The South
Carolina Modern Language Review
Volume 1,
Number 1
The Pleasure of Being
a Pig:
Marie Darrieussecq’s Pig Tales
by
Adelheid Eubanks
Coker
College
During the fall of 1996, Marie
Darrieussecq’s debut novel, Truismes
(Pig Tales), a text about a woman who
is transformed into a sow, took the French reading public by storm. One
reviewer states: “Marie Darrieussecq is the new darling of the French literary
world” and goes on to tersely describe the book as “short, . . . effective but
revolting” (Dallas 4).[1] While the novel’s extravagant success may be
inspired in part by the shock value of its language as well as its sexual and
violent content, it is also clear that Truismes
echoes earlier writers. The protagonist, who describes her metamorphosis from
woman to sow, recalls Kafka’s Gregor Samsa. The sow, which seems remarkably
human, reminds the reader of Orwell’s Animal
Farm.[2]
Underneath the Kafkaesque metamorphosis
and the Orwellian critiques of society and ideology lies a different text that
weaves a web of apparent paradoxes and double
ententes which address questions of
madness and bliss which are, in turn, tied to the concept of identity. Ultimately, Truismes resolves the complex issue of identity by proposing a
synthesis of the woman and the pig, which combines the two and, by virtue of
this combination, stresses the characteristic aspect of identity to be a process instead of a static entity.
Ostensibly, the narrator works as a sales
clerk in a beauty parlor. Since she had been desperate to find employment, she
is perhaps too grateful, or else too naive, to realize that what she is asked
to sell are crude sexual gratifications. For a while, the narrator tries to
convince her readers (and herself) that this is where she is most alive and
blissful and thus relates existence to the physical and experiential. The
narrator’s naiveté points to an
important double entente.[3]
On the one hand, it appears she is not aware how or even that she is becoming a
prostitute. On the other hand, her naiveté
may also be read as a refusal to grow up or to become socialized, for she would
need to embrace madness in the mad and abusive world of the novel in order to
be a fully integrated member.
The narrator’s identity and knowledge of
the world appear to hinge on a haphazard string of single and non-reasoned
experiences. By ‘non-reasoned
experiences’ I mean to describe an epistemological process which is neither
simply random, nor arrived at by employing the faculty of reason, i.e.,
connected, analytical or rational modes of thinking. Just as the reader may begin to think that the text itself, by
virtue of its very existence, constitutes a meaningful organization of events
based on judgment, memory, and a willful remembering of the past, the narrator
denies any such transparent structure. Instead
of using language to create a reliable account, she utilizes it to give shape
to images and sensations: “si . . . je me concentre très fort . . . je parviens à
retrouver des images” (11-12; emphasis mine). Her language
does not mirror the world or human nature, but it mediates and reveals
phantasms of the individual.4
The narrator’s repeated confessions about her lack of knowledge and education run parallel to her bodily changes from human to pig. Interestingly, these interspersed reminders about her feeble intellect also serve to point the reader to the text’s underlying structure. Put differently, the narrator expresses in words the number of experiences, i.e. nonverbal events, which transform her from woman to sow, but she does so at a time when these experiences have already come to ‘fruition’. Already in the first paragraph of the text, the reader can suspect that the narrator writes as a pig when, for instance, she makes reference to having difficulty holding a pen, or when she asks her editor to excuse her bad handwriting, described in Linda Coverdale’s English translation as ‘piggle-squiggles’ (Darrieussecq, Pig 2):
[I]l faut
que j’écrive ce livre sans plus tarder, parce que si on me retrouve dans l’état
où je suis maintenant, personne ne voudra ni m’écouter ni me croire. Or tenir
un stylo me donne de terribles crampes. Je manque aussi de lumière, je suis
obligée de m’arrêter quand la nuit tombe, et j’écris très, très lentement. Je
ne vous parle pas [. . .] de la boue, qui salit tout, qui dilue l’encre à peine
sèche. J’espère que l’éditeur qui aura la patience de déchiffrer cette écriture
de cochon voudra bien prendre en considération les efforts terribles que je
fais pour écrire le plus lisiblement possible. (11)
During the transitional phase, as the
narrator becomes more pig and less human, the text slowly dissociates all
concrete physical acts from the ideas of existence and identity in order to
forge and stress a new alliance between the mind and identity. Paradoxically,
it is the ‘perverted’ human, the pig, who develops a real intellect and human
identity. This process becomes an example of the creation of a new mode of
being, part woman and part pig.
