Some day, people will say I didn't write my own books.

I've been digging into the x-chromosome side of the history of philosophy lately. As soon as my manuscript on Mary Wollstonecraft (without zombies) was off to the publishers, I started reading Christine de Pizan. Then I had a bright idea and went further back. I knew that Abelard was studied in courses on Medieval philosophy. What about Heloise, his correspondent? And then I went a bit further down.  Plato had female students - did any of them, or any other women in the ancient world, write anything philosophical?

I'd like to say I hit gold - but it would be slightly off the mark. There just aren't many writings by women philosophers before Christine de Pizan. And not many afterwards either until the seventeenth century, when every princess worth her salt started taking on Descartes, and a few English eccentrics wrote metaphysical treatises of their own. Then, gradually, there's an increase in the female branch of the family, and now we make up nearly 20% of the profession! Hurrah! In another three or four centuries, we might actually reach equal proportions. Never lose hope.

I've ranted before about why there aren't that many women philosophers, listing several reasons, none of them have to do with women not being good enough. But I think I may have come across yet another reason.

Reading up on the Abelard and Heloise literature, I found very little analysis of what Heloise had to say. Instead, authors questioned whether she'd written the letters herself. Was the whole correspondence a forgery from the author of Le Roman de la Rose? Or did Abelard himself concoct them as a publicity stunt? Some more generous commentators suggest that maybe Abelard discussed with Heloise what her fake responses might be before he wrote them. The thought that Heloise was a highly educated woman, who taught Greek, Latin and Hebrew to the nuns in the convent she ran, did not dampen the of those wanting to write her out of philosophical history.  Of course no one suggests that it's because she's a woman. No. It just so happens that the best use of some scholars' time is in coming up with arguments why Heloise couldn't have written these letters. It also turns out that these arguments don't hold much water - as a more careful scholar, John Marenbon, convincingly argues.

When I eventually located a text attributed to an Ancient Greek woman philosopher, I had the same experience. I quickly found myriads of poorly constructed arguments why she could not have written her own piece of philosophy. Granted, the writer bore the name of Plato's mum. Given there are no records of her being a philosopher, it stretches the imagination a bit far to think she was a well-known author. It doesn't stretch it as far to think she would have written a short text though, so I'm not sure it's worth getting one's knickers in a twist. But the texts themselves are discounted as forgeries by men writing some four centuries later. Again, the arguments are shoddy. And no one seems to even entertain the possibility that the forger, or pseudonymous writer, could have been a woman. I call it bad faith. I call it bad scholarship. I call it bad philosophy.

Telling 'Im indoors about all this at lunchtime, we pondered why and when this taking over of women's philosophical productions stopped. After all, he said, nobody is claiming that Wollstonecraft's or Simone de Beauvoir's books were written by men. I said that maybe that was because they were both active, public figures, who discussed their works with other writers, so that there could be no doubt about authorship. He replied that maybe these memories were still too fresh in our minds, but that a few centuries from now, people would again start questioning whether these works had not in fact been written by Godwin or Sartre.

Which brings me to the title of this post. How long till fragments of my books turn up in some archive and someone, bent on identifying obscure philosophers from the past decides that I couldn't have written them and attributes them to a male contemporary of mine? I suppose I won't be worrying about the royalties, then.

The royal ticking bomb

I posted this yesterday on my other blog, The Forbidden Sister, but as the comments on that blog are broken, I thought I'd repost it here, and share it with you. Here goes.

We can now breathe a huge sight of relief – but ten days ago, unbeknownst to us, forces were at play to destroy us. Not only did they want to destroy us, but they picked a time when we were at our most vulnerable, basking in the glow of royal love vows and cartwheeling vergers. But the dark forces were very much at work, as we are now finding out.

There was a bomb. Not only was the wedding itself being targeted but it was done from its most vulnerable point – planted inside the bride’s womb! Top lifestyle/career blogger Penelope Trunk explains to us, step by step, how it came to be there and how it was defused. She tells us that Kate was indeed a ticking bomb but that her timely wedding was enough to defuse it, and that we should all be grateful to her.

