A Life of Her Own Emilie Carles Summary

A Life of Her Own: A Countrywoman in Twentieth-Century France
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A Life of Her Own: A Countrywoman in Twentieth-Century France
Published in 1977, A Life of Her Own: The Transformation of a Countrywoman in 20th-Century France, is a book written by Emillie Carles. In the book, Carles born in the year 1990, writes about the life that she lived in the southern part of France. She lived in the countryside within a mountainous area. The book is written in an eloquent approach, drawing the leader into her Claree Valley village, where she lived with her father and without a mother and further elaborates on her journey seeking enlightenment. Together with her family, they toiled in the fields to make ends meet, until she recognized that she had a gift of intelligence and this would be the key to life that she always wanted. She could finally break away from the village life and all the restrictive patriarchal traditions. She made a life for herself as a mother, farmer, nonconformist, political activist, teacher and a feminist. Towards the end of her life, she became a fierce environmental activist with the aim of protecting her homeland from developers. The A Life of Her Own: The Transformation of a Countrywoman in 20th-Century France, became one of her best seller in Europe. Among the main titles by the writer are Une soupe aux herbes sauvages, A Wild Herb Soup, Mes rubans de la St-Claude, making her one of the most successful writers of her time.[Emilie Carles and Robert Destanque, A Life Of Her Own, 1st ed. (New York: Penguin, 1992).]
The book is a written in the form of a memoir, as a reflection of the life that Emillie Carles lived in the Alpine village to the south of France near the Italian border. In the book, she documents her personal and family struggles she endured, through hard work fighting through poverty and traditions. It is a story about strength, personal integrity and survival in the face adversity as Carles rises her situation in life, through education.
In the book the author introduces the theme on education by first preparing the audience with details of the kind of life that she led in the village. Most of the villagers were not educated and this largely affected her family as well. Most of the villagers depended on agriculture and their lives were either controlled by the weather or the fickleness of the mayor. However, the author is also able to bring out he passion in education, explaining how she sought after knowledge to elevate her status, that of her family and community
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