An obvious question is why did the author
choose a pig instead of some other animal? The Encyclopedia Britannica defines pigs as: “[S]tout-bodied,
short-legged, omnivorous mammals, with thick skins usually sparsely coated with
short bristles. Their hooves have two functional and two nonfunctional digits”
(“Pigs”). One has to wonder what led to
the choice of such an arguably unattractive, gluttonous, and somewhat defective
creature. We are free to speculate that perhaps the author’s native city,
Bayonne, may have inspired the choice, for it is known as ‘city of ham’. Chris
Hall, in a tongue-in-cheek review, surmises that Darrieussecq “found the idea
strange, funny, and shocking. A pig is contrary to all that is demanded of a
woman. It’s fat, ugly, obscene, dirty” (“Marie Darriessecq”). In addition to
these whimsical explanations, it may be helpful to remember that the author’s
apparently paradoxical choice may be occasioned by the fact that the pig also
has a long tradition as a symbol. The Buddhist Wheel of Life, for instance,
houses the pig together with the snake and the cock in its center. Here these
animals “exemplify those baser human instincts that keep us tied to the realms
of birth and death and prevent us from stepping off the wheel into Nirvana”
(Fontana 78). The pig also symbolizes
fertility, motherhood and, in the Christian tradition, sex, i.e. sensuality and
the sins of the flesh that come with it (Fontana 93). The same source mentions
the Christian tradition attributing
gluttony to the pig, while the Buddhist tradition sees the pig as symbol
of greed. Both gluttony and greed establish a connection to the material side
of human nature. In both the Judaic and Islamic traditions, the pig is unclean
and its flesh is not eaten. Finally, and perhaps surprisingly, the pig is also
a symbol of ignorance.5 Interestingly, all of these symbolic
qualities are fully represented in the text, although paradoxically, it is the woman, not the sow, who seems to possess
the more negative qualities.
The woman revels in all types of
sensation. It is certainly no coincidence that she works in a perfume and
cosmetics shop, where potions, creams, and ointments are readily at hand to
affect the olfactory and tactile senses.
She also experiences the effect of nature in a pervasive internal
sensation which she describes: “Moi je n’avais jamais été aussi en forme de ma
vie . . . l’air, les oiseaux, je ne sais pas . . . ça me faisait tout à coup
quelque chose” (19-20). At one point, the narrator freely confesses her
addiction to sensual things, stating: “C’est mon corps qui dirige ma tête”
(26). The gustatory sense is invoked in the somewhat coy admission of why she
enjoyed the customers’ compliments in the form of flowers: “[C]e que j’ai du
mal à avouer ici, et pourtant il faut bien que je le fasse parce que je sais
maintenant que cela fait partie des symptômes, ce que j’ai du mal à avouer
c’est que les fleurs, je les mangeais” (35).
From
the beginning, it is clear that the narrator accords both sex and sensuality a
capital role in her life. Even prior to prostituting herself in the perfume and
cosmetics shop, she proudly announces: “A cette époque-là de ma vie les hommes
s’étaient tous mis à me trouver d’une élasticité merveilleuse” (12). She
eagerly responds to the attraction men feel toward her by having sexual
intercourse whenever the opportunity presents itself:
Elle [la mère] a . . . refusé de me
donner un ticket de métro a j’ai été obligée, pour ranchir la barrière, de me
coller contre un monsieur. Il y en a toujours beacoup qui attendent les jeunes
filles aux barrières du métro. J’ai bien senti que je faisais de l’effet au
monsieur; pour tout dire, beaucoup plus d’effet que je n’en faisais d’habitude.
Il a fallu, dans les salons de déshabillage de l’Aqualand, que je lave
discrètement ma jupe. (14)
Lest the reader think that the narrator
is merely a passive victim of men’s desires, she stresses that she enjoys sex
and that she actively seeks to engage in it: “Mes massages avaient le plus
grand succès, je crois même que le directeur de la chaîne soupçonnait que je
m’étais mise de ma propre initiative aux massages spéciaux, alors que
normalement on laisse un peu de temps à la vendeuse avant de l’y inciter” (19).
In conjunction with sex and sexuality,
the narrator broaches the subjects of fertility and motherhood. Her sexual
engagements at work do not remain without consequence, especially in view of the
fact that “je ne gagnais pas assez pour pouvoir faire attention” (29). Soon she
becomes pregnant. Ever ardent on the job, however, this state results in a
spontaneous miscarriage. The miscarriage can be read as a double entente. On the one hand, the narrator miscarries because
she continues to be promiscuous and thus abuses her body. On the other hand,
the miscarriage may also occur due to the fact that her reproductive system is
temporarily non-functioning as she is on her way from woman to pig. This is
supported by the doctors’ assessment
that “ils n’avaient jamais vu un utérus aussi bizarrement formé” (31).
