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Out from under the artists’ brush: Aesthetics and psychoanalysis in “Manette Salomon” and “L’OEuvre”

Molnar, Julie Arlene, Ph.D.

The Ohio State University, 1988

UMI 300 N. Zeeb Rd. Ann Arbor, MI 48106

OUT FROM UNDER THE ARTISTS' BRUSH

AESTHETICS AND PSYCHOANALYSIS IN MANETTE SALOMON AND

L 'OEUVRE

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in

the Graduate School of the Ohio State University

Julie A. Molnar, B.A., M.A.

* * * *

The Ohio State University

1988

Dissertation Committee: Approved by:

Charles G. S. Williams Advisor Pierre Astier Department of Romance Languages and Literatures Stephen Summerhill

Lee Brown Copyright by Julie Arlene Molnar 1988 To My Mother

Who Always Wanted a Doctor in the House ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This dissertation owes its success to a number of teachers and friends. The Department of Romance

Languages and Literatures and The Center for Comparative

Studies in the Humanities enriched my academic growth.

I owe a special debt to my friends, Mary Wolf and

Patricia Bismuth, who kindly agreed to read my manuscript. I am sincerely grateful to my director,

Charles Williams, whose critical perspective, patience, integrity and understanding of this project encouraged me to challenge myself and my ideas. To Stephen

Summerhill, Pierre Astier and Lee Brown, my readers, thanks. It counts as a special favor to acknowledge

David Hockenbery and my colleagues at Columbus State, who supported me through the final stages of writing.

Sincere thanks to those who encouraged me: my close friends; my family; and finally, David, who does not expect thanks but deserves it. I express my gratitude to him for helping me to persevere and always think in the realm of desired outcomes and possibilities. VITA

October 6, 1954 ...... Born - Youngstown, Ohio

1977 . • • ...... • • . B.A., Miami University Oxford, Ohio

1978-79 ...... Graduate Teaching Associate, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio

1979 ...... M.A., Miami University Oxford, Ohio

1981-84 ...... Graduate Teaching Associate, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio

1984-87 ...... Lecturer, Center for Comparative Studies in The Humanities Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio

1988 ...... Coordinator, Romance Language Program, Columbus State Community College, Columbus, Ohio

FIELDS OF STUDY

Major Field: Nineteenth Century French Literature Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism

iv TABLE OF CONTENTS

DEDICATION ...... ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... iii

VITA ...... iv

INTRODUCTION The Male and Female Voice in Naturalism ...... 1 Notes to Introduction ...... 29

PART I

Writing the Discourse: Emile Zola and the Goncourts

CHAPTER I The Goncourt Brothers and Writing: Discourse as 'Concours'...... 34 The Eighteenth and Nineteenth-century Woman ...... 45 Languages of Exchange: Women and Jewish Men ...... 51 The Oedipal Model of the Subject ...... 64 Notes to Chapter I ...... 70

CHAPTER II Differences with Zola ...... 74 Correspondance: Emile Zola and Jules de Goncourt .... 82 Gender, Genre and Naturalism ...... 88 Emile Zola Restored ...... 107 Notes to Chapter II ...... 120

PART II

Maiden Texts: Fiction and Sexuality

CHAPTER III Manette Salomon ...... 126 Anatole Bazoche: Anarchy and the Play of Fiction ... 130 Writing The "Voyeur"...... 149 Manette Salomon: 'La Juiverie' ...... 164 Notes to Chapter III ...... 181

v CHAPTER IV L ' OEuvre...... 185 Naturalism and Impressionism ...... 189 The Model in French Fiction ...... 208 Nature versus Culture: Barbizon and Bennecourt .... 215 Notes to Chapter IV ...... 231

PART III

Out From Under the Artists' Brush: Psychoanalysis and the Studio

CHAPTER V The Body Scene ...... 236 Canvas as Mirror: The "Mirror Stage" ...... 237 Painting Transference ...... 246 Paranoia and The Feminine Text...... 251 Narcissism and Maternity: Image Makers ...... 255 Notes to Chapter V ...... 267

CONCLUSION ...... 270 Notes to Conclusion ...... 280

WORKS CONSULTED ...... 281 INTRODUCTION

The Male and Female Voice in Naturalist Discourse

This work addresses the general question of the relationship and possibilities between the act of reading and psychoanalysis. In exploring my own practice as a reader, I have discovered a relatedness, or rather a solubility, between the nineteenth century discourse of naturalism, and contemporary discourses of feminism and psychoanalysis. The recent French interest in the study of Discourse, which I interpret as the relation between language and its referent and the polemical framework it has engendered, gives focus to and organizes my own research in naturalism. Jean Borie believes that Naturalism is the most Oedipal discourse.

Claude Roy contends that "C'est dans Freud que sera formulee la cle fondamentale des Rougon-Macquart, qui n'est pas comme Zola l'avait cru, la theorie de l'heredite, mais la sublimation".1 Ferdinand de

Saussure postulated that the "same" phoneme pronounced by two different people is not identical with itself.

He is responsible for comprehending meaning or identity as difference, that is to say, meaning as the result, of a division. Applying this model of difference to naturalism reveals an identity best understood as difference. Specifically, this split is between feminism and psychoanalysis. Essentially, this reading of difference in discourse is one that best defines

Naturalism as differing from itself. According to

Roland Barthes, difference is perceived in the act of rereading, not cognition but "erotic play."2

Oedipal and feminist are terms into which we write our own story of psychoanalysis and through which we recognize our humanity. In terms of criticism, these combine to form the critical discourse, the one applied to the level of the language of Manette Salomon and

L 1OEuvre. At the opposite extreme, these terms combine in the language of psychoanalytic practice as either an approach to literature or the self.

The subtitle of this work, "Aesthetics and

Psychoanalysis in Manette Salomon and L'OEuvre113 presupposes that literature and art may contain some knowledge or at least questions about the common ground shared by aesthetics and psychology. In setting out to explain some of the methods of literary interpretation,

I have chosen these two novels which critically and clinically resemble each other. Few literary texts have provoked and drawn between them so many affinities and controversies. My first step in this same-but-different direction was guided by a model of narrative transformation based on Peter Brooks' theory of obituary:

All narration is obituary in that life acquires definable meaning only at, and through, death... Walter Benjamin has claimed that life assumes • transmissible form only at the moment of death. Death-which may be figural but in the classic instances of the genre is so often literal-quickens meaning: it is the "flame," says Benjamin, at which we warm our "shivering" lives. 4

For some critics, the death of 0 came at the hands of MS. Equally quick to point out the many thematic similarities between the two novels, critics have, moreover, neglected to focus on difference as a structuring element. Armed with this provocative and powerful insight, it becomes clear that, by killing off

0 as a weakened pastiche cf MS, the former can or will assume a more transcendent form. My starting point, paradoxically enough, was the obituary written by the critics for these novels. I undertake, then, to reopen the possibility of interpretation by reading MS and O as figures transformed at the moment of death. By resurrecting these texts, I am creating a plot that posits the female body as the starting point for a new polemic in reading. Both novels involve the reader in what is supposed to be a full and complete depiction of the Parisian art world in the nineteenth century.

