SHAME AND CLASS: A FEMINIST READING OF ERNAUX'S SHAME

Abstract

The current research paper presents a feminist examination of Annie Ernaux’s Shame through the perspective of Simone de Beauvoir’s influential work, The Second Sex, revealing the intersection of shame and class in determining the female experience. Ernaux’s seminal work Shame, a highly subjective account, shows how shame, engrained in socio-economic position and gender, becomes prolonged in women lives. Through a feminist appraisal, this research observes how Ernaux’s description discovers the intersection of class-based oppression and the societal restrictions on women. The article examines this with de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, where she reveals how female`s inferior rank is socially erected, concentrating on how the notion of the other functions in determining of female identities. De Beauvoir’s investigation of the ways women are trained to accept their sidelining presents a theoretical agenda for understanding Ernaux’s depiction of shame as not just a particular, but a socially imposed experience. The examination mirrors how Ernaux’s work donates to feminist discourse by revealing the personified and psychological significances of class-based shame, while also drawing attention to the ways in which female experiences of shame are thoroughly tied to their cultural and social settings.