Shortly after the incident, the reader witnesses a repetition of all the
symptoms of pregnancy. This time, the narrator goes to an abortion clinic and
is told “que si je ne faisais pas attention . . . je risquais de devenir
stérile” (31). Far from barren, she proves quite fertile when a third pregnancy
occurs which produces “six petites choses sanglantes qui remuaient” (91). While
the offspring does not survive, the reader still comes to appreciate motherly
instincts in the narrator: “J’ai léché les petites choses le plus soigneusement
possible. Quand elles sont devenues froides, ça a fait comme si ça ne pouvait
plus continuer en moi. Je me suis roulée en boule et je n’ai plus pensé a rien”
(92). Later on, she embraces the idea of motherhood when she notes: “C’est beau
l’instinct maternel, la reconnaissance du
ventre comme on dit” (133). The ventre, here, implies another double entente. A belly swells with pregnancy, but it also
swells due to the increased intake of food, which is an effect of the
transformation from woman to pig.
The ventre
is also important in that pigs symbolize gluttony and greed. On many occasions,
the narrator refers to hunger, for
instance “j’avais faim” (20), “j’avais de plus en plus faim” (21), “avoir
constamment faim” (12), and her “appétit” (43). Consequently, she keeps gaining
weight as she consumes copious amounts of anything from exotic drinks to
apples, sandwiches, truffles, grass, acorns, pizza, flowers, and more.6 In addition to this gluttony and greed for food, there is evidence
of materialistic greed as well. The teacher, Honoré, becomes her boyfriend only
after he buys her a pretty dress and after they have intercourse. Similarly,
the narrator barely notices the sexual favors she is asked to perform during
her interview with the director of the perfume shop, because she ogles her
precious contract, fantasizing about dresses and perfumes:
Ses doigts étaient descendus un peu plus
bas et déboutonnaient ce qu’il y avait à déboutonner, et pour cela le directeur
de la chaîne avait été bien obligé de poser le contrat sur son bureau. Je
lisais et relisais le contrat par-dessus son épaule, un mi-temps payé presque
la moitié du SMIC, cela allait me permettre de participer au loyer, de
m’acheter une robe ou deux; et dans le contrat il était précisé qu’au moment du
déstockage annuel, j’aurais le droit à des produits de beauté . . . . Le
directeur de la parfumerie m’avait fait mettre à genoux devant lui et pendant
que je m’acquittais de ma besogne je songeais à ces produits de beauté, à comme
j’allais sentir bon, à comme j’aurais le teint reposé. (13-14)
References to food and greed are
accompanied by references to the narrator’s growing revulsion toward pork. Pig
meat becomes the one thing the narrator cannot eat under any circumstances
because it makes her vomit. Clearly, she has to experience this revulsion. If
she did not, she would exhibit some form of ‘pig cannibalism’. On the other
hand, the refusal to eat pork also serves as a reminder of the symbolic
uncleanness of the pig, which renders its meat taboo. Apparently this
uncleanness is not an issue with the woman before she begins her metamorphosis.
Finally, the reader becomes privy to the
narrator’s alleged ignorance of current events when she states that “je ne
suivais pas les informations” (30), or when she stresses how “ma tête était
toujours . . . embrouillée” (46). Two of her references to education are
interesting because of the choice of verb tenses. First she notes her lack of
education: “je n’ai pas fait tellement d’études” (64), whereas later she
informs the reader about not having had any education: “je n’avais pas fait
d’études” (78). The switch to pluperfect is evidence that some type of learning
takes place on the narrator’s part as the text unfolds.
Clearly the story is one of a
transformation that occurs on several levels, ultimately narrated by the
changeling. While one may not wish to
go so far as to call it a Bildungsroman,
the reader can place this novel in the French tradition of what Serge
Doubrovsky termed “autofiction,” which is also referred to as ‘autobiofiction’,
a genre in which the past is resurrected through memory, culminating in the
establishment of (an) identity (Ramsay 37). This genre has come into its own through the
works of Robbe-Grillet and Margarite Duras, to name but two. Like the works of
these authors, Darrieussecq’s novel “unfold[s] in a world of ontological and
epistemological uncertainty . . . [and] is characterized by a telescoping of
personal story and history and rewrites a self,” as Raylene Ramsay informs
(37). In Truismes, the ‘telescoping’ is undertaken by the pig which
remembers itself as a woman and which traces the transformation from one into
the other. Given the connection of Truismes to autofiction, the reader is now in a
position to make sense of the metamorphosis from woman to pig, because the
transformation allows a body’s history to be rewritten by changing the body
itself. Put differently, by problematizing the past, the narrator controls
actively what the body has undergone passively.