"Out From Under the Artist's Brush" is meant to inculpate painting as one of the structures which have determined and oppressed women. Just think of it— here we have a master's vision representing the complete and achieved female or, his version of her. As he attempts to define art in relation to male-female vision, Edwin

Mullins indicates Art as "a formidable body of evidence of what men have really felt about women."5 From the structural demands imposed by the narrative on the model/artist relationship I hope to extract some indicators about male-female and familial relationships.

As this knowledge develops, there is evidence of a move from passivity to mastery in reading. In other words, I will give a voice to the silent partner in the creative process and release her from her unstable position as the "object" of the male gaze. Primarily my concern with the model is as subject in a contemporary feminist, psychoanalytic and familial discourse. As a psycholo gical discourse, feminism exists as a response to

Oedipal concerns and manipulations. Historically, feminism exists because of the universality of misogyny which oedipal or Freudian discourse encourages.

Ultimately, Feminism exists because women, at every level of exchange, have been oppressed.

Approaching the female problem in literature and history refers us to both unconscious and conscious levels of meaning and reference for some insights and suggestions. In Le Deuxieme Sexe, Simone de Beauvoir challenges the masculine model used to define humans, as set up by Sigmund Freud. She dismisses Freud's basic assumption that she, like all women, feels mutilated.

Because she spotted deficiency with a system that insisted on explaining human life on the basis of sexuality, she proposed the fact that "woman is a female to the extent that she feels herself as such,"6 thus releasing her from her biological destiny. Integrating sexuality with the whole human personality draws a parallel between her theories and modern psychoanalytic ones. The sovereignty of the male has propelled the female to shame her own, less valid sexuality. De

Beauvoir identifies a paradox brought about by maternity: "she may be able to find an equivalent of the penis in her child...this supposes that she begins by wholly accepting her role as woman and...assumes her inferiority. She is divided against herself much more profoundly than is the male."-7 From this evaluation stems concrete expressions of her oppressed existence in western civilization. The event of maternity, as it reflects both female emotionality and male genius acts as a pivotal point between aesthetics and psychoanalysis. De Beauvoir continues, adding that the social and economic structure of western thought was limited; consequently, women were excluded from their history. Almost thirty years later, I recognize much more than just a gap left by the exclusion of females from male sponsored history. What becomes more noticeable are the varying, contradictory, unpredictable, yet mostly negative images of female, in literature and here, especially, in naturalist discourse. Male power has succeeded in extending itself to the realm of language and along with this power of diction men have defined women in relation to themselves. Here, difference has assumed a qualitative evaluation resulting in a negative interpretation. Theorizing about women's oppression calls for condemning history, culture, religion, the media and a long list of humanistic and contemporary issues. At present there seems to be no accurate vision which totally releases women from oppression. At best, writers and critics can demystify and analyze structures which have inexorably repressed female desire under bourgeois patriarchy. Phallocentricism, the structuring of man or, in this case, the artist, as the central reference point, is the target of this reading. Including woman, her history and her culture raises questions that ultimately reshape and challenge both traditional criticism and the concept of the 'subject'.

Initially my focus on Naturalism entailed a close consideration of Emile Zola and his role as novelist and founder of Naturalism. To all students of French literature, the name Zola immediately produces images of the literary scientist, the novelist mainly responsible for "biologising" literature. His novel, 0 (1886), is considered by art critics and historians alike to be an exact and complete document, as well as a masterful tribute to the Parisian art world as it existed in 1874.

Other critics, mostly literary critics have dismissed the work from the Rougon-Macquart by virtue of the fact that it was too historical, too exact, more of a

"roman a clef" than a novel. A thorough reading of Zola must include a concurrent reading of Patrick Brady, presently one of Zola's most comprehensive and ardent contemporary critics. Brady's "L'Oeuvre" de Emile Zola, presents a list of possibilities for my inquiry. Brady is mostly interested in untangling the complex, autobiographical structures which support the narrative.

According to Brady, Zola extracted scenes from his own childhood in Provence to advance and enhance the story line in 0. Not only did he dip into his own memory bank from his youth spent in Aix-en-Provence in the company of a young Paul Cezanne, Brady informs us that a more ethical problem complicates the genesis of Ch

Allegedly, Zola borrowed scenes, themes and characters from Edmond and Jules de Goncourt's MS, published roughly twenty-two years earlier. Regarding this accusation, Patrick Brady has made a suggestion

that is also a challenge:

Ce serait une curieuse et piquante etude de comparer 1 1 OEuvre £. Manette Salomon, une fetude qui permettrait de mettre facilement en lumiere (puisque l'objet semble le meme dans les deux livres) les differences profondes qui existent entre Goncourt, ces artistes et Zola, ce poete.B

The two novels have been compared and contrasted, beginning with the authors themselves. The debates have well exhausted questions regarding the origins of the discourse of naturalism. My personal belief is that the

"object" referred to in Bradys's suggestion, "qui semble

le meme dans les deux livres" is the same when approached from now traditional male lines of inquiry.

What distances these novels from one another while softening the cries of plagiarism can best be extrapolated through its difference: a specific feminist perspective. The most effective manner in which to present these ideas is by way of a textual analysis of the novels which I provide in Chapters

Three and Four.

According to Robert Niess, author of Zola, Cezanne and Manet, 0 is a genre piece. By this he means that, unofficially, O contributes to the canon or genre of

literature that concentrates on the painter in French fiction. Out of all the novels comprising this genre,

Niess notes the most similarity between MS and 0. Niess calls these resemblances of structure "synthetic 9

similarities". These are briefly:

an account of the painter's early days and training in art school; a description of his milieu, embracing his studio, points of contact with nature (an open air studio or the motif he chooses, such as Fontainebleau or Paris) and points of contact with other artists, such as cafes, the notation of shop talk with painters, models, and dealers; long discussions of aesthetic and technical questions, presented by the artist or by the author's spokesman, criticism of the academic tradition and "unofficial" art, accounts of exhibitions and Salons and the operation of the jury systems; the introduction of literary figures as foils to the painter; involvement of the artists in sentimental complications, the rivalry of women and art, the introduction of actual painters, either under their own names or in transparent disguise, to serve the ends of the plot and also to provide versimilitude, and their use as elements of composite portraits.3

This type of classification, although useful to a

point, proves to be squarely reductive and rigid. The

faithful adherence to a traditional French mode of

interpretation only serves to demonstrate that "Zola

learned something from his older colleagues."3-0 While

admitting certain generic properties to the novels, this model emphasizes their constraints rather than their

freedom. We learn much more about Brady's suggestion by moving past static denominators. Roland Barthes would

agree that moving from the level of the work to the text

is more productive. By considering MS and 0 as

"scriptible" texts, we are equally bound in reading to

subject them to or transpose them into different

" sub-texts.urL1L 10

Everything here remarked, thematically, about the

novels is true. A main idea or conflict in both novels

is the serious problem of the woman and her reactions to

art as it defiantly steals away her lover from her.