Just in case the same terrorists decide to plant bombs inside of us too, Ms Trunk advises we follow the same steps as Kate.

1. Don’t bother about a career: it will only interfere with your finding a husband, and you’ll have to give it up anyway.

2. Have children young, before thirty, as otherwise they will have birth defects, and they will probably become terrorists.

3. In order to have children before thirty, you should be married by twenty-eight, which means that you must have found your prince by twenty-five. Ms Trunk links to ‘scientific research’ that proves this and quotes ‘zillions’ of books that back it up.

4. Relocate, relocate, relocate. Give up your career, if you were stubborn enough to start one, and follow your husband. It is a fact (scientific research, zillions of books, etc.) that women do not care much for their careers and that men do not care much for their family. Hold on, that’s not right. Of course men care for their family, it’s just that women care more. Or care better. Or are too stupid to say they care for anything else. Or whatever.

If you follow all these steps, disaster will be averted and the bomb will not go off.

I think we can all learn from this near catastrophe, and avoid making potential terrorists of ourselves by following Ms Trunk’s advice as closely as we can.

(Not)* On Ada Lovelace's day: Emilie du Chatelet

"Judge me for my own merits, or lack of them, but do not look upon me as a mere appendage to this great general or that great scholar, this star that shines at the court of France or that famed author. I am in my own right a whole person, responsible to myself alone for all that I am, all that I say, all that I do. it may be that there are metaphysicians and philosophers whose learning is greater than mine, although I have not met them. Yet, they are but frail humans, too, and have their faults; so, when I add the sum total of my graces, I confess I am inferior to no one."

      Mme du Châtelet to Frederick the Great of Prussia.


Behind every great man, they used to say, stands a great woman.
Well, some still say it. So for every great woman standing behind a great man, I say:
Take a large stick, and hit the good man over the head with it. Then stand in the light you were hidden from. Enjoy.

All this is especially true of the wives, sisters, mistresses of the men of the Enlightenment period. Mme du Chatelet is an excellent example of a woman who could have used a large stick.

International Women's Day - Judge a book by its cover.

This post is in honour of International Women's Day: a global day celebrating the economic, political and social achievements of women past, present and future, every year on 8 March, since 1911.



As part of my job, I occasionally review books. This is good, because I get free books, a publication of sorts to my name, and I get to find out what some of the other people in my field are thinking.

The latest one is a book by Robert Kane called Ethics and the Quest for Wisdom. Cool title, I thought, when the editor first contacted me about doing the review. A quick look at Amazon told me that the book seeks to revive certain ancient ethical beliefs and apply them to contemporary problems in social and political philosophy. Nice, I though. My kind of thing.

Then, a few weeks later, I received the book. Here it is:

Men, men, and more men. Fat men, skinny men, old men, young men, bearded men, bold men, men. Is this what the quest for wisdom looks like, I asked myself? If so, I might as well give up. Now.

Pink is a feminist statement.

As much as I hate the pink aisle at the toy shop, as much as I hate the fact that nearly any where you go little girls' clothes go from pink to slutty without anything in between (whereas little boys' go from Thomas the Tank Engine to, well, normal, you know), as much as I hated it when my daughter's kindergarten's class was divided into boys and girls and the girls had to shout  'I do!' when the teacher asked 'who loves pink?', as much as, well, I hate all of this, I have to say, pink is sometimes pretty cool.

Let them bleed

I've been following the anti-abortion debates in the United States with a growing sense of horror - which is why I was grateful for some light relief from The Feminist Philosophers' blog with their cartoon: The Mombies!!!
But what are these people thinking? Do they really think it's ok to sacrifice a mother's life in order not to kill a fetus, even though the fetus will probably die if the mother dies before the fetus is big enough to survive?

Salad Bar Philosophy, anyone?