It remains to be seen who and/or what the
‘new’ self is. Since the narrator asserts that “c’est la rationalité qui perd les hommes, c’est moi qui vous le dis” (126),
it is clear that we are not witnessing the emergence of another “traditional
single and centering Cartesian subject present to itself in thought” (Ramsay
38). In addition, the reader comes to appreciate that the narrator’s identity
also does not fit the category of the decentered or endlessly deferred self
that has become typical of postmodern fiction. This narrator’s self must be
somewhere beyond the dichotomy of body and mind and is, in fact, a sustained
union of both.
The use of the pig as a symbol adds a
dimension to this text that makes it neither wholly referential, nor wholly
fantastical or mad, because symbols invoke principles of analogy between the
outer and the inner worlds. In Cirlot’s words, these principles are “the common
source of both worlds, the influence of the psychic upon the physical, [and]
the influence of the physical world upon the spiritual” (Cirlot xxxix). What is most significant about this analogy,
for my present purpose, is the codependency that exists between the outer and
inner worlds. Truismes resists
favoring one over the other and, in turn, actively seeks to create a harmony
between the two. In fact, finding the harmony becomes a matter of survival.
Witness the narrator’s comment: “Je ne pouvais jamais être au diapason de mon corps, pourtant Gilda Mag et Ma beauté ma santé, que je recevais à la parfumerie, ne cessaient
de prévenir que si on n’atteignait pas cette harmonie avec soi-même, on
risquait un cancer, un développement
anarchique des cellules” (46).
Unfortunately, the narrator cannot find
this balance as woman, nor can she find it as pig. The woman fails because she
cannot make herself live up to others’ expectations and she comes to the
conclusion that the relationship with Honoré ended because she could not be
satisfied with becoming a ‘normal’ wife: “Les choses auraient sans doute été
plus simples si j’avais accepté de rester à la maison, de faire un enfant et
tout ça” (71). In the end, the pig, too, experiences failure in the company of
other pigs: “Même dans la forêt avec les autres cochons, ils me reniflent
souvent avec défiance . . . . Je ne suis pas à la hauteur de leurs attentes”
(141).
The reader might be left at this impasse
were it not for the narrator’s falling stark raving madly in love with Yvan. It
is Yvan who teaches her to embrace the woman/pig synthesis as the source of
bliss and fulfillment. He does so by loving both the woman and the sow and by
telling her, for instance, “que c’était formidable d’avoir deux modes d’être”
(122). Yvan himself is an authority on the subject, because Yvan is a werewolf.
And with Yvan’s introduction to the narrative, the text moves from symbol to
myth.
Before proceeding, it is necessary to
address Catherine Rodgers’ discussion of Truismes
which centers on the assumption that Darrieussecq’s text is “un texte de fin de
siècle par excellence” (Rodgers 74).
Specifically, Rodgers sees Truismes
as “un collage de genres et de thèmes” (79) and its narrator, by virtue of her
metamorphosis, “participe de l’indécidable du texte” (74). Considering Rodgers’
conclusion that “Truismes se prête à
différentes lectures” (80) and that “[e]n fin de compte, on peut y voir ce que
l’on veut” (80), I suggest that Darrieussecq’s introduction of myth does not diminish
the “image d’un monde cauchemardesque” (Rodgers 79), but that it marks an
insistence on the need not to resign oneself to the “cauchemar” but to generate
(new) questions and (new) knowledge instead. 7
With Vickery, I understand myth here to
mean “some alternative to the narrow categories of modern rationalism” (Vickery
139). The werewolf, specifically,
“remains a true myth because it was not created as a symbolic representation;
it was designed . . . as a description of what passed for ‘true occurrence’
outside the sphere of everyday life” (Vickery 400). Through Yvan, the werewolf,
the reader accepts the narrator’s metamorphosis from woman to pig as “true
occurrence.” In different words, we may accept the presence of the werewolf as
an interpretive tool which helps to understand the presence of the pig.
Ultimately, the werewolf serves to
contextualize the woman/pig, or the body/mind synthesis, rendering it
constitutive of human nature. The relationship with Yvan, with the beast and
the man, does not only mark the narrator’s happiest period of life, but it also
awakens something atavistic in her: “J’entendais le monde s’arrêter de vivre
sous le hurlement d’Yvan, c’était comme si toute l’histoire du monde se nouait
dans ce hurlement” (118). The narrator begins to feel the “distress of
dinosaurs” (141) and is amazed when she can verbalize to him vague universal
memories of humankind: “Je lui ai parlé des rêves des enfants, des cauchemars
des hommes, je lui ai parlé de la Terre. Je ne savais pas d’où je sortais tout
ça, ça me venait, c’était des choses que je découvrais très au fond de moi, et
je trouvais les mots même les plus difficiles, même les plus inconnus” (129).
