Sexism and colonialism intertwine in the history of a toxic relationship

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Shortly after Frances, the young heroine of Daisy Lafarge’s debut novel, arrives at Noa Noa, an organic farm in the south of France, she is put to work by the charismatic owner, Paul, tearing up the lianas that choke the lianas. vegetables: “’The stranglers,” Paul said with a grimace, pulling sharply at a vine scalloped with white trumpet-shaped flowers. “They colonize everything.”

In Paul (Granta Books), Lafarge has produced a nuanced and readable novel about the attraction, power, and toxic relationships between the interlocking spheres of colonialism and gender relations. Frances is a young British woman who took time off from her university job in Paris – and from a complicated sexual relationship with her supervisor – in order to volunteer on organic farms in exchange for food and meals. When she arrives at the farm, she finds herself drawn to Paul, an older man who seems to want to trade his admiration for his protection. He tells her about his past and in particular his travels to Tahiti, where he believes he has rediscovered a culture of “wealth” and “vitality” which has been lost in the West. It quickly becomes evident that Paul’s “expertise” is limited to anecdotal information about male Tahitian traditions; he looks “empty” when Frances asks about Tahitian women.

In its acknowledgments page, Lafarge explains that his novel is based on “names, place names and anecdotes” by Noa Noa: the Tahitian newspaper by Paul Gaugin, first published in 1901. This autobiographical diary was Gaugin’s attempt to rewrite his own account, hiding the fact that he had traveled to Tahiti after mistreating his wife and failing to provide for his needs or those of his family through his painting. With his life and career in crisis in 1891, Gaugin sold his benefactors a dream of the island as a primitive and sexually liberated place where the indigenous population lived without the artificial socio-cultural limitations of the Western world. In truth, however, Tahiti was an established French colony and therefore far from the untouched, uncivilized paradise that Gauguin claimed to be.

When he was finally forced to return to France for lack of funds, he discovered that the paintings he had sent in advance had not received the critical praise he expected; his Tahitian adventure seemed dead in the water. In a final attempt to generate some interest in his “exotic” travels, he wrote and published his Noa Noa journals (1901), in which he presents an embellished and often fictional account of his artistic and erotic experiences in Tahiti. In recent years, academics and art historians have paid attention to Gauguin’s exploitative relationships with local Tahitians. While there, he married three teenage girls, the youngest being just 13 years old. He impregnated two of his “wives” and gave them all three syphilis.

Lafarge’s novel presents the enigmatic middle-aged photographer Paul as a parallel to Gaugin, unveiling the ways in which sexist and colonialist behaviors are so often intertwined. Looking like a man every young woman has met once at a party, Paul says, “I’m a photographer, I’m a traveler – but I think, deep down, I would say that discoverer. “From an external point of view, Paul is a pretty repulsive character; there is something transparent about him. Lafarge’s talent as a novelist is to maintain a realistic and deeply understandable sense of why Frances remains under. charm. Even though she is uncomfortable with her attitude or work, the confidence and authority of her masculinity and age repeatedly disarms her, and she begins to doubt herself at her square.

One of Paul’s photographs shows “a girl of about five or six, naked to the waist.” Frances silently wonders who, if any, authorized Paul to take the photo. When Paul claims that such work is important because it “opens the eyes of the people,” she settles her fears in even silence: “Sure, I think. Of course, Paul thought about all of these things and somehow found a way to solve them. […] I feel the knots of doubt begin to unroll in my body, and a longing for Paul to take me by the hand and show me the way forward.

Throughout the novel, Frances expresses a desire to be a child again and to cede responsibility to others. She is both attracted and repelled by older men who seem to offer her this opportunity by taking charge of her life. Frances seems to be more alive when she interacts with the little girls, often feeling more in touch with them than with the parents of the girls (who are all friends of Paul and therefore ostensibly his peers). At one point, she dances with two little girls: “There is something certain, as if by dancing with them I became one of them, a child from whom no one expects anything. It’s so tiring to have a woman’s body. I would like to get out of it and come back to the size of a child. Ironically, however, she attempts to escape her female body by seeking the protection of an older man who fetishes her physique for her childish appearance. Frances is stuck in her own flesh, which is turned into a prison by a society and individuals who objectify women and girls and claim ownership of their bodies.

In Paul, Lafarge delicately unwraps the power games and mind games of a toxic relationship, emphasizing the silence of society and art on women. At one point, Frances finds herself literally unable to speak, a trait Paul finds endearing when they are alone together and embarrassing when he tries to introduce her to his friends. His paradoxical double standards echo the rules of society that baffle and oppress Frances.

She is finally shaken from her silent acquiescence by a shocking revelation to Gauguine about Paul’s behavior in Tahiti; suddenly, the man who has held such an important place in his life seems “so small: a cluster of cells”. His sexist and colonialist state of mind now makes him pathetic, and Frances is finally able to break free. In Paul, Lafarge has written a beautifully balanced novel that sheds light on all-too-common gendered behaviors and the socio-cultural contexts in which such behaviors are both permitted and encouraged.

Paul by Daisy Lafarge (2021) is published by Granta Books and is available online and in bookstores.

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