I was listening to woman's hour again today. It was a program I'd meant to catch on the day it came out but didn't in fact listen to for a while because my computer got virused (and all...) So I listened to the podcast here. The reason I was so keen on listening to it was that they'd announced it on twitter as being about women in philosophy. As in academic women philosophers. In actual universities, teaching in actual jobs. Why there are so few of us.

So the women interviewed were saying, surprise surprise, that it's all down to cultural stereotype. Women aren't supposed to be good at abstract reasoning, and cold stuff like logic and maths. Which is sort of what Rousseau said. And Aristotle, those pillars of the sexist bastards community.

Mean people are dumb

I was listening to a Women's Hour podcast this morning at the gym. While I just love Jenny Murray, I sometimes get pretty upset at the things I hear, especially now everything is going pear-shaped in Britain with the conservatives and all.

So I just wanted to remind myself and you all, that not only are the bastards trying to put us down mean, they are also pretty stupid. So here goes.

La femme francaise...

So the Global Gender Gap report 2010 says that France comes 46 out of 114. The New York Times interviewed some people to try and figure out why that might be. Some of the stuff that's reported on the video makes me sick. As does some of the stuff that isn't said.

No one, apart from the journalist conducting the interviews, remarks that one reason for gender inequality might be that there is no equal division of labour in the home. French women may know how to carry a handbag, but French men don't seem too adept at changing a nappy or loading a washing machine.

So maybe women stopped in the street or interviewed at the park don't want to bitch about their partners on film. But from a woman who is a politician, and a minister of economic affairs, business and employment you'd expect better, wouldn't you? Not if she's Christine Lagarde, apparently. Here's what she says about the gender gap:

Either it requires so much sacrifice that they're not prepared to commit, or they find it unpleasant, not rewarding based on their values, and essentially they say, you know, thank you very much for the glass ceiling, we've cracked it but there's not enough air up there, so I don't want to go.

So basically, women don't make it to the top because they can't hack it. They're not like men. They're soft. And this despite a prompt from the journalist suggesting that maybe the lack of equality at home would be a good explanation for women's lack of success at work!

But what am I thinking. Of course, if women do all the housework and childcare it is simply because they find it more rewarding based on their values! What an unnatural French woman I must be. Me and most of the others I know. Thank you Christine Lagarde for reminding us of our true nature.

Tcha.

Mad Women, or Life on Venus.

I've read a few posts about female characters in tv series recently. And they're mostly about whether it's ok to slag them off or not. And sometimes about whether they can be people we identify with in the way that the male characters are. I think the first is true if the second is, that is, it's ok to slag them off if at the time you think they're potentially good role models. So when fans make crass comments about River Song in Doctor who, about her physical attractiveness, calling her whiny and bossy, and wishing she was dead, it's not ok. Bitching about Buffy's perm at the beginning of season 4 is just fine. What was she thinking?

Pink books are for boys. Girls prefer blood.

Do you read chick lit? I do. I've read all the Shopaholic books. I've read things I don't remember the name of but that tell the story of a recently divorced woman who finds love after lots of comical mishaps, or of a younger woman who finds love after lots of comical mishaps. And there are always friends involved: the sassy girlfriend, the gay best friend, the enemy from high school who's rich and anorexic, the parents, etc. These books satisfy my need to have a number of written words entering my head everyday -  can't all be good words! And they sometimes make me laugh.

I used to recognise these books in the shop by the cover. Just like you can recognise a sci-fi book because it's usually dark blue with some exploding orange star or spaceship in the middle.
But that's no longer the case. Now most books written by a woman are pink. Just so you know, if you're a man, or a serious woman, to avoid them.

I bought a new copy of Emma, the other day - I recently had to refill the Jane Austen gap on my bookshelf, not an actual physical gap, you understand - haven't had one of those since I was about four. The book was off white, with a black silhouette drawing of the kind that you sometimes see in fashion magazines, and details were coloured in pink.  The back cover spelt out the main lines of the story in a very chick lit kind of way. Emma's attractive, gets into trouble, finds love.

