By Lea Katzer
Correspondent
Thunderous applause before she even speaks. As if an anthem were beginning before the first note had been played.
On March 30 at New York’s 92NY Center for Culture and Arts, nearly 900 people rose to their feet as a 73-year-old woman walked onto the stage. Gisèle Pélicot, the French woman whose refusal to cower in shame during the trial against her former husband and dozens of other men became a rallying cry for women worldwide, stood before them, visibly moved.
There is a certain anticipation in the room, the kind that belongs to openings, to premieres, to moments that promise meaning. And yet, what unfolds is not a triumphant overture. It is a composition full of dissonance, one that resists resolution.
As Women’s History Month comes to a close, Pélicot’s memoir “A Hymn to Life: Shame Has to Change Sides” raises broader questions about how women’s stories are told and who ultimately controls the narrative.
Speaking through a translator, Pélicot tells the audience it is her first time in New York. Earlier in her trip, she met with feminist icon Gloria Steinem, a striking moment for someone who has said that the women’s liberation movement of the 1970s once felt distant from her own life, which was centred on building a family.
That life, as she recounts in her memoir, was shaped by decades of hidden violence. Behind the façade of a 50-year marriage, her husband drugged her into unconsciousness and invited dozens of men to their home in southern France to rape her. A crime repeated so often it became rhythmical. Structured not by chance, but by intent.
When the case first broke in France, it was impossible to ignore as it struck like a discordant chord. The trial echoed far beyond the courtroom. But on stage in New York, Pélicot does not present herself as a symbol of tragedy.
Instead, she speaks with remarkable steadiness.
“It was the solitude that really helped me,” she tells the audience, describing the years she spent deciding whether to allow the trial to proceed publicly. “It was at that point that I really came to believe that there is shame here and it’s not the victims who must bear the shame, it is really those who victimize that must bear the shame.”
In telling her story, she insists on a radical shift. “Shame must change sides.”
She does not frame herself as a victim, but as a witness as someone who exposes what has long been hidden rather than embodying the harm itself. Her voice does not rise. There is no theatrical crescendo, no appeal to spectacle. Instead, there is clarity.
And yet, even that control exists within a larger score. Because this is not a solo piece. It never was.
Pélicot’s story is part of a broader arrangement. One that continues to play across borders and institutions, often without interruption. She recounts how, during the trial, she was forced to face dozens of men who denied wrongdoing, some claiming they believed they had permission. Inside the courtroom, she stood before them and their families. Outside, however, a different chorus formed.
Letters arrived addressed simply to “Gisèle Pélicot, France” and still found their way to her.
“It made me feel that I wasn’t alone,” she says. “When I would see all of these women around me… they gave me strength.”
That same energy filled the room at 92NY. The audience did not remain passive. They listened, responded, and rose again in applause. By the end of the evening, as Pélicot waved an emotional goodbye, she was met with another standing ovation which lasted long enough to feel less like an ending and more like a collective acknowledgement.
And yet, even in that moment, the question lingers beyond the room itself.
Which raises the question: Who is really conducting?
In Pélicot’s case, the control did not lie with her at first, but with those who shaped the conditions around her. Directing what was heard, what was ignored, and how the audience responded. Like a conductor guiding an orchestra, the system of abuse manages attention as much as action, setting the pace and tone in ways that keep scrutiny low and compliance high. The result is not chaos, but a controlled environment in which harmful patterns can continue, while the focus of those listening still remains elsewhere.
Pélicot’s story functions in much the same way.
It arrives within a system that has long relied on repetition, on the quiet normalization of violence and silence. And then, suddenly, à la Surprise Symphony, it disrupts. Not through spectacle, but through exposure.
“Shame must change sides.”
Like Haydn’s sudden chord, her words interrupt not only the narrative, but the audience’s position within it. They force a reorientation of who is being watched, and who is being judged.
It is an uncomfortable rupture but a disruption alone does not rewrite a composition.
Pélicot does not shatter the orchestra with a dramatic finale. She does something quieter which, hopefully, is more enduring. She changes the interpretation. By refusing the expected script of victimhood and insisting on accountability, she alters the way the story is heard.
In doing so, she shifts attention away from individual trauma as spectacle and toward the structures that enable it.
Her decision to speak publicly is not about bravery, but about the determination to change society itself.
Yet, even as new notes are introduced, the larger composition remains unfinished.
Women’s History Month, too, can feel like a movement within this ongoing piece: a moment of heightened awareness, of amplified voices, of temporary reconfiguration. For a brief period, the orchestra seems to adjust.
But when the month ends, the question remains: does the music actually change, or does it simply return to its previous form?
And as the applause fades at 92NY the impact of the evening does not disappear as quietly.
If Gisèle Pélicot’s “A Hymn to Life” is meant to stand as a hymn to hope and justice then the question of who shapes the way it is told remains. But it also raises a broader question about who shaped these narratives in the first place.
