Breakdown of Après avoir fait ses devoirs de grammaire, Marie se détend avec un bon roman.
Questions & Answers about Après avoir fait ses devoirs de grammaire, Marie se détend avec un bon roman.
Après avoir fait is literally after having done.
It’s a common French structure:
- après + infinitive of auxiliary (avoir / être) + past participle
It’s used to express a completed action that happens before another action, but without repeating the subject:
- Après avoir fait ses devoirs, Marie se détend.
→ After having done her homework, Marie relaxes.
Instead of saying:
- Après que Marie a fait ses devoirs, elle se détend.
Both are correct, but après avoir fait is more compact and stylistically elegant, and avoids repeating Marie / elle.
Fait is the past participle of faire.
- je fais, tu fais, il/elle fait → present tense forms
- fait → past participle
In the structure après avoir fait, we need:
- avoir in the infinitive (avoir)
- followed by the past participle (fait)
So the combination is:
- après
- avoir (infinitive of auxiliary) + fait (past participle)
You normally use with avoir or être in these constructions just as you do in compound tenses like the passé composé.
- Faire is a verb that takes avoir as its auxiliary:
- j’ai fait, tu as fait, elle a fait
So in the infinitive construction, it must also use avoir:
- après avoir fait (never après être fait here)
You would use être with verbs that normally take être (movement / reflexive verbs, etc.):
- après être arrivé – after having arrived
- après s’être levée – after getting up / after having gotten up
French treats les devoirs as a countable plural noun meaning homework/assignments:
- un devoir – a (single) assignment
- des devoirs – homework in general
So ses devoirs = her homework / her assignments.
The possessive ses is used because:
- ses = his/her/its for plural nouns
- devoirs is plural
You would say:
- son devoir – her (one) assignment
- ses devoirs – her homework (as a whole), which is the usual expression.
Here de grammaire is like saying grammar homework in English.
- ses devoirs de grammaire ≈ her grammar homework
It’s a noun + de + noun structure:
- devoirs de grammaire = homework of the type “grammar”
You don’t use de la because you’re not saying homework of the grammar (which would sound odd even in English). You’re simply specifying the kind of homework, so French uses de without an article:
- un cours de français – a French course
- un livre de recettes – a recipe book
- ses devoirs de grammaire – her grammar homework
Se détendre means to relax (literally: to relax oneself).
- Marie se détend = Marie relaxes.
The non‑reflexive détendre usually means to relax / loosen something else:
- Ce massage détend les muscles. – This massage relaxes the muscles.
So:
- Marie détend (without an object) is incomplete: Marie relaxes (something?)
- To say she relaxes, you must use the reflexive form se détendre:
- Marie se détend.
Se détend is present tense (présent de l’indicatif):
- Marie se détend – Marie relaxes / is relaxing.
The phrase après avoir fait ses devoirs de grammaire uses an infinitive construction that refers to an action completed before the main verb in the present.
So the timeline is:
- She does her grammar homework (completed action: avoir fait).
- Then she relaxes (present: se détend).
Even though avoir fait isn’t conjugated in a past tense, its form in this structure expresses anteriority (something that happens earlier than the main verb).
No. Après faisant… is incorrect in French.
To express “after doing…”, French uses:
- après + infinitive of auxiliary + past participle
So:
- ✅ Après avoir fait ses devoirs… – After doing her homework…
- ❌ Après faisant ses devoirs…
If you want a different structure, you could use a full clause:
- Après qu’elle a fait ses devoirs, Marie se détend.
(After she has done her homework, Marie relaxes.)
In après avoir fait ses devoirs, fait stays invariable (no agreement) in normal usage.
Reason:
- With avoir as auxiliary, the past participle agrees only with a direct object that comes before the participle.
- Here, ses devoirs comes after fait, so there is no agreement:
- après avoir fait ses devoirs – correct
- not après avoir faits ses devoirs
It also does not agree with Marie, because Marie is the subject of the main verb se détend, not a direct object of faire in this construction.
So fait remains masculine singular by default.
Some adjectives in French usually come before the noun; bon is one of them.
Common adjectives that often come before the noun include: beau, bon, grand, petit, jeune, vieux, mauvais, joli, nouveau, etc.
So:
- un bon roman – a good novel (natural French)
- un roman bon – grammatically possible but sounds unusual, and would sometimes have a slightly marked or contrastive feel.
In everyday French, you should say un bon roman.
Un is the indefinite article (a / an), and le is the definite article (the).
- un bon roman = a good novel (any good novel, not specified)
- le bon roman = the good novel (a particular one we already know about)
In the sentence, Marie is relaxing with a good novel, not necessarily one previously mentioned or identified. So un bon roman is the natural choice.