Now I'm all for the pimping up of classics so that more people read them. But surely turning Emma into chick lit is ensuring that less people read it, no? Unless we assume that only women read women novelists in the first place.

Part of me doesn't have a huge problem with  what that says. That is, I tend to read mostly women novelists. I also tend to think of some writers, like Hemingway, Salinger, John Irving, as 'boy writers', i.e. people who write books that boys like. As opposed to just 'great writers'. Now I know that's not fair, that it reflects double standards, as I wouldn't want writers I love to be dismissed as 'girl' writers. And even if I thought that so-called great male writers were only fun for boys, I wouldn't say something like that in a public forum, like err, on a blog. It wasn't me who wrote I thought most great novelists were women novelists.

But whatever you think about John Irving, Jane Austen's novels aren't just for girls. They're not a way to pass the time and giggle on the train - although they'll be that too. They're for discovering, thinking about, growing old with. Reading Austen is good for us, it helps us mature intellectually and emotionally.  So the thing is, if only women read Jane Austen, we'll end up with a world full of wannabe Elisabeths, and Eleanors, and truck loads of Bingleys and Willoughbies to match!

I feel this can all be avoided somewhat if we ditch the pink covered Emma and turn instead to this:

Where have all the women gone?

In my head, the great writers are women. Sure, there's Balzac. But is he really as good as Jane Austen? Don't think so. And there's Victor Hugo - eminent - but he can't touch either Charlotte or Emily. What's a better read? Dickens or Mrs Gaskell? What's a better social commentary: his Hard Times or her North and South? I know which one I'd vote for. And Sartre's novels are nothing to Beauvoir's, certainly. And contemporary fiction - well, that's mostly women, isn't it!

Still, this all seems to be in my head only, because Universities world wide are having fights about whether or not to revise their mostly male syllabi.

Now in my branch of writing, philosophy, there's even more of a gender gap. One that's not quite ready to close yet, as men are still hogging the front line in the syllabi and the university jobs.

My husband has it all. So do I. What are you going to do about it?

Disclaimer: I really don't mean this to come across as a criticism of stay at home mums - only those people, men or women, working or not, parents or not, who claim that it's the only valid choice. Also, I don't normally read Good Housekeeping or the Daily Mail!

J has two children and a full time job. J is, on the whole, happy, fulfilled, and wouldn't dream of giving up either children or career. 

How likely is this scenario?

Well, according to some people, including actress Emma Thompson in an interview for Good Housekeeping, and Lorraine Candy in the Daily Mail, it is highly unlikely for about 50% of the population of developed countries, and highly likely for the other half. Does it depend on how fulfilling the job is, how well-paid, how good an access to childcare A has, and A's other living conditions? You'd think these things would make a difference - working in a factory 10 hours a day to support three kids single handedly while living in a tiny flat may make for a slightly less satisfying life than an interesting writing or teaching job, a partner who also earns, two kids and a house.

I want it all and I want it now

Dear fans (yeah, I know, but it feels good to write this) I'm sorry I've been away for a little while, but my life has been a tad hectic these past few weeks. I'm back, though. For good. Because I miss writing, and because I'm starting to take Sandrine's threats pretty seriously. Man, she's scary.

Yesterday, Sandrine the Barbarian sent me a link to an unbelievable article on the Web. Some Carrie Bradshaw wannabe published a note on how women had it all and it wasn't progress at all. So basically, having a husband, a job, kids and a dog is too much to handle and we, women, should probably choose between having kids and a career. Now, let me react to that in the most sensible manner: BULLSHIT.

Is it 'natural' for boys to play with guns and girls to like pink? Come on!

I feel I haven't had a proper rant for a while. What with the holidays and all, I've been positively calm and cheerful, and, frankly, that's not healthy. So here's something that really gets me going.