Since we agree that the central idea or problem is the

same, we recognize also a need to distinguish between a

search for meaning and a search for mechanism. My

belief is that mechanism brings about new meaning. In

this case, the mechanism is female, the mechanism

is the model. Opening up the novels to a less historically determined voice, in this case the female

experience, elevates the novels to the level of text.

This is productive criticism because it involves still many of the problems articulated by Niess and Brady; yet, it additionally forges new questions and insights

into the dynamics of language and discourse. Relying once again on Patrick Brady's wisdom we discover that the novels are centered more on the women than on the

artists as his remark on Naz de Coriolis, the artist in

MS and Claude Lantier, the leader of the group of artists in O, suggests:

Coriolis a trouve, des l'esquisse, la posture de la baigneuse de son "Bain Turc," mais il desespere de la bien rendre, jusqua'd ce que Manette lui mette sous les yeux le corps qu'il cherchait. Claude se trouve au meme stade avec "Plein Air": et devant le meme probleme jusqu'au moment ou la beaute de Christine lui permet d'achever la figure centrale. 12 Manette and Christine are singled out by Brady as.

the liberators in the creative process. Just as they

are necessary to the completed picture, I suggest that

they function as referent points in a textual sense, in deciphering some true difference between the narratives.

My approach to the novels, which is also a response to

Brady, and Bowie, neutralizes into a complimentary play

of disciplines involving history, autobiography, and psychoanalysis. In promoting my central thesis, that

the two novels are not the same, I present the most

troublesome and basic points first. Therefore my

research begins with a clarifying look at the origins of

Naturalism, its practice and application.

Edmond, more than Jules de Goncourt, emphasized

that Zola only worked the same soil as they did and that

they were denied true recognition for their earlier

contributions to the discourse. A solid basis for a

critical and ideological treatment of Naturalism emerges

from the accumulation of biographical information found

through careful study of the personal letters of both

Zola and the brothers as well as a study of the "letter"

of the Goncourt Journal. To the Goncourts, "L'histoire

est un roman qui a ete; le roman est de l'histoire qui

aurait pu etre" (5:26). We notice from the choice of

the verb tense, "aurait pu etre" the Goncourts reliance

on the powers of the imagination. We also read in 12 this the possibility of rewriting history to reflect an individual consciousness. To me, this method of liter ary creation responds more to the demands inherent in the discourse of Romanticism. The naturalist writer, in contrast, is made up of two parts: one part observer and one part experimenter. In a word, naturalism is contemporary literature, and signifies a concern for scientific truth in literary pursuits. Naturalism is a product or consequence of the scientific evolution of the times. In retrospect, the main concern is qualitative: are we concerned with style and subject matter (une fa<^on d'ecrire) or with historical perspectives? The Goncourts, I suggest, would opt for the former.

One of the logical consequences and strengths of promoting an argument through an historical and autobiographical perspective is that it offers critics the necessary materials for a precise and vivid portrait of family dynamics. Read along these lines, the family plot of both the Goncourt brothers and Emile Zola will be turned over as the consummate elaboration of a symbiotic and symbolic discourse. The mother-son relationship becomes the psychological statement for understanding the author's sexuality as it is often inscribed in images of female sexuality and productivity. The term 'trans(t)extuality' has been created to refer to that process of writing through which images of female sexuality and writing are used to describe or mask male sexuality. From this dichotomy we introduce the use of projection as a means of defining self and others. Also included in these opening chapters is a discussion of the androgynous nature of both authors and how their androgynous natures affect their fictions and ways of representing characters.

This objective provides materials necessary for a constructing a coherently unobstructed reading of the narratives.

Critics have unanimously agreed that Claude

Lantier, Zola's artist and Naz de Coriolis, the hot blooded Creole in love with Manette, do pass through similar stages of development; both push to extremes; both make sacrifices for art and both are leaders of their respective groups. Far more has been concluded regarding the static "en masse" movements of "la bande" than on the females, the models, who are the true subjects in both the narratives and the paintings.

As soon as critics are confronted with the idea of the model, they retreat. Thanks to the considerable, yet, still critically abstract differences between Christine and Manette, we, on even the most superficial level, recognize that Manette, a Jewish model by profession, is radically different from Christine, herself a repressed 14

painter and an orphan. Still, true difference resides

in the female body as site of discourse, and not in how

, much the models are reported to resemble each other

under the artist's brush. For Barbara Johnson, this

play of difference is not frivolous but is directly at

the heart of what she considers the reading enterprise.

Decoding female, she would agree, is one method of

reading which "pluralizes the readers intake", which in

turn effects a "resistance to the reader's desire to

restructure the text into large, ordered masses of

meaning."13 Following Johnson's advice and focusing on

the neglected plural or female plot in MS and 0

confronts and challenges the status quo.

In La Creation Romanesque chez les Goncourts,

Robert Ricatte immediately focuses on the Goncourt

brothers recurrent use of the theme of "le talent

vaincu par la femme."14 This same theme sustains two

of their earlier novels as well, En 18 (1851) and

Charles Demailly (1860). Ricatte considers their return

to this theme as symptomatic: a sign pointing to their

own personal phobias. Francois Fosca translates this

not as a mark of a lack of imagination but moreover as a

defense "toujours repetee contre la tentation de la

femme chez deux hommes qui craignent autant pour leur

fraternite que pour leur oeuvre."1S Fosca's statement

alerts us to the fact that there is truly some 15 connection between the bodies. Females, alien forces, threatened their relation to each other as much as they did their relation to the symbolic. My analysis of the

Journal situates the source of their fear. In their most private writings, the Goncourts eulogized their own intimate contact with others, mostly women. Many condemning images of women appear. The origins of these seamy remarks can be traced back to their own youth.

The opening chapter on the Goncourts records their own relations to their mother(s) as much as it does their relation to the symbolic, understood here as the act of writing. Through the application of psychoanalytic and feminist interpretation of the Goncourt brothers' and

Zola's writings, the obsessive phantasies of the authors begin to be uncovered.

