Les volets (the shutters)

     To the average American, shutters are simply a decorative attachment to a house that recall a bygone era of the country’s Colonial youth.  Only perhaps if you live in the states potentially affected by the devastating effects of hurricanes would you ever have a functioning shutter to protect your windows, and even then it is almost certainly aesthetically displeasing.  In France, however, shutters are not merely pseudo-accouterments used to look like they will protect a home from the elements, but they function in all propriety and manage to look beautiful in the process.

     The photo above was taken in the Panier in Marseille (I’ll address that experience at some point in the future, but let me say, the beautiful photos I brought home were the only good to come of the holiday).  Regard how the shutters actually close on the windows... shocking, I know!  In fact, French shutters are not only placed around windows, but some summer homes, like my friend’s in L’Ile d’Oleron have big shutters on the doors a well.  I distinctly remember the remarkable experience of my friend Popi making her bedroom as dark as night during the middle of the day.  Unsurprisingly, she tends to amiably grumble that she cannot get proper beauty rest at my house in New Jersey because of all of the bright morning soleil that begins to pour in my room as soon as the sun rises.

     While it may be impossible to see from the provided photos, the shutters often times fold back on themselves in order to make it easier to bring them in when the time is appropriate.  Furthermore, the outward-folding shutters require the windows in french homes to come inside the room, rather than outside, as with American casement windows.  In the grand scheme of the world, these details are probably inconsequential, but to me, the lower height, easy accessibility, and practicality of the windows and shutters lends a certain charm and inviting friendliness to a French home.  I have, on more than one occasion, turned the lock on the frame, folded back the shutters, and leaned out the window in my friend’s Niort home only to be filled with the desire to shout “Bonjour!” to the pietons below and go out and attack the day with a Carpe Diem sensibility.

     I have yet to find an explanation for this cultural phenomenon, which in my personal opinion, is a blunder on the part of American house designers.  Functioning shutters provide protection from not only storms, but relentless summer sun, and allow you to sleep late into the day. undisturbed, which is particularly helpful if you return in the early morning from a late-night, champagne-filled soiree.  Someday, when I am building or restoring the beautiful old stone farmhouse or villa of my dreams, make no doubt about it that there will be charming blue shutters adorning my inward-cranking windows that will allow me to lean on their sills and shout my morning greetings to whomever I please.

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Madeline, the beginning of a Franco-American love affair

I’m not exactly sure at what age the fascination began, but I can figure that I was probably four or five when I was introduced to that very cute little écolière named Madeline. I loved her old house in Paris that was covered with vines. I loved the eleven other girls that walked along with her and Miss Clavel in two straight lines. In fact, my favorite characteristic of Madeline was a tie between her audacious poo-pooing of the tiger at the zoo and the awesome scar she retained as a result of an in-the-middle-of-the-night-Miss-Clavel-said-“Something is not right”-appendectomy. At some point in the middle of my childhood I even had a blue wool cape, carefully crafted by my maman, that reminded me of my own Madeline doll’s blue coat.

The countless readings of not only the original Madeline book by Ludwig Bemelmans (who isn’t even French at all, quel horreur!), but its subsequent sequels, in combination with perpetual screenings of the television cartoon nurtured an early devotion toward all things French in my nascent heart. Before I could even point out my native state on a map of the USA, I knew that France was just across the horizon at the Jersey Shore and that the center of this romantic place was Paris. It didn’t take long to daydream about wandering by the Seine, munching on a croissant, and most importantly visiting the Tour Eiffel.

What I find most peculiar about this fledgling attachment to the nation of baguettes, Victor Hugo, and Le Vache Qui Rit, was that I concocted in my imagination, pictures of a city and country I had only seen in illustrations. I probably didn’t see a photo or image on television of the Eiffel Tower until I was at least nine! Perhaps this is the reason that I still harbor incredibly romanticized images of France in my mind (images that have almost all but been brushed aside the night that I was nearly stranded in Paris because of a grève or the time I broke down into tears when I was followed by creepy men in Marseille). For nearly the entirety of my young life I have had an intense desire to invoke that joie de vivre, the je ne sais quoi, the incomparable Frenchness that will inevitably escape my American self no matter what I try. My honest efforts in my cause have led to two moderately long journeys, countless purchases of L’Occitane and Chanel beauty products, insisting on making my own salad dressing, wearing scarves in the summer, and interjecting des petits phrases en français into my everyday English conversation.

So while I have come to terms with the impossibility of actually becoming French, I will not seek a cure for my very serious case of Francophilia. Instead I will write about my past and future adventures feeding my passion, and humbly attempt to garner a bit of readership that will engage in a bit of reactive dialogue. And if no one comes along, well... c’est la vie!

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