“A human being should have autonomy over their own body.” This is a pretty uneventful statement that most would say even goes without saying. However, by simply changing the subject, we obtain an argument for one of the most divisive questions that still fuels socio-political debates to this day. “A woman should have autonomy over her own body.” Today, most would still find nothing wrong with the sentence, but it is the premise of a topic some would call taboo, yet that is an experience many women have to go through: abortion.

How to break a taboo? One way is to share stories, just like French author Annie Ernaux did in her autobiographical novel Happening, published in 2000. During an ordinary doctor’s visit for an HIV test, Ernaux recollects the ins and outs of the events surrounding her clandestine abortion eleven years prior, in 1964 Paris. This initial setting is crucial in understanding the writing style Ernaux uses in Happening. Readers will quickly notice the striking detachment and lack of emotions even through the most painful and gut-wrenching descriptions, as the author revisits her younger self from an outsider perspective. Ernaux explores her memory, a very bright and vivid memory of this traumatic happening and through her highly detailed descriptions and her pragmatic approach in her delivery, she manages to share a fraction of the fear, the distress and the pain she experienced with the reader, who is left with pure feelings of discomfort and even disgust. However, it would be wrong to conclude that the only value of Happening comes from its rawness and unusual shock factor. While it feels particularly long while reading, the scene of the abortion itself is only a few paragraphs long. The stress and apprehension leading up to and following the abortion is a major part of the trauma induced by it. Throughout Ernaux’s descriptions of her struggles with becoming a class defector, her dismissive boyfriend and doctors bound by the law, we also get hope from her supportive classmate and the abortionist, and the reader gets glimpses of her present thoughts wrapped in parentheses, as she reflects on how the events have affected her years later.

Happening is a difficult book that you will feel the need to put down at times, yet that will keep absorbing you in its modest hundred pages containing the story. Without cutting any corners, Ernaux dissects her personal experience of clandestine abortion, turning it into a specimen of what a large number of women were and are still forced to suffer, which is fed to you to chew and digest.

In 2022, Ernaux became the first female French author to win the Nobel Prize for Literature and was acclaimed for depicting in her works important societal topics such as feminism, class and culture without shying away from the ugly. Happening is merely an entry point both to Ernaux’s body of work and to understanding the seriousness of the fight for women’s reproductive rights. A must-read opus.

Bibliography:

Ernaux, Annie. Happening. «Traduit par Tanya Leslie», Second edition. Seven Stories Press, 2019.

Owono Doun, Kelly. «Une histoire à la fois singulière et universelle — L’Événement d’Annie Ernaux ». 12 april 2024, https://www.growthinktank.org/une-histoire-a-la-fois-singuliere-et-universelle-levenement-dannie-ernaux/.

Leyris, Raphaëlle. Le prix Nobel de littérature 2022 attribué à l’écrivaine française Annie Ernaux». 6 october 2022. Le Monde, https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2022/10/06/le-prix-nobel-de-litterature-attribue-a-la-romanciere-francaise-annie-ernaux_6144694_3210.html.