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Amongst Women: Literary Representations of Female Homosociality in Belle Epoque France, 1880–1914

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Amongst Women: Literary Representations of Female Homosociality in Belle Epoque France, 1880–1914 Amongst Women: Literary Representations of Female Homosociality in Belle Epoque France, 1880–1914 Submitted by Giada Alessandroni to the University of Exeter as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in French in September 2018 This thesis is available for Library use on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. I certify that all material in this thesis which is not my own work has been identified and that no material has previously been submitted and approved for the award of a degree by this or any other University. Signature: ………………………………………………………….. ABSTRACT This thesis explores fictional representations of female homosociality in a group of female- authored, middlebrow novels published in France between 1880 and 1914 in order to include women’s writing of the Belle Epoque within the narratives of the literary and cultural history of friendship and further our understanding of gender identities in the long nineteenth- century. Novelistic portrayals of female homosociality are compared to the models of female bonding described in didactic or orthodox literature of the time so as to highlight the various innovations made, in relation to this theme, by the texts under consideration. Using the novel as a forum in which ideas about women’s identities and their relationships could be reflected upon and negotiated, some Belle Epoque female authors engage with the limitations and possibilities of female relationships in fiction as a way to participate in contemporary debates about modern and traditional womanhood. In particular, the representation of female homosociality constitutes one of the literary devices through which the figure of the femme moderne comes into being on paper, and reflects the authors’ engagement with a form of female modernism that problematizes the dichotomy between ‘high’ and ‘popular’ literature, giving shape to women’s experience of modernity. The Introduction briefly traces the history of female friendship in France, before considering the ambiguous notion of romantic friendship and discussing predominant models of female interaction as outlined in nineteenth-century didactic literature. It explains why the Belle Epoque constitutes an interesting time from the point of view of female homosociality, establishes relevant scholarship, and details the methodological premises upon which this research is based. Chapter One considers the different roles played by physical intimacy between fictional female friends in two romans de mœurs by Daniel Lesueur, and situates these roles within the context of the medical and social discourses on the female body that dominate the turn of the century, and that determine the types of female identity available to women at that time. Chapter Two examines three female Bildungsromans by Gabrielle Réval, Colette Yver, and Marcelle Tinayre in order to identify different models of female mentorship through which the tensions between biological and spiritual motherhood, love and friendship, marriage and career, conventional and progressive femininity are played out. Chapter Three focuses on the portrayal of female communities in schoolgirl fiction by Yvette Prost and Gabrielle Réval, highlighting how the characters’ experience of intellectual rivalry and intellectual friendship within the fictionalized world of the Third Republican school subverts dominant notions about presumed female nature and sociability. Chapter Four investigates female-based love 2 triangles in three novels by Yvette Prost, Daniel Lesueur, and Colette Yver. By redefining the figure of the Other Woman and by establishing a feminine economy of generosity based on sacrifice and on the exchange of men, these texts posit women as the guarantors of the family and the moral health of the nation in the context of French degeneration, simultaneously upsetting negative stereotypes about female jealousy and sexual rivalry. The Conclusion offers an overview of the findings of this thesis, before pointing toward further avenues for research. 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements 5 Introduction 6 Female Friendship: ‘The Troubling Silence between the Lines’? Chapter One 41 Female Friendship and the Body Chapter Two 91 Female Mentorship and the Making of the Femme Moderne in the Female Bildungsroman Chapter Three 143 Female Communities in Schoolgirl Fiction Chapter Four 195 Female Rivalry and Love Triangles Conclusion 245 The Troublesome Noisiness of the ‘Troubling Silence between the Lines’ Appendix 249 Bibliography 252 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Not a line of this thesis would have seen the light of day without my supervisors, Maria Scott and Fiona Cox. Maria, the day you decided to answer my very first, poorly written email, one of the best experiences of my life began. You have been an excellent guide throughout this journey, and I sincerely thank you for all your help, kindness, and wisdom. Fiona, your unfailing cheerfulness and enthusiasm for this research have warmed my heart and kept me going at every meeting. You both have my deepest gratitude and admiration. Thanks to the College of Humanities and the Modern Languages Department for including me in their research community and providing me with the means to pursue this research, and in particular to Gert Vonhoff, Hugh Roberts, and Cathryn Baker. I wish to express all my gratitude to Sharon Marcus and Marie Kawthar Daouda for offering precious insight on my work. Your generosity is a testament to the value of female support in academia. Thanks to Diana Holmes and Adam Watt for the time that they dedicated to the review of this thesis. I am very grateful for the affection, understanding, and friendship of some special people, met at different points of my educational journey, from kindergarten right up to this doctorate: Lucia, Jessica, Clément, and Sandra. Special thanks to Lucia, Sandra, and Dana for their proofreading. Thank you mamma and papà for expecting nothing from me but being happy; you are the ‘safe haven’ I can always return to. Martina, during our childhood you were the worst playmate and the best ally; now you are my best friend. Thank you for never letting me down. My beloved grandparents, Armandino, Elvira, Armindo, and Nina, you are very much missed. I have kept a special place in my acknowledgements for my endlessly patient and incredibly supportive husband, Fabien. Fabien, your love and faith in me feed my dreams, and every day with you is a gift. 5 INTRODUCTION Female Friendship: ‘The Troubling Silence between the Lines’? The expression ‘the troubling silence between the lines’ was used by historian Alan Bray in his seminal work on the history of friendship, The Friend (2003), to indicate the seeming lack of evidence regarding the public and political dimension of female friendship in early modern archives.1 In this introduction, I wish to employ Bray’s expression in a different sense, calling attention to the way in which, for a long time, French women have been marginalized or erased from the cultural history of friendship. With regard to the nineteenth century, the ‘troubling silence between the lines’ concerns French women’s exclusion from traditionally androcentric definitions of friendship, their apparent absence from ongoing discussions on the value of this relationship, the scarcity of positive representations of female friendship in canonical literature, and the small amount of research conducted on this topic in French scholarship. At first glance, some of the most well-known French novels from the nineteenth century suggest that female friendship was non-existent or, at best, dangerous when it was not simply replaced by rivalry. In Madame Bovary (1857) the heroine Emma is utterly lonely, in La Cousine Bette (1846) Bette and Valérie’s alliance is evil and threatening, in La Chartreuse de Parme (1839) Gina and Clélia are in competition for Fabrice’s affection, and in Boule de Suif (1880) Elisabeth is the object of other women’s contempt, just to mention a few examples. However, the picture provided by such canonical literary representations and by the few studies dedicated to this topic remains incomplete, or even inaccurate, as long as we do not attend to how French women themselves imagined and represented their relationships, and to what ends. In focusing on female-authored, middlebrow fiction from the period 1880–1914, this thesis seeks to include women’s writing of the Belle Epoque within the narratives of the literary and cultural history of friendship in the long nineteenth century. In this introduction, I am going to provide a brief outline of the discourses and practices of female friendship in French history, subsequently turning my attention to the much-debated notion of female romantic friendship. I will then discuss the ideal of female friendship in nineteenth-century France, as presented in conduct books and essays from this period, and will explain why the Belle Epoque constitutes an interesting time for the 1See Alan Bray, The Friend (Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, 2003), p. 10. Bray’s claim, however, has been contested by recent scholarship that uncovers female friendship in the early modern world, such as Penelope Anderson’s Friendship’s Shadows (2012) and Amanda Herbert’s Female Alliances (2014). 6 study of women’s relationships in literature. After considering to what extent the topic of female homosociality has been treated in French scholarship, particularly with regard to nineteenth-century and Belle
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