237 FOR EXAMPLE”: SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR’S PARENTHETICAL PRESENCE IN PHILIPPE LEJEUNE’S THEORY OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY

MARYLEA MAC DONALD UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA

and thevf eigniieseighties (bartnes,Swtffi" Sarraute,sJSJ.*^S? Yourcenar,iO0,B*rtly Duras, ‘°Robbe-Grillet)ok P|ace in Francethe sixties 'n the was seventies nnt thp : haas stood theT^o,0,6'3^6,3 ‘he0ry 0f ,he 9enre- The b«> theory if wj are ,o judge S Aristotle^ Poe^'r9 haHSfhe! In16, t188 trad'tl0na,,y come after periods of great literary production QnnhiSfo AfCuh?d th^ advanta9e of being able to reflect on the tragedy and the comedv of GS’ Ae,fchylüs* Eur,P,des and Aristophanes. Boileau had the work of Corneille and olière, as well as the beginnings of Racine behind him when he wrote his Art poétique. Todav Phiiinno ^ f-3y îî)ese theories are '"formed by the authors and the ideology of the theorist author/ who/ hf tnheo,ret,cal ?t[orts are '"formed by the critical school of naratology and the snlnra imnn^l/nn^h H^eS' The ,rony of the critical sch°o1 which effectively prolonged the f °n he d,scuss,on °fthe author's life producing the most influential theorist of âutobiography cannot escape us. It reflects the continued dominance of that particular school of S LTiht: r are T a!lowed t0 sPeak about the life, or rather the aor? of a "e but on?y from a structural or narratological perspective. y Who wins and who loses in Lejeune's theory? Among the contemporaries the bia studio’ inerma T, °lde'. Mjfhel Leiris and Sartre. These are the autobiographers whom hi studies in the detail which characterizes the narratological approach, and whom he unabashedly eulogizes. Lejeune is perfectly aware of what he is doing, as he shows in the concluding remarks to Le Pacte autobiographique. Among the losers are those autobiographers who do not qualify at all for his repertory because their works are either too fragmentary or not written in prose or lack a pact or attempt to pass for fiction (i.e. Colette, Mes Apprentissages; Aragon, Roman inachevé; Musset, La Confession d'un enfant du siècle; Hugo, Contemplations). Next are those autobiographers who are included, but, for one shortcoming or another, receive shabby treatment at the hands of the theorist. Simone de Beauvoir is one of these. Losing in the current situation is not without its advantages. Admission to the canon has a price, conformity to accepted models. For both men and women, this is problematic, but especially for women, who have to negotiate a tentative entry to gain access to power, validity and recognition, yet continue to defend all that has kept them on the threshold for centuries: the experiences, the values, the life stories. The admission of women to the canon and the process of the institutionalization of the genre of autobiography, often characterized as a more intimate and thus feminine form of writing, are inextricably linked, yet decisively separated by such critics as Georg Misch and Lejeune. Sidonie Smith, in A Poetics of Women's Autobiography, clearly demonstrates how critics like Misch formulate definitions of autobiography which preclude the admission of women. (Smith, 8- 9) Lejeune also seemingly wittingly sets up criteria of admissibility which continue to exclude and/or belittle the contribution of women writers to the genre. It is my hypothesis that an unwritten theory of autobiography underlies Lejeune's written, and signed, theory. Rather than explicitly stating what he is against, he chose to write about what he favoured, but that did not prevent him from taking swipes at those who were not worthy of his signature, thus constituting a sort of quarrel in the tradition of "la querelle de la femme." Whether it is in his first general study, L'Autobiographie en France, or in his readings of Sartre's written and spoken autobiographies, "L'Ordre du récit dans Les Mots de Sartre", in Le Pacte autobio¬ graphique, and "Sartre et l'autobiographie parlée", in Je est un autre, Lejeune consistently comments on Beauvoir's Memoirs parenthetically and unfavourably. She is a "non-exemplary - 238 - example", a failure. : Beauvoir is first mentioned in the "avant-propos" of Lejeune's L'Autobiographie en France. Her name appears in the list of authors of "un certain nombre d'oeuvres de qualité moyenne, de facture honnête" (AF, 7) which had recently appeared, along with those of Julien Green and Claude Roy. It is not an auspicious beginning. A few pages later, Beauvoir reappears, this time in parenthesis, as an example of a disastrous overdose of the use of the diary in the autobiography, when she quotes at great length her 1946 diary in La Force des choses. Lejeune argues that the diary "brise la perspective rétrospective et correspond à une sorte d'abdication de l'autobiographe" (AF, 36). According to Lejeune, only Gide succeeds in integrating the diary in Et nunc manet in te. This sort of genre purity is not helpful in evaluating a text which does not practice it. The question which a critic should ask is: what is the desired effect or the motivation behind mixing the genres? This is the direction which Leah Hewitt takes in her reading of Beauvoir in Autobiographical Tightropes (Hewitt, 18). Beauvoir returns, again in parentheses, in Lejeune's exploration of the function of autobiographical writing in the life and work of a writer. He formulates a hypothetical study on novelists to see whether it is still possible for them to write fiction once their autobiography is written. His unconfirmed impression is that "l’acte autobiographique dégage le texte fondamental que le romancier transposait jusque-là dans la fiction: 'aveu' après lequel il devient impossible de 'fabuler*" (AF. 54). Again the example is Beauvoir: "(o]n a parfois l'impression (par exemple chez Simone de Beauvoir) .. ." (AF, 54). Then he goes on to say that the reality is more complex and that autobiographical writing did not dry up the romanesque vein for Stendhal, André Gide, François Mauriac, Julien Green, Fr. Nourissier and many others. While Lejeune announces that he is now moving from the realm of hypothesis and impression to that of reality, he fails to include the name of Beauvoir in this list, thereby misrepresenting her writing at that period. What about Les Belles Images and La Femme rompue? The writer who really ceased writing fiction after the publication of his autobiography is Jean-Paul Sartre, but Lejeune’s refusal to criticize Sartre, to speak of him in anything but the most glowing terms, is flagrant. Besides, we know that Sartre's abandonment of literature was willful, was at least partly due to his political aesthetics. The reality of Beauvoir's writing is much more complex than Lejeune would allow and his misrepresentation perplexes me. What myths, stereotypes, misinformation, prejudices inform his surmisings? Behind the dried-up inspiration can we see the frigid spinster, the limited resources of a woman writer? Can we also see the accusation of limited imagination: was the sole source of Beauvoir's fiction, her "fundamental text," her life story? This is true of many other novelists, for example, if I may indulge in a little parenthetical behaviour myself, Marcel Proust. I cannot imagine Lejeune treating Proust the way he treats Beauvoir. But then Proust did not write his autobiography, at least not according to Lejeune's definition. When Beauvoir is once again cited with the by now mandatory "for example," we are spared the parentheses. It is the occasion for a frontal attack, which reveals a positive feature of the parentheses: protective shields. So what is Beauvoir accused of this time? She is one of the rare autobiographers who abstained from any autobiographical discourse, who preferred to stick to a pure narration. "Par exemple Simone de Beauvoir, dans les Mémoires d'une jeune fille rangée, loin d'afficher la subjectivité liée au récit autobiographique, a l'air de raconter les choses 'telles qu'elles furent': il n'y a aucun pacte autobiographique au début du livre, et les interven¬ tions avouées du narrateur se comptent sur les doigts de la main." (AF, 79-80) She may indeed be one of the rare ones, but another one of them is Sartre and once again she is singled out for criticism while his name is carefully silenced. Lejeune argues in Le Pacte autobiographique that Sartre adequately identifies the narrator without a pact. (PA, 30) Furthermore, Lejeune is wrong, for Beauvoir intervenes several times in her narration, especially on the question of the accuracy of her memories. The narrator is strongly present in the opening page, where she evokes her early childhood as she turns the pages of her photo album. The consequences of this abstention, of this failure to conform to the traditional autobiographical discourse, to make what Lejeune calls a "pact," constitutes a "feinte objectivité." Lejeune leaves it up to the reader to