The inner driving force. Domestic space and individual resistance in Vercors’ short stories, 1942-1945

In our collective memory, French writers are remembered for their determination to use poetry, essays and short stories to resist the German occupation and collaboration. Historiography has largely reconstructed the stages of this literary Resistance, which culminated in the publication of The Silence of the Sea by Vercors (pseudonym of Jean Bruller) in 1942. However, there is a paradox in this story and the others that he also published underground with Éditions de Minuit: they hardly ever show members of the Resistance carrying out their missions or networks of partisans taking part in the armed struggle in the maquis. Instead, they capture the commitment at its origins. They describe the key moment when the characters become aware that consenting to the Occupation is no longer legitimate. The focus is not on the resistance fighter who has taken up the cause, but on the bystander who shifts from complicity or indifference to commitment. This article looks at the dominant theme in Vercors’ accounts of the Occupation, that of an invisible entry into the Resistance, confined to the domestic sphere and driven by private concerns.