Marie Cardinal
Marie Cardinal was a French novelist born on March 9, 1929, in Algeria, and she is recognized as a significant voice in literature addressing the female condition. As a pied-noir, her upbringing was marked by the complexities of her parents’ divorce and the broader impacts of French colonialism in Algeria, which contributed to her struggles with mental health throughout her life. Cardinal pursued higher education in philosophy at the Université d’Alger and began her writing career with the publication of her first novel, *Écoutez la mer*, in 1962.
Her works often explore themes of women's dissatisfaction and the societal roles that exacerbate their struggles, with many protagonists facing challenges such as depression and abandonment. One of her most notable books, *Les Mots pour le dire*, blends various literary genres and draws on psychoanalysis to depict a woman's journey through mental illness, reflecting Cardinal's own experiences. Over her career, she received numerous literary accolades, and her candid portrayals of the female psyche resonated with many readers. Cardinal passed away on May 9, 2001, leaving a legacy as a pioneering writer who articulated the complexities of women's lives in a patriarchal society.
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Marie Cardinal
Writer
- Born: March 9, 1929
- Birthplace: Algeria
- Died: May 9, 2001
Biography
French novelist Marie Cardinal said that her works constituted “un seul livre” (a single book) recounting her experiences in Algeria, France, and Quebec, Canada. Known as “a leading spokeswoman for the female condition,” Cardinal was born a pied-noir (French-Algerian) on March 9, 1929, in Algeria.
In the year of Marie’s birth, her mother divorced her father, Jean-Maurice, whom she had come to hate. She blamed Jean- Maurice for the death of a first daughter, Odette, from meningitis because he had not sought treatment for his own disease. Marie regretted that she barely got to know Jean- Maurice, although he lived until 1946. Her parents’ estrangement—along with guilt over French colonialism in Algeria—was a factor in Cardinal’s lifelong struggle for mental stability.
From 1947 to 1953, Cardinal attended the Université d’Alger, obtaining a license and diplôme d’études supérieures spécialisées in philosophy. In 1953, she married Jean Pierre Ronfard. The couple had three children. In the course of several years, they lived in Greece, Portugal, and Austria, where she taught French language and literature. Her first publication came in 1962 with Écoutez la mer (listen to the sea), a story about the sharing of memories between two lovers. Karl, a German writer, tells Maria, a pied-noir expatriate in Paris, of the terror he had felt as a sixteen-year-old soldier in World War II. In turn, Maria recounts her childhood in Algeria, and the act of mutual revelation dispels her profound depression.
Most of Cardinal’s books portray women dissatisfied with their lives and attempting, not always successfully, to improve their circumstances. While their issues may not be uniquely feminine—depression and fear of loss, abandonment, or death— they are to some degree gender-related, partly because in the early works men are portrayed as causing or aggravating the womens’ difficulties. In La Mule de corbillard, a woman plots revenge against a man who robbed her of her farm. In La Souriciere, a woman commits suicide to escape postpartum depression after her husband proves unsupportive. Cardinal later tried to distance herself from these early novels, and much of her subsequent work shows women facing their issues alone.
Her most famous work, Les Mots pour le dire (The Words to Say It), is difficult to classify under a single genre. Cardinal, in fact, wanted her books to be “at once fiction, poetry, essay, investigation, history, philosophy.” This book (one of two Cardinal works made into films and one of a few translated into English) is distinctive in delineating the role of psychoanalysis (closely paralleling the author’s own experience) in its main character’s recovery from crippling depression and psychosomatic symptoms that include uncontrolled menstrual bleeding. Bruno Bettelheim declared the work “as near perfect as a novel can be.” The title comes from a famous maxim by the seventeeth century poet Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux: “What one understands well, one can express clearly/ And the words to say it can easily be found.” For Cardinal, this saying articulated the challenges facing female authors discounted by patriarchal society.
By the time of her death on May 9, 2001, Cardinal had won many literary honors, including the Prix International du Premier Roman (1962) and the Prix Littre (1976). She noted that hundreds of women responded with gratitude to her portrayals—not always uplifting—of the female psyche.