[100 Challenge] Roberta Gattel_33

The wine of solitude, Irène Némirovsky, 1935

“Life was changeable, unstable, uncertain. Nothing lasted. A relentless torrent dragged away loved ones, serene days, took them far away, and captured them forever. A shiver of anguish suddenly assailed the little girl sitting in a corner, alone, calm, with a book in her hand: she seemed to perceive all the loneliness there was in the world; the room became hostile and terrifying; beyond the small circle of the lamp only darkness reigned, creeping towards her.”

I have read all of Irène Némirovsky's novels, and none have touched me as closely as “The Wine of Solitude.” Perhaps this is because novels capable of sincerity on the mother-daughter relationship still remain few, and " The Wine of Solitude” is one of them.

There are few novels that don't end up saving the family in the usual moral network that tells us, "Yes, the family is a mess, but it's beautiful because it's a mess." Stories usually suggest that a mother always loves her children because it’s normal behavior to love them, and if it's not like this, it means that the mother is a monster.

A woman can become a mother without wanting it. She may believe she wants to be a mother and discover that it's not her thing. She may not like it, but she must convince herself that she does. She can want it and then regret it. Books still struggle to talk about these and many other combinations of being a mother. It is a silence that does not help women explore themselves, their relationships with their mothers, daughters and sons, other women, and complex relationships with their partners. This silence doesn't allow them to see being women and becoming mothers as different and separate things. This silence doesn't help them live their feelings with compassion, which is widely considered harmful because they are misjudged by society. Silencing the dark sides of motherhood means trapping mothers even more in the golden cage of "children are the best thing I've done in my life." Children shouldn't be the best thing you do in life.

Irène Némirovsky hates her mother more or less than her mother hates her. The lack of affection between mother and daughter is as natural as the unconditional love that is expected in this type of relationship. Not loving each other doesn’t make them monstrous; on the contrary, it makes them much more real. Their figures are round, deep, complex, exquisitely human.