Yvan not only encourages her to embrace
both modes of her being, but also teaches her to move between them at her will.
Thus the narrator, from here on out, vacillates from pig to woman to pig to
woman to pig in a way that makes a separation of the two impossible.
In conclusion, one may well want to
remember Blaise Pascal’s succinct and elegant description of human nature: “La
nature de l’homme n’est pas d’aller toujours, elle a ses allées et venues”
(Pascal 150). Truismes adds its own
interpretation to this and celebrates human nature not as merely having comings and goings. Here, human
nature is comings and goings which
can only be grasped if we mark each one in its continuous turn and return,
engaging in synchronic and diachronic constructions of identity. In Truismes,
identity is neither equivalent to a single (Cartesian) subject, nor is it
merely random, rather it is paradoxically a process
of ‘becoming’. The implication is that
the re-membering process is never ending because the work of becoming cannot
conclude. This also means that the
identity of the narrator in Truismes
allows the pig-woman to be a creator of meaning instead of a passive victim of
the nightmarish society portrayed in the text.
[1] With one exception to be discussed
later, critical work on Darrieussecq’s first novel is currently to be found in
short review articles occasioned by the novel’s publication in many different
countries. Searches on the internet show several dozen listings for
Darrieussecq. Many of these listings
indicate that Truismes is being read
in university literature courses in both the United States and in France.
[2] While Kafka’s Gregor wakes up a bug, Truismes is a text about the narrators
recollection of the process of transformation unfolding. A discussion of intertextual connectors to Orwell’s text is
omitted, but can be summarized: they are the pig, political corruption, and
totalitarianism, which Darrieussecq calls ‘Social Free Progressionism’.
[3] Another example of a double entente is the novel’s title,
since la truie refers to the sow,
whereas le truisme means truism.
4
Possibly, this view is supported by the title of Darrieussecq’s second novel: Naissance
des fantômes (Paris: POL,
1998).
5
This is another example of double entente. The narrator repeatedly refers to her ignorance but does so
retrospectively, i.e. when she no longer is ignorant. In addition, the symbolic connection to ignorance is ironic in
that pigs are now known to be intelligent animals, which the narrator mentions
near the end of the text (145).
6
Again, a double entente. The weight
gain is undoubtedly due to the consumption of massive amounts of food, but is
also a consequence of the transformation from woman to pig.
7
This possibility is corroborated by a German writer whose most recent work is
inspired by myth. I am thinking of Christa Wolf’s Medea. (Wolf, Christa. Medea. Stimmen. Munchen: Luchterhand,
1996. English translation 1998.) For Wolf, working on myth enables one to see
and to understand why “unsere Kultur, wenn sie in Krisen gerät, immer wieder in
die gleichen Verhaltensmuster zurückfällt: Menschen auszugrenzen [und]
Feindbilder zu züchten” (Hochgeschurz
77).
Works Cited
Cirlot, J.E. A Dictionary of Symbols. Trans. Jack Sage. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1971: xxxix.
Dallas, Lucy. “A sense of Absence.” Times Literary Supplement 4 July 1997.
Darrieussecq, Marie. Pig Tales. Trans. Linda Coverdale. New York: New Press, 1997.
Darrieussecq, Marie. Truismes. Paris: POL, 1996.
Fontana, David. The Secret Language of Symbols. A Visual Key to Symbols and Their Meanings. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1993.
Hall, Chris. “Marie Darrieussecq.” Spikemagazine. September 1997. http://www.spikemagazine.com/0997mari.htm
Hochgeschurz, Marianne, ed. Christa Wolfs Medea: Voraussetzungen zu einem Text. Frankfurt: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 2000.
Pascal, Blaise. Pensées. 1670. Brunschwicg, Léon, ed. Paris: Flammarion, 1976.
“Pigs.” Encyclopedia Britannica Online. http://search.eb.com
Ramsay, Raylene. “Autobiographical Fictions.” Thompson, William, ed. The Contemporary Novel in France. Gainesville: UP of Florida, 1995: 37.
Rodgers, Catherine. “Aucune évidence: Les Truismes de Marie Darrieussecq.” Romance Studies 18 (2000): 69-81.
Vickery, John B., ed. Myth and Literature: Contemporary Theory and Practice. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1966.