Back when Charlotte was at Kindergarten, they used to play this game. The children would be sitting in two groups - boys on one side, girls on the other. The teacher would shout out: 'Who likes pink?' and all the girls would have to yell 'I do!'. Then the teacher would ask  'Who likes Blue?' and the boys would have to answer. That's not really what pisses me off. I'd long decided that this particular school could not teach my daughter very much, and at home, we worked hard to counteract every single one of their efforts towards gender discrimination.

No, what really gets to me, is normal, non-sexist people. The ones who tell you that yes, this is all very wrong, and schools shouldn't be allowed to put such ideas in children's minds. But then they start nodding and smiling wisely, and using their confiding, yet down to earth voice, they tell you that once you have a boy, or a girl, you can't help but notice certain things. Boys just like to play with guns - there's nothing you can do. If you won't buy them toy ones, they'll just use a random stick and shoot the hell out of you. And girls, well, they're different. They're quieter, aren't they? And they do like pretty things.

All this has nothing to do with the way you bring them up, they say. You never bought guns, or hair ribbons. They just naturally turn to them. They really weren't expecting their boys or girls to be like that - after all, they've always thought of themselves as feminists, and wouldn't have dreamt of pushing gender prejudices in their own home - but, somehow, they are. That's nature for you. Shame, isn't it. Those theories about equality were so nice and pleasant. Well, you can still be a feminist, but you just have to moderate certain points of views as you get older and wiser, don't you?

Bollocks to that.

It's a girl thing!

This is my entry for this week's Weekend Assignment:

Weekend Assignment #323: Tech Savvy

When you bring home some new piece of technology, do you usually get it up and running with pleasant anticipation and calm confidence, or is there more likely to be much swearing, wailing and gnashing of teeth? What's the most trouble you've had with a new computer, tv, phone or related tech gadget?

Extra Credit: Who do you call in to help, if you get stuck?

In our house, there are no divided responsibilties. 'Im indoors and I share everything equally - childcare, housework (not much of that as we have a cleaner!), shopping, cooking, taking Max to his special ed (lots of that!). It means a lot of time spent talking about things, organising, comparing notes. But it's definitely worth it. There are a couple of exceptions: 'Im indoors tends to do all the repair work that involves gluing things. I tend to be in charge of the technology. So if we have a new computer, a new telly, or dvd player, I'm the one that sets it up. If, at a later stage, there's something wrong with any of the above, I'm the one that fixes it.

I don't like football. It's a feminist issue.

I don't have anything against football, really. I hear it's very popular with little girls in the United States.

I don't have much of a reason to complain either: my husband isn't a great football fan - he can take it or leave it. He's more into cricket, and, as he points out, that's the ideal spectator sport for a family man: you just put the radio on and get on with your day to day business. So this rant is purely on your behalf. Selfless. 

No men were injured in the writing of this post.

A few weeks back, Marianne and I wrote our weekend charter posts on how to get men to cook. You can read them here and here. I felt a bit iffy about doing this because I believe that men can and do cook, and that to come up with tricks and special recipes to get them cooking has a strong whiff of the double standard about it. Coincidentally, last night, while we were washing up for a large dinner party for which my husband had done all the cooking (well, I did boil the quails eggs), he took it upon himself to offer a few pointers for those women whose partners don't cook. And let's face it, maybe men can cook, and maybe quite a few do, but there's a hell of a lot that don't still. So something must be done and I will share with you those pearls of wisdom from a man that cooks (and makes minimal mess in the process).

Note that the phrasing of the advice may not always be his - but the substance generally is, (except in one fairly obvious case). 

How to save your marriage (and Mary Poppins) in the kitchen

BIG APOLOGY TO THOSE MEN WHO DO ROUTINELY COOK FOR THEIR FAMILY AND DON'T MAKE A MESS! THIS ISN'T ABOUT YOU.


Yeah, yeah, yeah, we've all heard it, men don't cook. At least not everyday cooking: they won't have dinner ready on the table when the children are hungry. Or if they do, they've cooked something entirely inappropriate and made such a mess in the kitchen that Mary Poppins' frantic finger snapping and spoonful of sugar singing will cause her to have a heart attack. Then you'll have a messy kitchen and a dead Mary Poppins. Great.

