The Cavalier - Nathalie Quintane

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The Cavalier

by
Nathalie Quintane

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

Title:	The Cavalier
Author:	Nathalie Quintane
Genre:	Non-fiction
Written:	2021 (Eng. 2025)
Length:	108 pages
Original in:	French
Availability:	The Cavalier - US
	The Cavalier - UK
	The Cavalier - Canada
	La Cavalière - Canada
	La Cavalière - France

	directly from: Winter Editions

French title: La Cavalière
Translated by Jonathan Larson

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Our Assessment:

B : quite compelling -- both the material and the approach

See our review for fuller assessment.

Review Summaries
Source	Rating	Date	Reviewer
l'Humanité	.	14/10/2021	Alain Nicolas
Libération	.	16/10/2021	Frédérique Fanchette

From the Reviews:

"La Cavalière n’est pas une enquête, mais un retour (.....) Retourner voir ces femmes et ces hommes, questionner leur mémoire permettent de restituer dans toute son étendue l’esprit d’une époque où le retrait, l’action militante extrême et le rejet d’une pédagogie asservissante étaient les faces d’une même conception de la vie." - Alain Nicolas, l'Humanité

"Nathalie Quintane aurait pu faire un simple portrait de cette femme (.....) Mais le retour sur le passé, la nostalgie n’ont pas cours avec elle. L’autrice est une femme engagée (.....) Et c’est effectivement là une traversée de strates temporelles totalement vivifiante." - Frédérique Fanchette, Libération

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

The Cavalier looks back not on tumultuous 1968 but rather the fall-out -- specifically, in the 1970s, but extending also to the near-present-day when Quintane writes. She begins with those who lived outside the system, off, essentially, nothing, in: "The era: between 1969 and 1976, let's say". These are people who insist that, for them: "No office job, and no teaching" (apparently the only plausible two alternatives: "A way of life by deduction or subtraction (if I eliminate working an office job, and teaching, what's left ?)" -- as those in the milieu Quintane explores apparently can't conceive of holding working class/factory jobs ...).
They haven't give up on the revolution, but rather believe it is imminent:

It was in anticipation of the revolution, which would be coming soon (Philippe: Every evening we'd tell ourselves: tomorrow morning it's due).

Eventually, however, there was some settling down, in more traditional roles. A teacher herself, Quintane is drawn to the story of teacher Nelly Cavallero, charged with the "incitement of minors to debauchery" and losing her license to teach over it. The government-control over teaching licenses, and the ability to keep teachers in line because of that, is among the things that Quintane is particularly interested in -- recalling also the "anguished look on my mother's face" when she goes to the 'Nuit debout' demonstrations in 2016, her mother reminding her: "You, a teacher, in a small town, have to keep a low profile: you could lose your job".
As Quintane notes:

To nuance the point: for fifty years, from 1968 to 2018, my family may have been wrong to think it would be better not to. Nowadays, I can only concede: saying certain things publicly will cost you an eye, a hand, a job. The bizarre arbitrariness of bureaucracy will remove you from what you live on, from where you live (you can no longer afford the cost, so you live in your car; but you are kept from living in your car, so you move to the street; but you are kept from living in the street, etc.). And the markets will recoup whatever is left.
And yet things aren’t so cut-and-dried. That between 1968 and 2018 (or 2016) it was altogether wrong (we can spare ourselves the details) to think one was living anywhere else than in a democracy is thwarted by the Cavallero affair and its context.

Quintane uses the example of Nelly (and similar cases) to show how the authorities deal with: "The eternal problem: how to get rid of 'leftists,' radicals, those who are excitable, etc." Nelly, with her: "inability to conform, her unpredictable character, she scared people, this unyielding intellectual powerhouse" was a thorn in the side of/inside the system and had to be removed.
This extends far beyond Nelly's specific case, as Quintane reports, for example:

As one reads the long list of teachers who lost their licenses in 1970-1971 and the reasons for their being pulled, the institutional admonishments in summary take the form of: they spoke up; they taught students; they were poorly dressed.

Quintane relates personal experience throughout as well -- including noting her own disheartened teaching-beginnings:

I remember the first time I walked into a teacher’s lounge as a teacher, in 1986. I told myself, ah, well, here nothing is going to be possible. The size of the room, the style of the furniture, the look of the staff. It wasn’t the feeling of something immutable but of something stronger, something more resistant, that wouldn’t let you do anything

       Nelly fought against that -- and, so Quintane imagines, the uncompromising reaction was: "Never again ! said the teachers ! Get her gone already ! That she and hers and he and theirs would be gone !"
       The Cavalier is not a neatly built-up argument or carefully structured report and analysis. Quintane describes her writing -- including this work -- as: "weird stuff like what you’re now reading, which a Parisian publisher, P.O.L., published", and The Cavalier is a far from straightforward mix of impressions, facts, reflection, and argument -- but it does bring across and make its point(s), emphatically and quite convincingly. (Nelly is a good fit for her -- and probably would have approved: "she struggled with literature, read no novels, some poetry, all that was too conventional for her though; she liked to read Lyotard, and then Plato".)
       Quintane explains her approach and attitude:

That's the whole point of literature, to reveal only what can be revealed by inching along and without thinking of the process as a “revelation” anyway, but rather as the excavation of things one happens on because they happen on you. In short, was it an order ?

It makes for an interesting text -- and one that hopefully also pushes the reader to examine the questions and issues Quintane raises here, her perhaps most important point being that this fifty-year-old history still sits and hits too close to our present-day world and situation(s).

- M.A.Orthofer, 23 November 2025

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Links:

The Cavalier:

Winter Editions publicity page
P.O.L publicity page
Excerpt

Reviews:

The Collidescope
En attendant Nadeau (French)
lelitteraire.com (French)
maze (French)
Les Parutions (French) (1)
Les Parutions (French) (2)

Other books of interest under review:

See Index of French literature

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About the Author:

French author Nathalie Quintane was born in 1964.

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