My reading of MS begins with a similar concen tration on plot which brings into focus analogous scenes and themes. My aim is to question the existing and reformulating new stages of the novel. We need to recognize the presence of a dynamic logic at work in the transformation between the accepted and proposed titles of the novel. My approach to the novel is linear; this design embraces plot summary which I understand as events developed through temporal succession. My intention is to stress the historicity and development of Manette as opposed to the development of a group of 16 artists. This approach to the novel clearly deviates from the traditionally accepted male voice in literary criticism. Up to now, Manette has been considered an apt literary vehicle for flaunting the Goncourts's anti semitism and infernal vision that art and women do not mix. I consider these to be convenient static denominators which negate Manette and reduce her to little more than just a catchword. Therefore, through linguistic textual analysis and feminist literary theory

I will begin the process of opening up a comparative dialogue between Manette, Coriolis and Anatole, the three principal characters. My reading gravitates toward the idea that the art world is really but a prop, a not so sturdy one that is dismantled, piece by piece, leaving Manette as the sole survivor. Even the

Goncourt minimize their loyalty to painters when they admit, "Les peintres pour moi, c'est comme les patissiers. Les patissiers font des choses qui me font

A un plaisir extreme, mais je n'estime pas les patisseurs.,,:LS

Zola applauds the Goncourts' Manette first by dissenting with other critics regarding Manette's abuse of Coriolis. His reply: "Je ne la discuterai pas, elle me semble absolument fausse...les romanciers ont, d'ailleurs, etudie Manette avec une penetration extraordinaire. Elle restera une de leurs 17 meilleures figures,"17 brings up some issues centered around Zola’s own theory of feminine ideology. Zola, by favoring Manette considers her, more than her male counterparts as ideology. The old absolutism is untenable here; the narrow assumptions highlighting her experience are paralyzing. Manette is ideology in that she reflects and constructs power relations within the culture and society of the art world in 1840's.

Zola's own relation to women, is not so obvious as the Goncourts'. Like Freud, he was confronted with the

"dark continent" when he approached the female question.

The striking variance in his representation of females is intimately linked with sexual difference; the reasons for which I find embedded in his own life, too. In her book, L'Eros et la Femme chez Zola, Chantal Jennings approaches the feminine question from a mythical perspective. The female is represented as an incarnation of either a goddess or a demon. Her essence is determined according to male desire-either an object of unrestrained eroticism, carrier of original sin, or a virgin reminiscent of infantile purity and innocence.

Whatever her status, virgin or demon, she is always

"Other" and, "Comme 1'autre, le personnage feminin constitue une menace au moi toujours masculin dans notre perspective."10 A major concern in this part is to identify Zola's steady progression towards a more 18

feminine consciousness. Early in her book, Jennings

sets up a value system based on the binary opposition

male/female which ends up with the female at the

opposite end of the hierarchy. She responds to this

uneven distribution of power among the sexes by

admitting that the female signifies sex and that "Une

fonction moins fertile de cette Autre est de signifier

le sexe— on disait autrefois "les personnes du sexe" en

parlant des femmes."19

Perhaps more than his contemporaries, Zola

entertains a dark view of sexuality. He undermines his

subjects' libido by placing a heavy taboo on sexual

intimacy in his narratives. Passion does enter the discourse, albeit in small satanic doses. Once

unleashed, it is aborted, so that female pleasure

(jouissance) is omitted. Brady sees passion, female

passion as one of the structuring differences between

the two novels. He considers Manette to be void of

passion whereas he admits Christine as a source of passion in the narrative. The fact remains however,

that Zola did not allow her to unleash her passion or

fully develop her own sexuality. At one point, when

Christine tries to seduce Claude she ends up unsatisfied due to his inability to perform. He, meanwhile, is paralyzed artistically for weeks and blames her for

ruining him. From this initial foray into sexual 19 pleasure, Claude retreats to abstinence storing up all his energy and creativity for the canvas. Freud, although not directly drawing a parallel with Lantier, challenges the artist's vow to celibacy. For Freud, the fight against sexuality in an artist is "scarcely conceivable." An abstinent young intellectual, he writes, "is by no means a rarity." In fact, Freud even entertains the possibility of abstinence as a key to

"enhancement" for the young intellectual. However, he believes that artistic production "is probably powerfully stimulated by his sexual experience." On the whole Freud was not convinced that "sexual abstinence helps to shape energetic, self reliant men of action, nor original thinkers,..." for, more often that not,

"it produces "good" weaklings who later become lost in the crowd..."20 The narrative, through the device of

Claude's abstinence, faces another uncertainty: it is unable to inscribe female emotionality and sexuality in literary forms. What is more, the description of the artist offered by Freud leaves the subject, Lantier, deprived of true artistic prestige and talent, and strips him of his leader role and relegates him to a secondary position, one of the crowd.

Equally pronounced in Zola's descriptions are the associations of sexual love and death. He bypasses any true celebration of sexual love. Children, the natural 20 products of successful sexual unions are considered to be the faults of clumsy and unfortunate matings. This theory is well supported in O by Lantier's deep affection for his dead son. He spends hours next to the child's corpse desperately trying to bring him to life on canvas. The child's hideously swollen head, he hopes and believes, will be the subject of his final masterpiece.2 x

It is certainly no surprise to readers familiar with the Rougon-Macquart that mental, physical and sexual disorders play a crucial part in the fabric of the text. Females, in general, and mothers in particular are responsible for the nervous and sickly conditions passed down from generation to generation.

Referring once again to Jennings, we realize that,

Dans les romans de Zola, la femme, autre absolu, porte les stigmates de son alt£rit6 et de son sexe sous la forme de la maladie physique et mentale. Les troubles nerveux des Rougon et des Macquart viennent surtout des meres. Non seulement c'est par les femmes que se transmet presque toujours la nevropathie, mais encore, les femmes bien plus que^ les hommes, semblent predestinees et se complaire a ce genre de desequilibre mental.22

I cannot shy away from interpreting this last statement as a point of reference in Zola's own life, too. His own nervous condition, I suggest, is a result of his personal relationship with his maternal grandmother, mother, and finally his first wife who perpetuated the theme of the excessive mother. In 21 concluding her arguments on Zola, Jennings offers a way out of the inferno constituted by visions of female sexuality. She proposes that females construct an order which rebels against male domination. Therefore, by defining difference in narrative, the statements made by

Jennings regarding the representation of females, are not limited to speaking only of Zola's conception of the female but apply themselves to an accurate reading of the female experience in nineteenth century literature.

