Nathalie Sarraute’s first work, Tropismes (1939 and 1957), presents a disconnected series of what she called “tropisms” in 24 numbered texts. Years later, in the last paragraph of Enfance (1983), a work essentially listing tropisms of her childhood, Sarraute clearly refers to them explaining why she is suddenly cutting off her reminiscences about her childhood: “Je ne pourrais plus m’efforcer de faire surgir quelques moments, quelques mouvements qui me semblent encore intacts.” Tropisms are an essential and unique characteristic of Sarraute’s writing. She refers to them very straightforwardly in her preface to a collection of her essays entitled, L’ère du soupçon (1956) where she states: “Je me suis aperçue en travaillant que ces impressions étaient produites par certains mouvements, certaines actions intérieures sur lesquelles mon attention s’était fixée depuis longtemps. En fait, me semble-t-il, depuis mon enfance.”
My thesis proposes to show that the feelings and perceptions in Tropismes are, in essence, the same as those in Enfance though they may or may not have similar settings, and that in both works, the same tropisms are delivered to the reader. Both works capture brief fragments of time, and examine them at close range using writing strategies clearly linked to early family experiences described in Enfance to address themes present in both works.
The powerful theme of betrayal which conjures up feelings of malaise, uncertainty, and fear is overwhelmingly present. There is also the theme of education as an antidote, an empowerment, and a means of reaching for security in both works. Comparison between Sarraute’s Enfance and Tropismes will show that Enfance is a conceptual retelling of the stories found in her first work, albeit with alterations, transformations and contradictions because in both works, the same tropisms are being revisited and revived. The latter work functions as a kind of annotated version of the first, providing, as it does, reasonable explanations for the feelings and perceptions associated with the underlying tropisms in both works.