The Weekend Charter

Each weekend, you'll be getting a joint double post on a single theme – there and back, as it were. And there'll be extra features: in-flight menu, and in-flight movie, where we share our brilliant recipes and our unique cultural insights.

Once a month our flight will have a correspondence: that's you! We want readers to suggest themes – the sillier the better - and we'll pick one to write about. Not that we don't have plenty of silly ideas of our own, but we like a challenge!

So we're counting on you, in the comments or on facebook or twitter!

This month's Charter brings you Maternal Instinct.

There...

A mother's love is irreplaceable (sigh)

I'm sorry to be harping on about these things in a particularly non-humorous way, but seeing as I'm writing a book on Wollstonecraft I can't very well avoid thinking about it. And if I have to suffer, I don't see why the rest of the world shouldn't. So here we go. The other day in class, we were playing around with one of those utterly senseless thought experiments: you wake in a hospital tied to a man who's in the next bed. You find out he's a world famous violinist suffering from a terrible disease and only you can cure him, by sharing your blood with him for nine months. Do you have an obligation to stay? The students all seemed to think that yes, you should stay, except if you're a woman who's a mother. So I ask whether the father of the children could not equally well take care of them, at which point they go all misty eyed and say that a mother's love is irreplaceable. Of course they can't tell me why.

I tell them I don't think my love for my children is irreplaceable just because I'm their mother and not their father. I don't think that's ever the case in families where the father is as involved in the children's life as the mother. But then again, there aren't that many of those around.

The students' eyes are no longer misty by then, they're becoming harsh, and they start talking about maternal instinct, which I clearly lack.

Well, it's not even clear that human beings have instinct. Used to, but that died out along with being hairy all over and painting in caves. Except for infants. When you hang your baby up on the washing line by its toes and it holds on, that's instinct. (Ok, so maybe my students had a point and I do lack maternal instinct). It's to do with the bit in the middle of the brain getting covered up, I think. Something wierd, physiological and complicated.

Ok, so some people, probably psychologists, would say that I'm taking the word instinct too literally. Nobody is saying that mothers haven't made it passed the prehistoric stage (yeah, you bet that's exactly what they're saying!) Instinct is something more subtle than that, some internalisation of popular wisdom, an ability to respond immediately, in an unreflexive way, appropriate to the situation. Fine, I don't deny I've got that. Many is the time when there's been a situation involving the children and I've responded quickly and unreflexively. Usually, that's when I'm trying to watch something on tv and they break something, or get hungry. You can imagine the kind of instinctual response I'm talking about.

In-flight movie

So I know every one is talking about it on the web, and there's pages and pages of 'lost theories'. But there's a couple of things I feel really need saying. First Sawyer is way hotter when he's on the right side of the law. Secondly, Richard, Ricardus, or Ricardo, whatever his name his, turns out to be a bit of a wimp. What's with all the mysterious non-ageing if he's only Jacob's servant? Does he eat bugs?

Just when I thought streaming couldn't get any better, I came across SKINS, a British show about teenagers in Bristol. It's called Skins because they get naked a lot and they, well, you know, skin up. (That just means rolling your own cigarettes, really). One good thing about it is that the principle actor is the little boy from About a Boy and he's all grown up. Put that together with information you've already got and that is plenty good enough reason to watch the show. Plus it's all gritty and humorous and deals with really issues and stuff, so you don't have to hide when you're watching it, like when you're watching Gossip Girl (oops, sorry I let that out).

That's all for now, as I don't want to let out any real spoilers.

And back...

On Maternal Instinct. Or not.

I love my children. I utterly adore them. Aside from the usual “no”, “shush” or “don’t bite your sister/brother”, I also say “I love you, but I’m not just your mommy, I had a life before you got here and I intend to keep some of it”. When I say this, my kids (6 and almost 3) have that dead fish stare and start asking why, or even better, just shrug and seem to think that it’ll pass and I’ll go back to normal anytime soon.