Anna Krakowski challenges Jennings in La Conditiion de la Femme dans L 'Oeuvre de Zola. First of all, she releases females from their mythical position. One major distinction is Krakowski's belief that intellectual capacity is the structuring element of difference between the sexes. She begins this line of argument with direct reference to Darwinism. Synonymous with virility, education was considered an exorcist stripping women of the graces and charms natural to them. Darwinist philosophy preferred to regard females as the exclusive function of male desire, or, in

Jennings terms, to bathe them in a mythical light. ✓ Krakowski writes that Zola "Essayant de se liberer du mythe de la femininite (il) £tait depuis sa jeunesse decide a lutter pour la justice et pour les droits des faibles."23 Moreover, she considers Zola to be a social reformer and feminist advocate who, in his later 22 works dispels any trace of the notion that the female is intellectually less developed than the male and confirms that "la femme pouvait atteindre le meme niveau intellectuel que l'homme et le danger de virilisation pouvait etre ecarte grace au bon sens et au profond sentiment qui etait en elle."24 Krakowski is important to my discussion in light of the specific space she carves for females. Her evaluations challenge the masculine "function" of females. To this end she writes "la femme demeura toujours la gardienne du foyer, parce que c'est tou jours lcl qu'elle est la plus forte."25 As guardian of the home she continues to also be the guardian of morality and to assure peace of mind to her children. I understand Krakowski to be saying that first and foremost, physically and emotion ally Zola's heroine is a mother. In fact, she continues along these lines admitting that "rares sont, chez Zola, les cas ou la femme est depourvue du sentiment maternel."26 This is the spot where we see Krakowski joining Freud, for whom the so-called normal feminity is the one defined by marriage and motherhood.

In 0, Zola's heroine, although not deprived of maternal instincts, directs her tenderness to the artist, not her child. Just as Claude transfers all of his energy onto the canvas, Christine bypasses mothering her child in favor of mothering her husband. Manette, 23 not Christine is more maternal with her child. Feminist criticism which has been concerned with the images of women under house arrest would consider Christine a perfect study in economic and domestic depravation. The real mother that Krakowski identifies is displaced by

Christine who has been reduced to the status of an unpaid model with no conjugal function.

Finally, Krakowski observes the political dimension of the female in Zola's universe:

A Le role de la femme dans la vie sociale ne se borne pas aux metiers et au commerce, elle tient encore une place importante dans la politique. L'activite qu'elle deploie dans ce dernier domaine differe de celle dont elle fait preuve dans les autres. C'est qu'elle se manifeste ici d'une maniere plutot indirecte.27

My attention is drawn to this statement in particular because of the use of the word "indirecte." Frequently the political consciousness of the female is shrouded by the obvious and direct voice of the male counterpart.

She is considered to be in his shadow as the silent participant. Although Zola has added many female workers to his collection of characters, they are never truly transcendent of their roles of worker, peasant, or clerk. What is specifically original in 0 is the political aspect of the female body. The female body itself is a testament to the ideological climate.

I am concerned with the elevation of the female onto the political scaffolding of the times, as the projection of 23

the male gaze. She is raised to ideological proportions

by her entry into the galleries and salons— the very

private world of male genius. Her entry into society,

uncloaked and unprotected is no longer indirect but a direct and almost primal entry into a male sphere. It

is certainly, and most would agree, the female body, in direct service of art which leaves her story printed on

the canvas of society.

Naomi Schor, in Breaking the Chain, her most recent collection of articles on Zola, reads, in the light of

Feminism and Post Structuralist Literary Theory, the discourse adapted to the Realist novel. Her thesis is concerned not so much with the representations of women

in the novel as with the relationship between women and

ideology. She is impressive in her belief that female desire is strongly repressed and buried beneath bourgeois patriarchy. Any true representation of female, she believes, must include the female libido instead of shelving it away under a non-existent label.

Schor observes that "female can be equated with the people, the body or money, with all that circulates and is repressed."23 I consider this an insightful and illuminating discovery, particularly important to my reading because of the structuring principle of an artist's studio where the body circulates from pose to pose and from canvas to canvas. In MS the reader is 24 introduced early in the narrative to the intricacies and internal system of the atelier Langibout. In 0 the reader never really leaves the studio. In contrast, we have the same group of artists reappearing, signifying,

I believe the ever replenishing genius of the male.

The need for females to circulate through the studio and for men to create is intimately related to the notion of the female use value to males. Because so many models pass in and out of the artist's studio we come to realize that females are used up and discarded when they no longer are inspiring to the artist. Like money, which is spent or lost, females are easily reproduced. In the case of the studio, it is women who circulate and men who create. This same bias of male productivity is highlighted in Madame Bovary. According to Schor, what Emma Bovary envies in a man, "is not so much the possibility of traveling but the possibility of writing; what she lacks in order to write are neither words nor a pen but a phallus."29 A process of substitution then allows us to consider a paint brush on the same order as Schor considers a pen. Schor and I both make the connection between the struggle for women to possess the phallus and men's resistance to recognize the generative power of women, which is perceived as threatening. In everyday terms, he will wear the pa(i)nts in the family even if they fit his subject 25 better.

Schor, Krakowski and Jennings have provided me with excellent departure points for application of a textual analysis in Chapters Three and Four. These chapters hope to prove that new meanings do exist for the novels.

Chapter Four, although mostly involved with an analysis of 0, creates a new genre, the "Model in French Fiction" as a response or rival discourse to the already existing

"Painter in French Fiction." Through its detailed comparison of Manette and Christine during their respective stays in the country, Barbizon and

Bennecourt, supported by an application of modern post- structural theories of discourse, this chapter inaugurates a version of female sponsored criticism new to the nineteenth century novel.

Schor1s identification of the circulating female gives good introduction to my last chapter which has as its primary focus, the studio. The studio originates particular cultural conditions which authorize and advance beliefs and practices. This is the logical stopping point to wrap up a psychoanalytic reading.

Begun as a therapy by Freud, psychoanalysis aimed at uncovering repression and then verbalizing what had been rejected. Psychoanalysis is based on a triangular structure involving analyst, analysand and discourse.

The role of discourse in the process functions much 26 like a third party, through which the newly constructed human personality emerges. To this end, a parallel is recognized between the literary text and the artist's studio. Like human emotions, the studio and the text are both socially constructed and situated. The promise of the psychoanalyst is to understand individuals and to effectively communicate, heal and create a new identified self. This theory of human communication extends to the unconscious as well as to a text as well as to a studio. For, in the studio, the tripartite structure is always in evidence between the artist, the model and the painting. Stuart Schneiderman recalls a few of the personal habits of Sigmund Freud.

