Based on thorough and exhaustive research, Dominique Sureau revisits the life of Natalie Le Mel (1826-1921), a Brest native and co-founder of La Marmite, a Parisian cooperative workers' canteen, a member of the First International Workingmen's Association, and a fighter during the Paris Commune. She was relocated to New Caledonia after a trial in which she accepted all the charges against her.
Indeed, it seems that not a single written account of her escaped his notice. By comparing the various (and rare) testimonies with information found in archives and the press, he attempts to establish certainties, to arbitrate between the different versions, always resisting the temptation to romanticize or to mistake mere hypotheses for truths.
Thus, he briefly reconstructs her early years, from her birth in Brest where her parents ran a café, her schooling until the age of 12, her training as a bookbinder, and then her move to Quimper where she managed a bookshop with her first husband, whom she married at 18. The author also paints a sociological portrait of these two cities at the time (famines, child abandonment, school dropout rates, epidemics, prostitution, etc.) to help grasp the context in which she lived, given the lack of direct memories and factual personal details. He also tries to understand the influences that may have contributed to the awakening of her political consciousness, as she was "confronted with the pervasive influence of Catholicism" and poverty.
In 1861, having declared themselves bankrupt, they left for Paris where she found work in an industrial bookbinding workshop, a sector disrupted by several strikes. With Eugène Varlin, also a bookbinder, and others, she created the first food cooperative in 1866, followed by La Marmite in 1868, whose operation, development (three others would soon open), and social and political impact the author explains.
Dominique Sureau also recounts Natalie Le Mel's various activist commitments within the First International and the Women's Union for the Defense of Paris, up to the intense weeks of the Paris Commune, her trial (of which he reproduces the transcript of her interrogation), her deportation and subsequent return to mainland France, with the warm welcome she received from the people of Port-Vendres, the successive disappearances of each and every one of her comrades, her activism, particularly for miners, and her final years in Ivry, where she died at the age of 94 in 1921.
Finally, the author analyzes the erasure from memory and the oblivion that befell her, as it has so many women throughout history.
Following her work on Gustave Lefrançais and the workers of the Bessonneau factories in Angers, Dominique Sureau continues her research on the forgotten figures of history with great rigor and honesty. This book undoubtedly fills a significant gap.
Ernest London (UCL Le Puy-en-Velay)
Dominique Sureau, Natalie Le Mel. Woman Among Women. A small, hardcover book, 2025, 226 pages, EUR20.
https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Lire-Dominique-Sureau-Natalie-Le-Mel-Femme-parmi-les-femmes
_________________________________________
Link: (en) France, UCL AL #368 - Culture - Read Dominique Sureau: Natalie Le Mel. A Woman Among Women (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]
Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten