Peasant woman: “peasant’s wife”. Thus the dictionaries of the XIXth century define, in a rural France until 1914, the ancestors of the farmers of today, engine, according to the author, of the “Transformation of the rural world”. Resulting from it, like its preface, it gives to read an anthology, claimed subjective, which watches for the emergence of these women in literature. Because if the peasant world was the victim of pejorative names (boorish, bouseux, redneck, etc.) its feminine part and its indispensable work were most often invisible or caricatured by writers.
Little by little, these strong women slipped into the stories, discreet in Balzac, more assertive in George Sand, Gustave Flaubert, Émile Zola or Jean Giono. Their constant presence, their stubbornness in the face of a harsh life, their love of the land bear witness to these realistic photographs. To evoke this rural feminine universe, foreign feathers also invite themselves in this beautiful tribute, a little nostalgic.