Mouchette
Georges Bernanos, J. C. Whitehouse (Translator)
Tells the story of a 14-year-old peasant girl who is raped and has a number of humiliating encounters. "Nothing but a little savage" is how the village school-teacher describes fourteen-year-old Mouchette, and that view is echoed by every right-thinking local citizen. Mouchette herself doesn’t bother to contradict it; ragged, foulmouthed, dirt-poor, a born liar and loser, she knows herself to be, in the words of the story, "alone, completely alone, against everyone." Hers is a tale of "tragic solitude" in which despair and salvation appear to be inextricably intertwined
eBook, English, [1966]
Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, [1966]