Beauté fatale: Selection #1

"It is the hat that matter," she would say, when they walked out together. Every hat that passed she would examine; and the cloak and the dress and the way the woman held herself. Ill-dressing, over-dressing she stigmatised, not savagely, rather with impatient movements of the hands, like those of a painter who puts from him obvious well-meant glaring imposture.

The little girl on the train to Paris, boarding with her mother in Achères-Ville, had heart-shaped sunglasses, a small apple green woven plastic basket. She was three or four years old, not smiling, clutching her basket, her head upright behind her glasses. The absolute happiness of bearing the first symbols of a "lady" and of possessing desired things.

Sciences, languages, theology and history would not only be useless to her, but harmful. She will only know the domestic arts and needlework; she will only have the mind that pleases the people who speak to her. Her dignity is to be ignored, her glory is in her husband's esteem.

All the hairdressers have festive looks, bright make-up, heavy, shiny earrings, red hair, blue highlights. They represent their function and purpose: to transform any head into curls, swirls, dark or sunny glow, one day's dazzle (the next day it's gone already).

Life is orchestrated, shaped by his will. When we walk together, don't hold my arm. The movement dominated, sculpted, the life contained, shaped, embellished. No softness, no carelessness, no surrender, no flippancy. Style. Shape. You can come now. Wear your evening gown. Orchestration. Instrumentalization. No mess, no whimsy, no fantasy.

I'm like turned upside down, my senses, my mind, my emotions. (...) The woman is reversed like a glove and all her once-secret richness is poured out. I'm immensely hungry for life. I wish I could be in so many places. I'd like to travel, to wander, to stroll. I would like to be writing. I would like to dance somewhere in the South.