrap around concepts that were coming easy to my peers who were excelling. I remember in 5th grade, I used to hurt Robert Carducci with my words. He was a little geek of a kid, but I wanted to feel powerful over somebody… feel better than them. So I bullied him, and I made him cry. I used to call people’s houses small when I was young, to the dismay of a disappointed dad who realized his son was a ungrateful little sh*ithead.
More recently in college, I’ve felt shame for privilege. It’s a stunning burden which I bore on my plate. A privilege to feel shame for being privileged; it had a deep irony. I am a child who has been coddled into the upper-echelons of the world, through a mixture of strong support systems, good luck, and a willingness to embrace grind coupled with a flair for the ambitious. I did not feel deserving – I would not give myself respect because I am not a self-made man. The solution to that problem, as I’ve reflected over time: STFU - it’s a very narcissistic thought, putting my ‘feelings’ at the center of the equation. Taking a societal inequity and casting it as a reflection of my moral character is dangerous, and doesn’t accomplish goals that benefit anybody).
Memorable quotes:
People were continually spying on each other. It was essential to learn about other people's lives, so that they could be talked about, and to protect one's own, so that it couldn't be. It was a tricky balance, 'worming information out of someone' but not letting them do the same in return, or else just 'saying what you could afford to re- veal.' Socializing was people's favorite distraction. They loved to mingle with the crowds pouring out of cinemas or rushing off the station platform at night. The mere fact that people congregated somewhere was a good enough reason for joining in. A brass band or a bicycle race pro- vided an opportunity to enjoy not only the event but also the sight of the crowd, and to go home saying who had been there and with whom. People's conduct was scrutinized and their behavior analyzed in minute de- tail, including the most personal traits; these signs were gathered and interpreted, shaping the history of other people. A sort of collective novel, with each of us making our contribution, adding the odd detail or a few narrative flourishes to the general picture, which people in the store or around the table usually summed up by 'he's a good guy' or 'she ain't worth much.
→ My own thoughts on sympathy
→ I often seek out sympathy, but much to my own disapproval. Maybe it was a thing of the past, because my current belief is that it is better to reject sympathy so that I can be independent of judgment. So that I can work in the shadows and let my outcomes speak for themself.
Saying 'my daughter goes to a private school' instead of simply 'my daughter goes to school' emphasizes the difference between those who are thrown together indiscriminately and those who belong to a special world, between those merely attending compulsory education and those who early on have opted for a better life. Naturally, it was understood that within the boundaries of the private school there were neither rich girls nor poor girls but one big Catholic family
In this world of excellence, I am acknowledged as an excellent student and I enjoy the freedom and privileges conferred upon me by my top rank in the school's hier-archy. Replying before the other girls and being asked to explain a maths problem or to read certain passages out loud because I have perfect intonation ensures that I feel quite at home in class. I am not particularly studious or hardworking, handing in hastily-written homework which I rush through in no time. Being naturally talkative and noisy, I delight in playing the part of the bad, unruly pupil without actually being one, as this will save me from being ostracized by the other girls on account of my good marks.
→ I felt similarly when I was young. That being on top of my sh*t was uncool, so I would play the ‘bad, unruly pupil.’
There were other classifications that mattered besides my school report, the kind that eventually develop within any close-knit community, conveyed by 'I like' or I don't like' so-and-so. First a distinction was to be made between the 'show-offs' and the others, between the girls who gave themselves airs' because they got asked to dance at parties or spent their summer holidays by the sea, and those who didn't. Being a show-off is a physical and social trait belonging to the younger, prettier girls from the town centre, whose parents are usually traveling salesmen or shopkeepers. Among those who aren't show-offs are the daughters of farmers; these older girls, many of whom are repeating their year, are either boarders or else day students who cycle over from some nearby village. The things they could boast about - the land, the harvesters, the farm hands - fail to make an impression, like anything else to do with the country. Anything associated with the sticks' is held in contempt. We're not on a farm!' is an insult.
→ It’s always fascinating to understand what exactly, at any given time, is viewed as high status in a society. These things change city by city, nation by nation. Just look at ‘prestigious’ in SF (how smart are your parents?) vs NYC (how wealthy are your parents?)
For me and no doubt many of my contemporaries, memories are associated with ephemeral things such as a fashionable belt or a summer hit and therefore the act of remembering can do nothing to reaffirm my sense of identity and continuity. It can only confirm the fragmented nature of my life and the belief that I belong to history.
→ When I was at Evan’s house over break, he had me read the first few pages on a book about memory. The thought experiment he played demonstrated an important point to me. If you remember your time with friend X at place Y over Z years, all those study sessions and hangouts and dinners and dorm talks blend into one whole scene. If you separate the place, to say a cabin in the woods or any small get-away trip, you suddenly have multiple memories whereas before you had only one long one. It made me think about the importance of taking trips and changing locations. It’s an insight that adds a layer of depth to the meaning of “third places” in life.
→ On Ernaux’s note on looking up to the older school girls
→ When we are young, we look up and fear those who are older. We dehumanize them as we do celebrities. Ex: On the Lex Fridman podcast, Jared Kushner spoke of how at the end of the day, all world leaders are humans too. They have favorite emojis, they get slighted at misunderstandings, they consult with voodoo genies sometimes too. One should work to break past the facade and arrive to the human
I remember a game I used to play in the morning on the days when I didn't have school and would lie in until midday. On the back of a blank postcard - an elderly woman had given me a whole pile of old ones - I write down the surname and Christian name of a girl. No ad-dress, just the name of the town pictured on the card. No text in the part set aside for correspondence. The surnames and Christian names are provided by newspapers such as Lisette, Le Petit Echo de la mode and Les Veillées des chaumières. I make a point of using the chronological order in which they were published. Then I cross out some of the names to add new ones and prolong the game. Inventing dozens of addressees gives me intense satisfaction (something akin to sexual desire). Occasionally, not very often, I send myself a card, blank, just like the other ones.
