A-Infos (en) France, UCL AL #368 - Culture - Read Dominique Sureau: Natalie Le Mel. A Woman Among Women (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Based on thorough and exhaustive research, Dominique Sureau revisits the 
life of Natalie Le Mel (1826-1921), a Brest native and co-founder of La 
Marmite, a Parisian cooperative workers' canteen, a member of the First 
International Workingmen's Association, and a fighter during the Paris 
Commune. She was relocated to New Caledonia after a trial in which she 
accepted all the charges against her.

Indeed, it seems that not a single written account of her escaped his 
notice. By comparing the various (and rare) testimonies with information 
found in archives and the press, he attempts to establish certainties, 
to arbitrate between the different versions, always resisting the 
temptation to romanticize or to mistake mere hypotheses for truths.

Thus, he briefly reconstructs her early years, from her birth in Brest 
where her parents ran a café, her schooling until the age of 12, her 
training as a bookbinder, and then her move to Quimper where she managed 
a bookshop with her first husband, whom she married at 18. The author 
also paints a sociological portrait of these two cities at the time 
(famines, child abandonment, school dropout rates, epidemics, 
prostitution, etc.) to help grasp the context in which she lived, given 
the lack of direct memories and factual personal details. He also tries 
to understand the influences that may have contributed to the awakening 
of her political consciousness, as she was "confronted with the 
pervasive influence of Catholicism" and poverty.

In 1861, having declared themselves bankrupt, they left for Paris where 
she found work in an industrial bookbinding workshop, a sector disrupted 
by several strikes. With Eugène Varlin, also a bookbinder, and others, 
she created the first food cooperative in 1866, followed by La Marmite 
in 1868, whose operation, development (three others would soon open), 
and social and political impact the author explains.

Dominique Sureau also recounts Natalie Le Mel's various activist 
commitments within the First International and the Women's Union for the 
Defense of Paris, up to the intense weeks of the Paris Commune, her 
trial (of which he reproduces the transcript of her interrogation), her 
deportation and subsequent return to mainland France, with the warm 
welcome she received from the people of Port-Vendres, the successive 
disappearances of each and every one of her comrades, her activism, 
particularly for miners, and her final years in Ivry, where she died at 
the age of 94 in 1921.

Finally, the author analyzes the erasure from memory and the oblivion 
that befell her, as it has so many women throughout history.

Following her work on Gustave Lefrançais and the workers of the 
Bessonneau factories in Angers, Dominique Sureau continues her research 
on the forgotten figures of history with great rigor and honesty. This 
book undoubtedly fills a significant gap.

Ernest London (UCL Le Puy-en-Velay)

Dominique Sureau, Natalie Le Mel. Woman Among Women. A small, hardcover 
book, 2025, 226 pages, EUR20.

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Lire-Dominique-Sureau-Natalie-Le-Mel-Femme-parmi-les-femmes
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Subscribe/Unsubscribe https://ainfos.ca/mailman/listinfo/a-infos-en
Archive: http://ainfos.ca/en