Une représentation littéraire de la pauvreté au féminin : Call Your Daughter Home et sa traduction en français

Abstract

This study is dedicated to the textual representation of female poverty in a contemporary work of fiction, Call Your Daughter Home, a debut novel by American author Deb Spera, and in its French translation, Le Chant de nos filles. The literary strategy adopted by the author relies mainly on characterization and narration; it reinvents some commonplace stereotypes and long-held assumptions about the 1920s’ rural poverty in the United States to portray a different socioeconomic reality based on cross-community female solidarity. The heterogeneous mind styles embedded in the narrative highlight the diversity of languages, cultures and worldviews peculiar to impoverished White farmers (often called Poor white trash), to Black American servants and to the White upper class. Translating such a novel into French involved a careful cultural and linguistic negotiation designed to recreate plausible sociolects in French for both lower-class communities.