Rethinking gender and autobiography in Nathalie Sarraute's Enfance : a survey of critical approaches

This research addressed questions of gender and genre with regards to the French author Nathalie Sarraute and her autobiography, Enfance. A working familiarity with her oeuvre, her concept of tropisms, and with the scope of autobiography was essential. An awareness of the ways in which certain textual techniques employed by Sarraute have been viewed as "feminist" was equally important. The range of critical reception to the primary text was surveyed. It was found that Sarraute and Enfance were interpreted through different but overlapping critical perspectives—textual/ critical, feminist, psychological, and reader-oriented. It was decided that a presentation of the text's reception in all its complexity served to positively enrich one's reading of the text. It was concluded that Enfance was both autobiography and something other than autobiography in that the text possesses certain innovative means of sidestepping generic conventions. It was also concluded that regardless of her personal distaste for labels, Nathalie Sarraute will continue to be read at times as feminist for her work with "the neuter" and with gender stereotypes. Finally, to the extent that Sarraute pushes her readers to reexamine gender with all of its traditional associations, it was concluded that she furthers the sticky debates of difference.