One of the most startling he relates as obsession:

"Freud was passionately involved with the process of emptying the earth of human artifacts. He hoarded them himself to such an extent that his offices almost resemble a tomb. And why shouldn't we consider this to be a text in the same way we consider Freud's writings to be a text?"30 Schneiderman's anecdote is designed to demonstrate an invaluable point: perhaps more than meets the eye as language can be read as text. His suggestion has led me to consider the possibilities of opening up the studio to a psychoanalytic interpre tation. Like Zola, who established affinities between the scientist and the novelist, my desire is to 27 establish a juncture between aesthetics and contemporary psychoanalytic theories of development. Therefore, in the fashion of Emile Zola, I replaced, when and if appropriate, the word "analyst” with "artist" and

"analysand" with "model." Hence, my reading of the studio, a fictional space, as it relates to the process of psychoanalysis relies on an elaboration of some of

Lacan's most basic concepts starting with the mirror stage, transference, counter-transference, narcissism and death. Suggesting a parallel structure of interpretation between the studio and the psychoanalytic experience as Lacan viewed it does not assure a mastery of Lacan's philosophy. What I am proposing, moreover, in Chapter Five is a reading of Lacan's knowledge and an application of that knowledge to a new phallic space— the studio. Ultimately, this reading takes its chances and risks while it considers some of the problems arising out of the diametrically opposed senses in which

Lacan's terms can possibly be used and understood.

In psychoanalysis, no matter how honest, clear or focused the analyst's vision of a problem may be, the truth must be transformed to accommodate the unconscious structures of the analysand. The discourse of the analyst and the analysand results in the formation of a new conscious self, different from the originally sketched patient. Painting sets up an identical triadic structure wherein the artist must be able to transfer

his vision of the model to the canvas. The model, like

the analysand, gives to the artist a vision which

inevitably will condition his response measured by his

choice of color, stroke and form. The new product results from the combined efforts of both the artist and the model. This parallel structuration is meant to demonstrate that the representational is a space designed to accomodate both aesthetic and psychoanalytic truths. 29

Notes to Introduction

1 1 Claude Roy, "Le Genie de 1'Amour Sublime," Zola (Paris: Realites, 1969):83.

2 Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983), 142. Eagleton uses this term to refer to the Post-Structuralist Roland Barthes' conception of reading.

3 Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, Manette Salomon (Paris: Union Generale D 1Editions, 1979). Future references to this edition will be cited in the text as M S . Emile Zola, L 'OEuvre (Paris: Fasquelle, 1978). Future references to Zola's novel will be cited in the text as 0.

4 Peter Brooks, "Freud's Masterplot: Questions of Narrative," Literature and Psychoanalysis. ed. Shoshana Felman (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), 284. Brooks' theory is based on principles derived from the Russian formalists (Propp, Shklovsky and Todorov) whereby narrative plot is constructed through tensions of difference and resemblance.

5 Edwin Mullin, The Painted Witch (London: Seeker and Warburg, 1985), 1.

6 Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. H.M. Parshley (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1952), 42. In addition to challenging the biological determinations of gender established by Sigmund Freud, De Beauvoir examines the entire psychoanalytic system built up around human significance.

7 ibid., 48.

8 Patrick Brady, "L'OEuvre" de Emile Zola (Geneve: Librairie Droz, 1967), 236. Brady's book is an indispensable guide to the genesis and construction of L 'OEuvre, which takes as its points of departure, the 30 biographical and autobiographical structures of the novel. Brady, like a detective, searches for hidden truths found in the earlier drafts of the novel. His work "is well intended for readers who consider L *OEuvre more asAan historical document ("il faut pourtant reconnaitre qu'en general on le trouve moins interessant comme fiction que comme document historique"), then as fiction, per se.

9 Robert Niess, Zola, Cezanne and Manet (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1968), 12. Bowie identifies forty nineteenth and twentieth century novels and short stories which comprise the genre of the "Painter in French Fiction."

10 ibid., 9.

11 Eagleton, Literary, 178. Eagleton refers to "sub-texts," as those created by the reader: "a text which runs within it, visible at certain 'symptomatic' points of ambiguity, evasion or overemphasis, and which we as readers are able to 'write' even if the novel itself does not."

12 Brady, "L'OEuvre." 140.

13 Barbara Johnson, "The Critical Difference," Diacritics, 8(1978):2-9. In her article, Johnson approaches the practice of reading through the value system set up by Roland Barthes in S/Z. The five codes he identifies are, for Johnson, producers of plurality (meaning).

14 Robert Ricatte, La Creation romanesque chez les Goncourts (Paris: Armand Colin, 1963), 309. Ricatte combines art history and biographical sketches in his investigation of the genesis of Manette Salomon. He pays close attention to the fictional level of the novel yet is particularly interested in plotting relations between characters and prototypes. For example, he believes the character Manette to be directly observable in the person of Lea Felix, a woman closely involved with Saint-Victor, one of the brothers' closest friends. This brings up an interesting point of difference between the models. Brady, out of all the characters in 31

L 1 Oeuvre, singles out Christine as not stemming from any real figure known to Zola.

15 Traz, Georges de, Edmond et Jules de Goncourt (Paris: Albin Michel, 1941), 223.

16 Francois Caradec, Les Goncourt en verve (Paris: Pierre Horay, 1973), 59. Caradec compiled an interesting and amusing collection of Goncourt maxims. His compilation condenses many of the longer more detailed entries found in the Journal. The present citation is from 1854.

17 Emile Zola, Les Romanciers naturalistes (Paris: Fasquelle, 1923), 247-48.

18 L'Eros et La Femme chez Zola, intro. Chantal Bertrand Jennings (Paris: Klincksiek, 1977), 9. Jennings' book is a thorough guide to Zola's female characters. She applies a system of reading to Zola's characters expanding on Simone de Beauvoir's original description of woman as "Other."

19 ibid.

20 Sigmund Freud, Sexuality and The Psychology of Love (New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1963), 34.

21 Linda Nolchin, Realism (New York: Penguin Books, 1971), 60-1. According to Nochlin, who interprets styles in European art, the theme of the artist desiring to paint a loved one at the moment of their death is "a recurrent topic in Realist mythology." She cites the artist Dubois-Pillet's Enfant mort as the actual painting Zola had in mind for Lantier.

22 Jennings, L 'Eros, 50. Here, Jennings extends to Zola's mothers the Freudian notion of neuroticism and hysteria.

23 Anna Krakowski, La Condition de La femme dans 32

L 1 Oeuvre de Zola (Paris:A.G. Nizet, 1974), 16.

24 ibid., 24. 26 ibid., 47.

26 ibid. Naomi Schor was the first to bring this criticism against Krakowski in Breaking the Chain (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 32. For Krakowski, joining Freud is a positive step; she sees motherhood as a source of renewal.

