Postfeminist worldmaking in Australian memoirs of life in France

Abstract

While only one book-length memoir recounting the sojourn of an Australian in France was published in the 1990s, thirty-seven have been published since 2000, overwhelmingly written by women. In the majority of these accounts, France serves as a backdrop to a project of refashioning the self. This article traces the ways in which France is configured in the memoirs to assist in the makeover of life, love, and self. In many cases, France becomes the ideal space in which to construct a hyper-aestheticized life of luxury domesticity. But even those authors who challenge the postfeminist fantasy position themselves in relation to this discourse, which refuses to fade into the background, so that France becomes a site of tension between competing kinds of worldmaking among Australian women.