In L’Autre fille (The Other Girl), Annie Ernaux presents personal trauma and familial silence through the recollection of her deceased sister. Adopting biblical motifs as an analytical framework, this article examines the resonance of the narratives of Abel, Isaac, and Job within the text. The sister’s early death echoes Abel’s “innocent death,” while subtle parental preference and psychological tension within the family reflect the dynamics of jealousy. Ernaux’s position as the surviving child corresponds to Isaac’s “logic of substitution,” and writing functions as a form of compensation for the deceased. Her questioning of parental silence and the injustice of fate recalls Job’s suffering and protest.
These motifs not only provide a symbolic structure for the work but also situate private memory within a broader cultural horizon, thereby establishing an intertextual relationship between individual and collective experience. This study argues that the autobiographical writing in L’Autre fille constructs a bridge between literature, interiority, and religion, enabling private trauma to acquire cultural and ethical intelligibility. In doing so, it demonstrates the capacity of autobiographical literature to transform individual experience into a universal human predicament.