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This article looks at the hazards of Marguerite Duras’ pre-oedipal connection to her mother and to writing. It explores how Duras approaches different themes, such as prostitution, in order to stage sexual jouissance, first inhibited by maternal pleasure and then liberated. Her writing describes and authorizes maternal devastation until the birth of a new style, which she calls “feminine” which is as much about the rejection of all phallicism as it is about giving a cultural meaning to its treatment using the words of jouissance. Does the desire to sacrifice maternal jouissance not allow the author to use a performative “I” and to enter the social field?