Background of Study
Introduction
Jacqueline Harpman was born in Etterbeek, Belgium, in 1929. Her family fled to Casablanca when the Nazis invaded, and only returned home after the war. After studying French literature she started training to be a doctor, but could not complete her training due to contracting tuberculosis. She turned to writing in 1954 and her first work was published in 1958. In 1980 she qualified as a psychoanalyst. Harpman wrote over 15 novels and won numerous literary prizes, including the Prix Médicis for Orlanda. I Who Have Never Known Men was her first novel to be translated into English, and was originally published with the title The Mistress of Silence. Harpman died in 2012.
Literature Review
The novel follows a young nameless narrator through her dystopian life. She has always lived in a windowless cage with 39 other women, none of whom remember how they came to live in the cage or how much time has passed since they first arrived. Their amnesia is likely drug-induced and sustained by their lack of desire to talk about their individual histories. In this cage they are given sleeping pads, minimal food, one toilet and zero privacy. They are constantly patrolled by male guards who never speak and rarely look at them yet are always watching. If the women try to touch one another, a whip cracks, threatening violence. If the women attempt to kill themselves, a whip cracks again, telling them that there is no escape from this life. In short, the women are merely surviving.
As our narrator gets older, even though her age is unknown, she begins to understand more and more of this existence that they all live in. Given that she has never known a life outside of the cage, her perspective is nuanced and inquisitive. She questions the system in which she lives, a trait that opposes the other womens’ mindless acceptance of that which they cannot change.
In the pivotal moment of the novel, an alarm sounds and all of the guards immediately leave the cage which had just been unlocked to give the women food. The women are at first apprehensive to leave out of fear that the guards will come back, yet eventually the narrator sprints up the stairs until she is outside, something she has never experienced. As they look at the barren landscape where the bunker resides under, they begin to realize that they are not on Earth but a different planet entirely. There is no trace of the guards or where they went, leaving the women truly alone.
Throughout the rest of the novel, the women walk across the planes and find other bunkers, some with men and some with women, all of whom are dead as their cages were locked when the alarm sounded. The women begin to realize that they are truly alone and begin to create a society for themselves with home-like structures and romantic relationships. The narrator finds great joy in building and learning, yet quickly gets tired of the stagnant existence that they occupy once again.
By the end of the novel, the narrator is alone in the most literal sense. All of the women from her bunker died before her due to her being the youngest. In her grappling with this, the reader feels all the same questions as the narrator due to the unexplained circumstances of their existence. Despite a persistent sense of hope that she will find other people, be rescued or have some resolution, she ultimately dies never knowing why her life has been what it was. While this can be viewed as a tragedy, there is something deeply human about the truth remaining just out of reach.
Ultimately, this is a novel about love, existence and what it means to be human. The narrator believes she has never known love, yet as her relationships with certain characters develop, readers can begin to understand that she does feel love in a different way. She has never interacted with a man and thus only knows the love and care of a woman and of the community which they built as a means of survival in a world that forgot them.
Jacqueline Harpman’s novel I Who Have Never Known Men is a work of speculative fiction. Set in an unidentified dystopian universe, the narrative world remains mysterious to the first person narrator and protagonist throughout. Therefore, because the unnamed narrator is unable to explain the reasons for her circumstances, she cannot relay them to the reader. The narrator is also writing from a retrospective angle. For this reason, she employs both the past and present tenses. The following summary adheres to a more linear mode of explanation and relies upon the present tense.
When the narrator is a child, she is ripped from her home and family and imprisoned in a cage underground with 39 other women. Because she is so young, the other women guess she was grouped with them by mistake. In the cage, the women have no understanding of why they are being held captive. They are constantly watched by a set of perpetually rotating guards. Although they are fed, allowed to wash and converse, and given mattresses to sleep on, they have no other comforts or freedoms.
When the narrator is roughly 15 or 16 years old, she begins to realize that the other women know things that she does not. Indeed, they are often talking and laughing amongst themselves. However, whenever she approaches, they stop their chatter. When she asks questions, they dismiss her and refuse to relay their stories to her.
In an effort to have a secret of her own, the narrator begins inventing stories for herself. These private fantasies grant her sexual pleasure. However, because she knows nothing about men, about sex, or even about her own body, she does not know how to name what she is feeling.
One day, the narrator befriends Anthea. Over the course of the weeks that follow, the two foster a kinship. Anthea is kind to the narrator and humors her questions and ideas.
Not long later, an alarm goes off at the very moment one of the guards is unlocking the cage to feed the women. At the sound of the alarm, the guards flee. Once they are gone, the narrator retrieves the key and frees the women.
Although the other women are convinced that the guards will return, the narrator is unafraid. She is thrilled to have escaped the cage and bunker. Indeed, the women have been delivered into the world above.
Over the course of the following weeks, the women begin to wander the desolate, indistinguishable landscape where they find themselves. When they start discovering other bunkers like the one where they were held, they hope they will find an unlocked cage. However, each bunker holds the same horror: a locked cage filled with the mummified bodies of both women and men.
The women eventually decide to settle down. They create a small village for themselves by a river. Although most of the women are happy, the narrator is restless. She wants to explore and discover.
After all the last of her companions die, the narrator finds herself completely alone. Initially this solitude feels liberating. Over time, however, she grows increasingly despairing. She particularly misses Anthea, realizing that what they shared was love. The narrator repeatedly delivers herself from despair by reinvigorating her search for meaning and understanding. However, no matter where she goes and how long she searches, she finds no explanation to what happened to her.
When she falls ill, the narrator decides that she will pen her account. Having found a bunker designed for comfort and enjoyment rather than torture, she settles in for her final days. She writes her story in the hopes that someone someday will find it and remember her.