27 Krakowski, Condition, 147.

28 Schor, Breaking, 29.

29 ibid., 17.

30 Stuart Schneiderman, Jacgues Lacan the Death of An Intellectual Hero (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983 ) , 7. PART I

Writing the Discourse:

Emile Zola and the Goncourts

33 CHAPTER I

The Goncourt Brothers and Writing:

Discourse as "Concours"

During their lifetime, the Goncourt brothers

produced via a single pen, a voluminous Journal.1 The

volumes comment on the hideous, eccentric, monied and

intellectual faces comprising Parisian and Provincial

life from 1851-1896. Predominant among the many daily

'entries are the author's reflections on writing,

"trans(t)exuality" and desire.

A composite picture of Edmond and Jules de

Goncourts' literary career yields, in addition to the J,

an extensive history of the eighteenth century, a

century which captivated their interests with its

grandeur and classicism. Our earliest critical percep

tions lead us to believe that between the eighteenth and

the nineteenth centuries the brothers spotted no

connections. The majesty of the eighteenth century

stands in opposition to the rank materialism ushered in

by the nineteenth century. The biographies, Histoire de

Marie Antoinette, Madame de Pompadour, L'Art du dix-

huitieme siecle and Louis XV, which is actually more

34 35 about his mistresses, and La Femme au dix-huitieme siecle, suggest that the brothers were primarily historians. Novel writing necessarily followed.

More than any other theme, the intricate problem of defining the female, from a psychological as well as physiological point of view invades and sustains their writing. This motif innundates every aspect of their writing; the autobiographical, the historical and the fictional are all primary vehicles for exposing their biases for and prejudices against females. There is a structural discrepancy in representation between the eighteenth and the nineteenth-century woman. The question of who belongs and who does not belong to the privileged class they call female is at the heart of this discrepancy. Above all, they admire and esteem the eighteenth-century woman, yet they fear, to the point of obsession, the nineteenth-century woman who shares a part of their history and whom they in fact label "femelles". Reconciling this split notion of female is the major focus of this chapter.

Since journal writing supposes the art and structure of autobiography, my reading of the J will focus on the text of the J as central indicator to tell the story of the self as writing subject. I consider the J not as a mouthpiece for a particular world view but rather as a complex structure of signs which are symptoms of an individual in the sense of personal reality. To this extent, the page, the scene of writing will be considered "comme exutoire pour leur libido oppressee."2 Reading the J through the vocab ulary of Freudian psychoanalysis lends focus to fixed psychological themes which in turn raise numerous questions about the creative process, questions pondered by both Freud and the Goncourts.

Perhaps our first clue to the psychoanalytic dimension of the J is revealed through the brothers' tenacity in defining themselves according to their theories on writing, "trans(t)exuality" and the economy.

What is ultimately projected through the metaphors and metonyms of the J is both an imaginary self and a writing subject. In this trans(t)extual system, the figure of the mother, a figure endlessly recalled, comes to signify and actually direct the Goncourts' creative desire. Writing for the Goncourts is "concours," where writing becomes desire for the primordial coming together; an attempt to repossess the (m)other.3

Furthermore, I believe that writing for the Goncourts is very similar to Rousseau's concept of it as "the restoration, by a certain absence and by a sort of calculated effacement, of presence disappointed of itself in speech."4 We emerge from reading the J with a model which structures presence against absence. 37

Conceptualizing the creative method of the Goncourt brothers is no simple task. In lieu of competition, the brothers' switch from historical discourse to journal writing created a partnership. According to Plato this is the only true friendship, the only real good. One aspect of the highly publicized and very frequently misunderstood inseparable nature of the brothers comes alive in this definition. Their close collaboration has prompted most critics to refer to the brothers as one effusive subject, one creative and expansive "I".

Critics must have taken their cues from the brothers' own description of their J:

La confession de deux vies inseparees dans le plaisir, le labeur, la peine de deux pensees jumelles, de deux esprits recevant du contact des hommes et des choses des impressions si semblables, si identiques, si homogenes, que cette confession peut-etre consideree comme 1'expansion d'un seul moi et d'un seul je. (1:29)

The locus of creativity in textual production becomes comparable to maternity and the birthing process. One cannot help but read this confession, interspersed with the vocabulary of labor, delivery, and expansion, when referring to the entire body of a text, as an analogue to the pregnant female body. This also allows us to consider the famed "ecriture a deux" as a direct consequence of their pre-oedipal fixation on the mother. For, only in a pregnant body is there true expansion in the sense of a "me" and an "other." It is 38 the J's remarkable opening which engages a convincing psychoanalytic perspective. In fact, textual dynamics suggest that the writing involves the deconstruction of a present self. Reinstated is an imaginary self willed from a fixation. In the previous passage, female desire is rechanneled into the only acceptable form of production available to males: literary conception and figurative birth. This maternal passage can also be understood through the psychological concept of sublimation. Since sublimation implies an ennobling quality, the Goncourts are, at the same time venerating or inspiring awe through their creations. From this confession it is evident that the repressed knowledge of the self has become manifest content.

The heart of my argument is now germinated: the brothers never sever their bond with female language in explaining their own literary production. The connection between female production and literary aesthetics, now synonymous with male competency and gestation, resurfaces in Letters.5 In an epistolary fit, a grieving Edmond describes to his friends, after

Jules' death, how they composed their novels:

... quand nous composions, nous nous enfermions des trois ou quatre jours, sans sortir, sans voir un vivant. C'etait pour moi la seule maniere de faire quelque chose qui vaille; car nous pensions que. ce n'est pas tant l'ecriture mise sur du papier qui fait un bon roman, que 1'incubation, la formation silencieuse en vous des personnages, la realite apportee a la fiction, et que vous n'obtenez que 39

par les acces d'une forte fievre hallucinatoire, qui ne s'attrape que dans une claustration absolue. (25-6)

Writing is again perceived as an elaboration of maternal discourse. The writer's efforts metonomize the entire process of pre-natal stages of development.

On December 2, 1851 their "first" was to appear.

