A brief overview of Emilie Carles' autobiography "A Life of Her Own: The Transformation fo a Countrywoman in Twentieth Century France" is given, with the contention that Carles' main point is that history is individual and not merely related to governments and important power players. This perspective can also be applied to wider studies of history.
Carle of Her Own
Perspectives on History in Emilie Carle's a Life of Her Own: The Transformation of a Countrywoman in Twentieth Century France
History can be viewed from many different perspectives, with drastically different outcomes in determining the causes and effects of historical events and trends. For the most part, however, the examination of history has been relegated to the scholarly analysis of large-scale factors: the actions of governments, leaders, and militaries, with note on how these larger actions affected the lives of the common person living in a given time and place, without a focus on this common perspective. There have been some attempts to present a different view of what is important in history and in the world, though they are less well-known because they do not deliver grand theories that explain general situations -- they actively resist these in fact, with a clear insistence that history is specific and personal. Emilie Carles' autobiography A Life of Her Own is one such work, with a very insightful and complex yet deeply personal commentary on life and purpose in the twentieth century.
Carles' Contention
A Life of Her Own is not explicitly or even purposefully written as an historical or philosophical tract, attempting to deliver an overarching theory of history or development. Despite this, there is a fairly clear implied thesis in Carles' description of her struggle to gain an education, the impact of two World Wars fought in part on her own native soil, and that is that the individual is the key component of history. The people, not the governments, are the historical actors that matter.
The evidence Carles supplies for this thesis is not constructed so as to build a clear and concrete logical argument, but it is still readily observable in the descriptions she gives of her life and what she saw in the world around her during the progress of the twentieth century and the creation of the modern world. The peasants and farmers that made up Carles' family and community and the rural valley that was her environment are clearly presented as the "real" world, affected by the Wars and by the developments between countries and the geopolitical structure, but not at all involved in the actual functioning of day-to-day reality of getting food, forming relationships, and finding personal fulfillment. Carles' own life, in which she was able to obtain an education and become a teacher and an advocate for her region and community's way of life, is also indicative of this personal drive.
Significance in Broader Perspectives
The situations and observations that Carles discusses are entirely unique to her own life and time, but this does not mean that the same attitude and perspective that she employs do not have relevance in a broader study of history and the progress of Western Civilization. In all ages, there have been "little people" such as the peasant villagers of Carles' world, and there have been the major players and entities that traditional historical perspectives have determined are important. The points Carles makes about war and its effects on the people of the real world, and the more uplifting trajectory of her education, her marriage and the other details of her life of self-discovery and -- direction, can all easily be applied to other epochs.
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