Celle qui voulait conduire le tram
(The one who wanted to drive the tram) Book not yet available in English
Summary:
During the First World War, women played a key role in the war effort, taking over from men who were fighting on the front and entering trades and professions that they had previously been unable to access. But when the war was over and men returned to work, many women were sent back home and became the great forgotten heroines in the historical narrative. This novel is the story of Agnès Meunier, a young textile worker. Agnès becomes a tram driver for two years, earning a little extra to send food parcels to her soldier husband Célestin. She loves her new job, but when the war comes to an end she is unceremoniously forced out. She decides to join the suffragettes, a new feminist movement based on the English model, demanding votes for French women. Her beloved husband Célestin returns home wounded and shell-shocked. He disapproves of Agnès’s feminist campaigning and her thirst for emancipation. He turns to drink and becomes violent. Agnès does not live to see French women win the right to vote, but her niece Luce brings the truth about her death to light, eventually voting for the first time in 1945.
Edited by: Université Sorbonne Paris Nord
Comment:
A cleverly constructed, thoroughly researched historical novel foregrounding various aspects of the French struggle for women’s rights in the first half of the twentieth century. The finely written, well paced novel highlights the burden of social constraints at the time. Agnès is a superb character, resolute and complex, and her life’s journey is handled with considerable sensitivity. The author shows how emancipation gradually changes her as well as her contradictions and doubts and her own prejudices (against lesbians, for instance). The novel ends with a scene of considerable violence, shedding light on the mechanisms behind domestic violence and even femicide.