Men, Masculinity and the Female Rebel in French Women's Fiction
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MEN, MASCULINITY AND THE FEMALE REBEL IN FRENCH WOMEN’S FICTION, 1900-1913 A thesis submitted to The University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities 2011 LUCY C. STONE SCHOOL OF LANGUAGES, LINGUISTICS AND CULTURES 2 Contents Abbreviations 3 Abstract 4 Declaration and Copyright Statement 5 Acknowledgements 6 Introduction 7 Chapter 1 Cries for Help: Men in Trouble in Colette Yver’s Les Cervelines (1903) and Daniel Lesueur’s Nietzschéenne (1908) 53 Les Cervelines: Dreaming of a Doctor for a Wife 55 Nietzschéenne: Propping up the Boss 77 Chapter 2 Anxious Seducers: Jeanne Marni’s Pierre Tisserand (1907) and Lucie Delarue-Mardrus’s Douce moitié (1913) 97 Pierre Tisserand: Misandry and Masculine Anxiety 99 Douce moitié: A Beleaguered Man 123 Chapter 3 Triangular Shackles: Masculinity, Male Homosociality and the Female Rebel in Marcelle Tinayre’s La Maison du péché (1902) and Colette’s L’Entrave (1913) 145 La Maison du péché: Objects of Faith 148 L’Entrave: Double Binds 165 Chapter 4 Giving and Taking Away: Rachilde’s La Jongleuse (1900) and Gabrielle Réval’s Le Ruban de Vénus (1906) 191 La Jongleuse: A ‘tour de passe-passe élégant’ 194 Le Ruban de Vénus: Loving Men, Laughing at Men 218 Conclusion 246 Bibliography 256 WORD COUNT 80,453 3 Abbreviations DM = Lucie Delarue-Mardrus, Douce moitié (Paris: Fasquelle, 1913) E = Colette, L’Entrave, in Œuvres, ed. by Claude Pichois, 4 vols (Paris: Gallimard, 1984- 2001), II, 325-474 LC = Colette Yver, Les Cervelines (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1928 [1903]) LJ = Rachilde, La Jongleuse (Paris: Des femmes, 1982 [1900]) MP = Marcelle Tinayre, La Maison du péché (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1902) N = Daniel Lesueur, Nietzschéenne (Paris: Plon, 1908) PT = J. Marni, Pierre Tisserand (Paris: Ollendorff, 1907) RV = Gabrielle Réval, Le Ruban de Vénus (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1906) 4 Abstract Men, Masculinity and the Female Rebel in French Women’s Fiction, 1900-1913 The University of Manchester Lucy C. Stone Doctor of Philosophy 2011 This thesis examines representations of men and constructions of masculinity in eight female-authored French novels published between 1900 and 1913: Rachilde’s La Jongleuse (1900), Marcelle Tinayre’s La Maison du péché (1902), Colette Yver’s Les Cervelines (1903), Gabrielle Réval’s Le Ruban de Vénus (1906), Jeanne Marni’s Pierre Tisserand (1907), Daniel Lesueur’s Nietzschéenne (1908), Lucie Delarue-Mardrus’s Douce moitié (1913) and Colette’s L’Entrave (1913). It approaches the issues of men and masculinity by analysing male characters’ relationships and interactions with female protagonists engaged in forms of rebellion against prevailing feminine norms. The study explores women’s fiction produced in a period that has frequently been considered as one of significant upheaval or change in gender relations in French society. This era saw the emergence of increasingly prominent groups of women – feminists, New Women, female doctors and lawyers – whose lives and activities challenged bourgeois or liberal gender norms. According to many historical accounts, this era also saw a crisis of masculinity among French men. Rebellious, transgressive or ‘new’ women figure, in such accounts, as a grave threat to masculine supremacy, eliciting fears among men of a radical inversion of the gender order and the subjugation and/or feminization of the hitherto dominant male sex. Taking such cultural narratives as a backdrop for its investigation, this thesis seeks to map out the ways in which women writers of the period imagined the effects and implications of these kinds of female rebellion for men’s lives and gender identities. Connecting the readings contained in this thesis is the proposition that, in these novels, rebellious female protagonists are called upon to endorse and uphold the desirability and necessity of masterful, authoritative masculinities as performed in public contexts and in heterosexual relationships. Rather than staging women’s attack on the bases of male supremacy, the novels point to the intractable linkage of maleness and power and, crucially, to the ways in which even those female subjects who problematize conventional scripts of femininity are shaped to invest in ideals of dominant masculinity. Female protagonists’ complicity in upholding powerful masculinities takes two main forms in the novels analysed in this study. It is manifest, first, in rescue and mentorship plots in which women assist and encourage struggling male characters to approximate to more heroic or masterful masculinities. Female competence and talent are, in these narratives, yoked to the cause of the male subject in a way that reinforces his claims to power and centrality. Second, the thesis identifies instances in which the closure of the narrative of female revolt emerges as the necessary condition for men’s performance of powerful masculinities, particularly where these masculinities are performed through men’s control of the female body in heterosexual relationships. In these cases, the female subject is, in various ways, enjoined to acquiesce in her subordination and to endorse masculine power. 