On the other hand, when their dad tells them to go see me or do something else because he’s busy, they’ll just do it. I was talking about this to someone the other day, and also complaining a little (OK, a lot) saying how I was doing all the children-related work and that I couldn’t understand how I was the only one to hear them scream at night, and here’s the answer I got : “Well, of course, you’re the mother”. I am going to say this once, and once only, so listen up: there is no such thing as maternal instinct. It does not exist. The survival instinct does, yes, that’s true. But maternal, nope. The fact that my kids think I’m all for granted and not their daddy just means that he drew the line way further than I did. Mothers are not more patient, they don’t have Bionic Woman’s hearing abilities, and they don’t need less sleep. They just deal with those things because society makes them. Instinct calls for natural, for action deprived of thought. Does that mean women stop being human beings and turn into animals when they have kids?

I’m not saying there’s no special bond between a mother and a child, I’m saying it is as special as the one he/she has with the dad. Different, sure, but just as special. You see, when people tell me about maternal instinct, a real instinctive reaction comes and urges me to punch them in the teeth. But since I’m not an animal and I can control myself, I don’t hit them. Why should I be any different towards my kids? Wouldn’t maternal instinct be something worrying if it existed?

Last night my little girl decided her bed was lame and ours was cool. She was pretty stubborn and ended up screaming, yelling, crying, waking her brother up who threatened to move to another house to get proper sleep. Now, instinctively, I would probably have told her to go sleep in the hall or kicked her in the arse or yelled like a mad woman. But since I’m a mother, and not an instinctual animal, I just told her endlessly that she had her bed, that it wasn’t lame at all and that I needed my sleep and my space at night. She fell asleep at 2 a.m. and woke up at 6 a.m. and said “I want my bottle now. I think my bed is lame and I want to sleep with you tonight”. Having no maternal instinct obviously does not make me good at this mother thing either, it seems.

In-flight Menu:

Recette de la tarte au citron meringuée : (if you want it in English, please post a comment and I’ll translate it. Also, you could start learning French. Or Japanese, for that matter. But it wouldn’t help you for the lemon pie.)

Pour la pâte :

250g de farine

125g de beurre

2 oeufs

30g de sucre

Sel

Pour la garniture :

2 citrons

2 œufs

75g de beurre

20g Maïzena (farine de maïs)

230 g de sucre

4 Cuillérées à soupe de sucre roux

1. Enlever ses bagues. Pétrir les ingrédients pour la pâte et faire une boule. Attention ne pas y aller de main morte, c’est sportif. Recouvrir d’un film alimentaire et mettre au frigo pendant une heure.

2. Préchauffer le four à 180°C mais on n’a pas le temps d’aller boire un café en attendant qu’il chauffe, y’a d’autres trucs à faire.

3. Râper le zeste du citron (attention aux doigts : d’abord parce qu’on peut se faire très mal et ensuite, parce que c’est de la tarte au citron, pas de la tarte aux doigts) et presser les fruits. Là c’est mieux d’avoir une machine. Ou quelqu’un qui ne s’est pas coupé les doigts avec la râpe.

4. Faire mousser les œufs et le sucre ; Ajouter le beurre fondu, la Maïzena, le jus de citron et bien mélanger au fouet.

5. Etaler la pâte, piquer le fond et garnir

6. Cerise sur le gâteau (non, non, y’a pas de cerise, c’est une expression) : la meringue. Une fois que la tarte est cuite, battre très fermement 3 blancs d’œufs puis incorporer toujours en battant 50g de sucre très fin. Recouvrir la tarte, faire un joli dessin au couteau et mettre au four très chaud sous le grill pendant 5 minutes. Se faire un petit café si on veut mais le boire DEVANT.

7. Laisser refroidir tranquillement (là on peut même sortir le boire, le café) et mettre au frigo.

We wish you a pleasant flight!