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Burnt Offering (novel)

Burnt Offering AuthorJeanne GalzyCountryFranceLanguageFrenchGenreDramaPublisher�ditions Rieder1929Media typePrint
Burnt Offering (French: L'initiatrice aux mains vides) is a French novel by Jeanne Galzy. Published in French in 1929, it won the 1930 Prix Brentano and was subsequently published in English, as the only one of the author's many novels.

While the novel (and the translation) received some praise in 1930 and 1931, it was never a great success, though it is now appreciated by critics for its study of the main character, Marie, a school teacher struggling with her (lesbian) desire for one of her students. Autobiographical elements permeating the novel have also been studied; these include the novel's perspective on the school where Marie and her author both worked, the Lyc�e Lamartine in Paris; and the college where they both received their education, the �cole normale sup�rieure de jeunes filles in S�vres.

Plot
Marie Pascal is a single woman who teaches seventh-grade "literature, geography, history, everything" at a small school in a small town in Picardy. Her very quotidian life ("the emotional vacuum that overcomes a young educator, once her school career is finished") changes when one of her students, 12-year-old Annette Rieu (whose father died in World War I "because he suffered too much (31)), writes an essay containing the sentence, "The saddest day of my life comes back every week, the day when Mother entertains her friends and I hear the sound of laughter" (25). Until then, Annette had not drawn attention to herself, but the essay prompts a fascination and attraction in the childless and single Marie that she finds hard to control, and her love for the child seems to be reciprocated. Annette blossoms under the attention paid to her, holds the door for her teacher, plucks the most beautiful flowers for her, and waits for her every afternoon after school to say goodbye. Initially reciprocating the child's devotion, Marie herself grows as a person and as a teacher, and is even recommended by a school inspector to transfer to a school in Paris. She declines, and finds it difficult to act on the child's attention and on two occasions even rebuffs her.

During a vacation, which Marie spends as usual with her grandparents in the country, she receives a letter from Annette, declaring her love. No longer able to disguise or justify her feelings as maternal, Marie responds by withdrawing her affection. The child, however, falls ill with pneumonia, and on the night the child's fever breaks, it is Marie who is with her, instead of Annette's mother, who thereafter becomes hostile, pulls the child from school, and forces Marie to transfer to another school. Annette does leave a token of love: the name "Marie" carved in her school desk.

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