The collapse of France during World War II was as abrupt as it was unforeseen. A major work of art that reflected the provocative history of France during the German occupation and the lives of the captives was that of Irene Nemirovsky’s Suite Française, a book she wrote in 1941. The French women that were portrayed in the novel come from different backgrounds and played different roles. The roles that these women depicted in the book were roles that women in reality played; roles that they didn’t necessarily choose, but rather was forced upon them by the French society and the circumstances that the war has brought upon them. Irene Nemirovsky was born in Kiev in 1903 to a wealthy family, and like most prominent Russian-Jewish families, hers had made the transition to French life impeccably (Kaplan 4). She was the daughter of a Jewish banker who fled the Russian Revolution with his family and settled in Paris, and Kaplan describes: Her French was perfect before she ever saw Paris. She was steeped in the rich Russian literary tradition, …show more content…
They didn’t have a say in things, so much so that they have to be with someone whom their parents arranged for them to marry, as with Nemirovsky’s character Lucile who was married to Gaston Angellier, “She had never loved him; she had married him because her father wished it” (202). They belonged inside houses performing house chores all day and taking care of the men and their children, “Charlotte Pericand, who ruled the family’s daily life with an iron hand, whether it was managing the household, her children’s education or her husband’s career” (5). But because of the war and under the collaborationist Vichy government, Kaplan stated, “the domestic policy of France moved in a direction that reinforced and sharpened the most conservative attitudes towards women’s role (2). Women were involved in all of the major organized Resistance movements, as Kaplan