My mother's religion, shaped by her experience in the factory and moulded by her fierce, ambitious personality and her work, can be summed up as: a highly individualistic approach, a way of seizing every opportunity to ensure material comfort; a distinguishing feature that sets her aside from the rest of the family and most of the customers from our neighbourhood; a social ambition, showing the snooty bourgeois women from downtown that her religious fervour and generous donations in church have made her - a former factory worker - a better person; the cornerstone of her universal quest for perfection and self-improvement, which embraces my own future.
→ The dignified person, worthy of respect for upholding universally “good” ideals which aren’t prescribed based on their place in society. Not ideals which say, “ah, what a good peasant farming woman you are.”
I find it difficult to convey the full extent to which religion governed my mother's life. In 1952, for me, my mother was religion. She appropriated the rules of private education, only she made them harsher. Among her favorite recommendations: take the example of (their kind, polite behaviour, their diligence) but don't try to copy (their failings). She was always saying, be an example (by working hard, behaving properly, being polite). And, what will people think?)
Brigitte embodies the model young girl, humble and contemptuous of creature comforts, living in a world where people have drawing-rooms and pianos, frequent tennis courts, visit art shows and sip afternoon tea in the Bois de Boulogne. A world where parents never argue. The book conveys the excellence of Christian moral standards, as well as the excellence of the borgeois way of life. (I found these stories more realistic than Dickens' novels because they painted the picture of a likely future -love-marriage-children. Can the real therefore be defined as a mere sum of potentialities?
→ I like the interjections of her own thoughts in the story
I have brought to light the codes and conventions of the circles in which I lived. I have listed the different languages that enveloped me, forging the vision I had of myself and the outside world. Nowhere could I fit in that Sunday in June. What happened that day could not be put into words, in either of the worlds that were mine. We stopped being decent people, the sort who don't drink or fight and who dress properly to go into town. Despite a brand-new smock to start the term, my beautiful missal, my top marks and my daily prayers, I would never be like the other girls again. Thad seen the unsee-able. I knew something that the Catholic school and its sheltered environment should have guarded me against, something that implicitly bracketed me with those whose violent, alcoholic nature and mental illness gave rise to stories ending in really, it's sad to see that. I became unworthy of private education, its standards of excellence and perfection. I began living in shame. The worst thing about shame is that we imagine we are the only ones to experience it.
→ Core theme of the book.
At a small table nearby sat a girl aged fourteen or fifteen, suntanned, in a low-cut dress, and an elderly man who appeared to be her father. They were talking and laughing quite freely, completely at ease, oblivious of other people. She was dipping into a thick milky substance in a glass - some years later I learnt this was yoghurt, which people like us had never heard of. I caught sight of myself in the mirror, pale and sad looking with my glasses, silently sitting beside my father, who was staring into the far distance. I could see everything that separated me from that girl yet I wouldn't have known what to do to resemble her. Afterwards, my father complained with unusual vehemence about this restaurant, where he claimed we had been served mashed potatoes made with 'pig slop', white and tasteless. Several weeks later, he was still venting his anger over the meal and its disgraceful 'pig slop.' Although he never actually said so - it was probably then that I began decoding his speech - it was his way of expressing resentment at having been treated with contempt because we were not chic customers who ate à la carte.
→ The world shows us that there are fine, elegant, in-better-taste people all around us. I felt like that when I came to Penn. The way people interacted with their parents (that relationship) was inherently different; it was more American, more fashionable, it matched. Over time, I learned to take pride in what I had instead of falling for envy. My roots define me.l
→ On the way up, dress and act upwards. On the top, dress down and speak simply, plainly, and with wit.Be common, because I have unquestionable proof that I’m uncommon.
After we had got back home, I couldn't stop thinking about our trip. I kept seeing myself in hotel rooms and restaurants, or walking down sun-drenched avenues. Now I knew there was another world - a huge place with a blazing sun, bedrooms and washbasins with hot water, and little girls talking to their father the way they do in novels. We were not part of it. That's the way it was. I'm pretty sure it was that summer that I invented the perfect day' game, a sort of ritual inspired by Le Petit Écho de la mode - which boasted far more advertisements than the other papers we bought - after I had read through the same way. I would imagine I was a young girl living alone in a big, beautiful house (alternatively, living alone in a room in Paris). I would shape my body and appearance using the products advertised in the magazine: pretty teeth (Gibbs), luscious red lips (Rouge Baiser), a slender figure (girdle X) and so on. I would usually be wearing a dress or a suit available by postal order; my furniture would come from the department store Les Galeries Barbès. The academic studies I chose were those which the Ecole I wouldn't eat food unless its nutritional value was stat-ed: pasta, Astra margarine. I would delight in forging my personality out of the products advertised only in that particular paper (a rule scrupulously observed), slowly taking time to explore each new ad', piecing the images together to paint the picture of a perfect day. One possible scenario would involve waking up in a Lévitan bed, having a bowl of Banania for breakfast, brushing my 'glossy hair' with Vitapointe and studying my correspondence course to become a nurse or maybe a social worker. Every week a new batch of advertisements would rekindle the game which, unlike the fantasies derived from literature, was both creative and exciting - I was using real objects to build the future - as well as frustrating -I could never work out a schedule for the whole day. It was a secret, nameless activity which I could never have imagined others also partook in.
→ old-school Pinterest vision board with a timeless spirit of consumerism.
“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” - Wittgenstein