Free hands, tied hands: Selection #11

"Afterwards came the dances, with a great final round and chain, which brought all that brotherly little people hand in hand, stretching out and revolving for hours to the strains of gay music, through the halls of the huge works. They had formerly toiled so much and suffered so much in the dirty, grimy, unhealthy inferno which had stood there, and which the flames had swept away. The sunshine, the air, and life, now entered freely."

Émile Zola, Work, 1901, p. 366 (translated by Ernest Alfred Vizetelly)

"My grandmother even had style. At parties she wore a cardboard bustle, and she didn't pee standing up and fully-dressed, like most country women did, simply because it was more convenient. As she appreoached her forties, having borne five children, she was given to bouts of depression and would stop talking to people for several days at a time. Later she developped rheumatism in her hands and legs. In the hope of getting better, she would visit Saint Riquier and Saint Guillaume du Désert, rubbing the statue with a cloth which she applied to her inflamed limbs."

Annie Ernaux, A Man's Place, 1986

"My father's sisters, who worked as housmaids for middle-class families, looked down on my mother. Factory girls were accused of not knowing how to make their beds and running after the boys. The village people disapproved of her. She wanted to copy the fashion she read about in magazines: she wore short dresses, made up her eyes, painted her fingernails and was among the first to have her hair cut short."

Annie Ernaux, A Man's Place, 1986

"I cross the street and walk into the Printemps. I go to the counter with necklaces and bracelets and earrings, which dazzle me always. I stand like a fascinated savage. Glitter. Amethyst. Turquoise. Shell pink. Irish green. I would like to be naked and cover myself in cold crystal jewelry. Jewelry and perfume. I see a very broad flat steel bracelet. Heavy, inflexible. Hand-cuffs. Siberia. I am the slave of a bracelet. Of my desires for perfume and jewelry. The bracelet is clasped on my wrist. I pay.…I do not think of Eduardo. I come to the coiffeur, where I can sit still and frozen like rock crystal. I write with a wrist encircled in steel."

Anaïs Nin, Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love": The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin", 1931-1932