Passion simple, "Fragments autour de Philippe V." and L'Usage de la photo: The Many Stages of Annie Ernaux's Desire

What is remarkable about Annie Ernaux's three texts which focus on desire is the way in which they provoke a literary "tac-au-tac" as well as escalate the stakes in a "she said, he said" discussion of sexuality. Indeed, this simple reversal of the typical "he said, she said" formula points out immediately that it is always Ernaux who is the agent provocateur. Alain Gérard responds to Passion simple with Madame, c'est à vous que j'écris; L'étreinte is Philippe Vilain's elaboration ofhis love affair with Ernaux that she reduces to two pages; and L'Usage de la photo completes this sexual call and response within one text. Both Annie Ernaux and Marc Marie react to photographs of clothing quickly discarded as they prepare to make love. With each text Ernaux becomes increasingly audacious, seeking to disorient readers with unsettling candor. Key to her defiance is the manner in which she coopts the male gaze, exploits voyeurism and uses it to her own ends: she is both the object of the gaze and she who decides the mise en scène. In other words, each stage in this ongoing narrative of desire progressively reveals the degree to which it is always the narrator—and consequently female desire—who is center stage.