5 Declaration and Copyright Statement Declaration No portion of the work referred to in this thesis has been submitted in support of an application for another degree or qualification of this or any other university or institute of learning. Copyright Statement i. The author of this thesis (including any appendices and/or schedules to this thesis) owns certain copyright or related rights in it (the “Copyright”) and s/he has given The University of Manchester certain rights to use such Copyright, including for administrative purposes. ii. Copies of this thesis, either in full or in extracts and whether in hard or electronic copy, may be made only in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (as amended) and regulations issued under it or, where appropriate, in accordance with licensing agreements which the University has from time to time. This page must form part of any such copies made. iii. The ownership of certain Copyright, patents, designs, trade marks and other intellectual property (the “Intellectual Property”) and any reproductions of copyright works in the thesis, for example graphs and tables (“Reproductions”), which may be described in this thesis, may not be owned by the author and may be owned by third parties. Such Intellectual Property and Reproductions cannot and must not be made available for use without the prior written permission of the owner(s) of the relevant Intellectual Property and/or Reproductions. iv. Further information on the conditions under which disclosure, publication and commercialisation of this thesis, the Copyright and any Intellectual Property and/or Reproductions described in it may take place is available in the University IP Policy (see http://www.campus.manchester.ac.uk/medialibrary/policies/intellectual- property.pdf), in any relevant Thesis restriction declarations deposited in the University Library, The University Library’s regulations (see http://www.manchester.ac.uk/library/aboutus/regulations) and in The University’s policy on presentation of Theses. 6 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisors, Floriane Place-Verghnes and Dee Reynolds, for the commitment, energy and enthusiasm that they have devoted to this project from beginning to end. I am immensely grateful for their many insights, their always considered and detailed comments on my work, and for the consistent support that they have given me as a doctoral student. Thank you also to Ursula Tidd and Darren Waldron for additional supervision and incisive feedback on my work at various stages of the PhD process. I gratefully acknowledge and thank the Arts and Humanities Research Council for funding this project through its Doctoral Scheme. I would like to acknowledge the AHRC and the Wadsworth Fund at the University of Manchester for offering support for fruitful and formative research trips to Paris. Thank you to the staff at the Bibliothèque Marguerite Durand for their assistance during my visits. I owe special thanks to Carolyn and Anna, for their friendship and for sharing lots of the joys and struggles that have gone along with this project, and to Sarah, for happy days and pints of coffee as we wrote our MAs in 2007 (and since). To JT, who shared in this project in countless ways, thank you for the love and adventures as I wrote it. This project travelled, in boxes, notebooks, poems and conversations, from our tiny home among the vines, out to the hills and back again. Eventually, it became a thesis, as you kept saying it would. To my parents, Fran and Ed, thank you for your constant and unfailing support through this PhD and everything before. You have been kind, wise, encouraging, and endlessly tolerant of my argumentative streak. Kate, thank you for inspiring me, for running the last lap of this race with me, and for planning new ones with me. Thanks to you and Steve for so generously feeding and housing me as I neared the end of this project. Finally, thank you, James, for your irreverent wit. I have appreciated it. 7 Introduction In spring 1898, an article examining representations of men in the work of contemporary French women writers appeared in La Revue des revues. Frédéric Loliée’s piece, provocatively titled ‘Comme elles nous jugent!’, exposed the purportedly harsh treatment afforded to men in female-authored fiction.1 Citing established and successful writers such as Rachilde, Gyp, Daniel Lesueur and Georges de Peyrebrune,