Determined to regain power over her destiny, the young girl escaped from a fort. Little is known about her, except that she “did not know how to read but was very devout, she was a good and pious girl”who was serving a family. Here she is now alone facing the cold, the fog, the hunger, in a most hostile forest, a harsh and secret territory populated by wild beasts which move around without hindrance.
Marie de France, a legendary destiny
Torments of the soul
“Hunger sharpened his visions”and nothing seems to be able to calm his terrors except the certainty of being free and the determination that results from it. Because alongside the physical dangers that he must face, there is added solitude, the torment of his soul, many nightmares and other night terrors. As is often the case in literature, the forest appears here as a double of his mental landscape. Therefore, dreaming about her future somewhat helps someone who was raised waiting for a savior, this man who would necessarily come to deliver her.
“The Furies”: The diabolical mechanics of Lauren Groff
If, for this young woman, the urgency is to survive in hostile lands, she sometimes allows herself to taste the joys of her free condition and a few moments of pure contemplation in a nature which is also majestic. “The happiness of her body and her solitude invaded her, and she felt happy to be there on this beautiful night of crystal transparency.” Further, Lauren Groff adds: “It is a moral fault to miss the beauty of the world.”
Throughout the pages, we discover an opportunistic and intelligent being, who also thought of memorizing the governor's map before setting out. But her journey is also revealed in its entirety, the author of the masterful Les Furies (2017) interspersing the story of his escape with episodes retracing the highlights of his life since his birth. We will reserve the discovery of these for the reader, the fate of what we called Lamentations lacking neither romance nor spice.
-Name well
This new life, strewn with many pitfalls, is nevertheless carried by the good optimism of the one who has become a heroine. “She would give herself a new name born of her struggle to survive in these new lands. There was something wrong with traveling nameless through this wild country; she felt like she was crossing the world without skin.” Naming beings and, beyond that, things correctly matters all the more in the context of the colonization then at work.
There is rhythm, breath, skill in this tale-like novel of emancipation which takes us to countries “untamed”. Alongside this rebel, woman “so insignificant, a dust in the eye of god”we will have experienced an unusual human adventure. And resolutely feminist.
⇒ The untamed lands | Novel | Lauren Groff, translated from English (United States) by Carine Chichereau | L’Olivier, 271 pp., €23.50, digital €17
EXTRACT
“[…] she ran the risk of having her throat cut and slipped through the crack in the fence to go into the forest […]”
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