In the French canon, François's work and success is said to testify to the viability and strength of gay and lesbian literature, and adds to the corpus of a feminist, radical lesbian literature begun by Violette Leduc, Monique Wittig, and Christiane Rochefort. Her winning the Prix Femina helped signal that literature's "institutional consecration." Alongside Jeanne Galzy and Mireille Best, she is credited with creating "images of lesbians challenge both the dominant heterosexist ideology and the limiting idea of the lesbian novel as manifesto in order to offer new visions of sexual identity." Love, or the "ardeur [de l'amour qui structure les jours," is an overarching theme in all her work, poetry or prose.