Novel
La Paix des ruches
Not translated into English
Alice Rivaz · 1947
Synopsis
“I think I no longer love my husband,” writes Jeanne Bornand in her diary. A stenographer and housewife in her forties, without children, she records there her disappointments with Philippe, a husband who understands her poorly, takes little interest in her and mocks her ambitions as a writer. With an ironic and disenchanted eye, she observes the office, the housework, the men who might become her lovers, and wonders what still holds the couple together: love, or obedience to an accepted fate. She thinks of divorce and dreams of a couple of equals.
Context
The novel appeared in 1947, two years before Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, and Ramuz himself expressed his unease at the book. Marcel Raymond prefaced its 1970 reissue; it was reprinted in 1984 with Comptez vos jours, then in 2022 by Zoé, with a preface by Mona Chollet, who notes in it the idea of the double working day and male condescension already present. Now regarded as a pioneering feminist novel of French-speaking Switzerland, it was translated into German as early as 1976, then into Italian in 2019 and Japanese in 2022.
Who it is for
For a lucid and ironic diary about marriage and women's work, written just after the war.
Prizes and reception
Reissued in 2022, it has since found readers in Spanish, Portuguese, Croatian and Dutch.