I Who Have Never Known Men: Reading between the lines

Imagine seeing yourself in the mirror for the first time. Imagine learning the alphabet for the first time. Imagine hearing music for the first time. You can’t, can you? Imagine living in an underground bunker with 39 other women, with no knowledge of the outside world, guarded by men who are not allowed to speak to you. I Who Have Never Known Men, by Jacqueline Harpman is a deep exploration of our shared humanity. Set in a post-apocalyptic world, the narrator, an unnamed girl, has been raised in captivity with a group of women in a cage underground. She doesn’t know why, and we never find out.

Another reviewer of this book describes the protagonist as a “blank canvas” and I could not have put it any better. Being raised in captivity, this girl doesn’t know any other way to live. So when the women mysteriously find themselves free from their cage and released into a barren and deserted world, we follow the narrator’s thoughts and feelings as she experiences things for the first time. From hearing someone sing to witnessing grief and suicide, the narrator’s story is a sad yet beautiful one.

It’s a short story – roughly 200 pages – yet it spans decades. It’s simple yet thought-provoking and will leave you with many questions that will go unanswered. It is here that I want to explore further: the ‘why,’ the ‘what,’ the ‘who,’ questions you will undoubtedly have upon finishing this book.

One of the biggest questions of the book is why are these women imprisoned in an underground bunker in the first place? Who put them there?

Unanswered questions are in no way a flaw. As a matter of fact, this book’s strength lies in its open interpretation and vast room for theorising. It’s a story about humanity where the most fundamentally human questions are asked. Why are they there? What does it all mean? Who even are they? What makes this book so tragically beautiful is that we don’t get any answers which is exactly the way of reality. What is our purpose? Why are we alive? What becomes of us? No one will ever know, so why should this book tell us?

One of the biggest questions of the book is why are these women imprisoned in an underground bunker in the first place? Who put them there? I hate to spoil it for you, but we never find out. This big, unanswered question has led to a lot of theorising among readers of the book, a rabbit hole which I have found myself deep within upon finishing the book.

One of my favourite interpretations was that this book is an autobiography disguised as a dystopian fiction. The author, Jacqueline Harpman, born in 1929, had to flee the Nazis along with her family to Casablanca, Morocco. They did not return to their home country, Belgium, until World War II had ended in 1945, and a large part of her paternal family was killed at Auschwitz.

As for the question of what happened to the world they are released into, does it really matter?

The narrator’s conflicting thoughts and feelings of being kept in captivity could reflect how Harpman herself felt during this period of her life, fearful and confused. The bunker in which the women are kept could be an interpretation of how Harpman and her family lived after fleeing the Nazis, becoming alienated in a foreign land. Upon release, the women come across other underground bunkers where they find the corpses of both men and women who had also been imprisoned and could not escape. A theory behind this part of the story is that these people reflect the Jews that were left behind, and the family members of Harpman’s that suffered in the concentration camps. It’s a creative interpretation but one that entirely makes sense.

As for the question of what happened to the world they are released into, does it really matter? The barren and deserted land that Jacqueline ‘frees’ her characters into could reflect her own views of what the world was like for her after the war, empty and meaningless. It doesn’t matter how they got there, it’s what they do now that matters. Despite this message, readers haven’t stopped guessing the possible reasons for the end of the world. From intelligent non-humanoids to nuclear war, the list of possible answers is endless.

This book sits outside of the reality we know. It is one that I found particularly difficult to form an opinion on. I felt lost, confused, and dissatisfied yet simultaneously moved, impressed, and curious. I’ve never read a book quite like it and it will truly haunt me for eternity. What disappointed me most was how it has not reached a wider audience. It feels very much like a book that should be studied in school. Reading between the lines and asking questions is exactly what this book is for and what I assume the author’s intentions were when it was written.

Love it or hate it, this book revels in its ambiguity and should be read by everyone. We are all human after all, and this book is just a glimpse into humanity’s beauties and complexities.