Unfortunately, their novel, En 18 was delayed due to the coup d'etat which broke the same day. Their publisher feared that the title alone would stimulate references to the coup and wanted to circumvent any political implications with the publication of the novel. Instead, military, not literary history was made that day. In the brothers sorrowful account of that day, we remark the on-going fascination with and delicate feminization of both the self and the writing process:

En 18— . notre premier enfant, si choye, si caresse, travaille et retravaill£ pendant un an, oeuvre incomplete, gatee par de certaines^ imitations Gautier, mais originale jusqu'a l'etrange pour une premiere oeuvre; premiere portee dont il n'y a pas a rougir, parce qu'elle contient en germe tous les cotes de notre talent, et tous les tons de notre palette, un peu outres encore et vifs. (1:44)

In this description En 18— is figuratively compared to an embryo incubating in the womb and advancing in pre-natal stages in the body of its mother. The narrative is carried forward, just like an infant is: both are nourished and nurtured, one in the womb up until it makes it way down the birth canal; the novel,

too, is gently handled and guided through the crucial

stages of careful revision. It is indeed hardly

possible to make a clear distinction here between text

and body. And, because of this, we begin to realize

that the Goncourts' discourse on writing brings together

all the dimensions of human sexuality and female

physiology. As a result of the interruption of the

historical onto the literary plane, En 18 becomes a

novel which never really makes it to full term. Its

impact is lessened due to its untimely publication. It

is never a truly completed work and ends up more like a

deformed fetus than a successful birth. Here we witness

the only possible form of stillbirth granted to males:

literary stillbirth.

Hommes de Lettres, another Goncourt novel was

delivered on January 27, 1859. Reflecting once again on

the literary process, the brothers rely on birth to

identify their feelings the day the novel was "carried

to term":

Notre roman Homines de Lettres est fini. Plus qu'a' le copier. C'est singulier, en litterature la chose faite ne vous tient plus aux entrailles. L'oeuvre que vous ne portez plus, vous devient pour ainsi dire, etrangere. II vous prend de notre A livre une indifference, un ennui, presqu'un degout. C'a et£ notre impression de ces jours-ci. (3:101)

The methodical cultivation of allusions to birth in the

first few passages is a powerful hermeneutic tool to 41 probe the issue of the writers' relation to their own sexuality. In the above example, we notice the brutal realism of separation, feelings which recall postpartum depression. Up to now, this term has been reserved for speaking about mothers who, after giving birth, experience both emotional and behavioral difficulties.

An illustrated book on women, The New Our Bodies

Ourselves explains the trauma: "In this form of depression, bouts of feeling unable, lonely or frightened reappear and make it difficult to eat, sleep. make love, work...Periods of depression last up to several days or a week."6 Equating cutting the chord with completing a novel is a repetitive albeit unpleasant move for the brothers, one which evoked sensations of adequacy on several fronts. Edmond and

Jules were plagued with a variety of physical and emotional limitations which included infectious diseases, appetite and weight loss and degenerating sexual desire. Many entries, like the following, speak of this depression:

II me semble que tout joue faux autour de moi. Je souffre au contact des autres. Le bruit des paroles et des gens qui m'entourent me blesse et m'agace. Ma bonne, ma maitresse me paraissent plus b&tes que les autres jours. Mes amis m'ennuient, et me semble s'entretenir d'eux memes plus qu'a 1'ordinaire. La sottise gue j’accroche ou avec laquelle je suis force d'echanger quelques mots me grince aux oreilles. Tout ce que j'approche, tout ce que je touche, tout ce que je perpois me gratte a rebrousse-nerfs. Je n'attends rien, et j'espere cependant quelque chose d'impossible, un transport, 42

> je ne sais comment, loin des milieux ou ]e vis, loin des journaux annoncant ou n'annon^ant pas le passage du Tessin par les Autrichiens, loin de mon moi contemporain, litteraire et parisien, un transport qui me jetterait dans une campagne couleur de rose, semblable ii "La Folie" de Fragonard, gravee par Janinet— et ou la vie ne m'embeterait pas. (3:113)

This passage underscores depression on many levels.

Vague or unexpressed feelings are marked by the repetition of "tout ce que," "rien" and "quelque chose". Sadness or a discord with peers is reflected in the verbs "ennuyer" "embeter," and "agacer." Yearning to escape the "moi contemporain," the poet places himself in another text: "La Folie" de Fragonard. We witness the coming into being of a mystery text formed out of desire. Through the poetics of suggestion, the imaginary "transport," the Goncourts have made a dream, a return to the eighteenth century, into discourse.7

Reclusive by nature, the nerve shattered young men suffered from the frenetic activities of daily living.

Life itself was frightening: "Ce matin, terreur de migraine. Nous n'en aurons pas mais l'agacement du bruit de la maison et les ennuis de notre vie, depuis / / tant de jours nous ont delabre absolument l'estomac"

(8:94). Their overstated concern with migraines, domestic boredom and stomach ailments expertly points to traditionally expressed female symptoms.

Language, tone and style combine to form a decidely female optic. The Goncourt art is in many ways an art 43 uf hyperbole. The inevitable corollary to this is seen in the next entry which captures our attention for its remarkable plotting of two terribly agoraphobic, men who ✓ lead a life of sensual deprivation: "Toute la journee nous depouillons le papier revolutionnaire et la nuit nous ecrivons notre livre. Point de femmes, point de monde, point de plaisirs, point d'amusements" (1:127).

Note the paradoxical linking of deprivation and production. The stress on the rhythmic construction

"point de" underscores restrictions and constraints.

Concurrent with this vision is the reader's image of two productive and undifferentiated beings physically and rhythmically in tune with each other, writing. In the next passage a new identity is found in imaginary representations: "Nous sommes maintenant comme des

/ A femmes gui vivent ensemble, dont les santes se melent, dont les regies viennent en meme temps: nos migraines viennent le meme jour" (7:228).

Toward the end of his life, Edmond found little if any pleasure in daily activities. Yet one source, the trellis in his garden satisfies his desire. Most readers see in this a vivid description of nature in full bloom; Edmond's vision is clearly the ancien regime:

Je n'ai eu vraiment cette annee qu'une seule satisfaction, qu'un seul plaisir: c'est 1'elevation de ce treillage au fond de mon jardin, de ce treillage avec ses chapiteux tout a fait 44

A / reussis et qui doit etre dans quelques mois habille en son architecture i. jour de Roses, et de cleraatites du Japon. C'etait pour moi, en petit, la Salle de Fraicheurs de Marie Antoinette d Trianon. (19:93)

Here, language captures the dynamic struggle between the conscious and the unconscious. The transgression is double: the conscious elaboration of a man gazing on his flowering garden recovers the forbidden desire to be a female aristocrat.

The Goncourts’ writing constantly disguises and possibly even confuses images of the self and writing in the textual fabric of female imagery. They have taken the position of writing and hiding at once.

Psychoanalytically speaking, their narrative displaces references to their own sexuality. Through literary transvestism they accomplish their deep seated desires of signifying female, and thus suspending difference.

Understanding birth as a human experience, or a verbal gesture can only be accomplished in literature, an experience shared by both male and female writers. The

French linguist, Julia Kristeva, asserts that literally only women have a privileged relationship to birth and gestation. However, "the territory of the maternal is not a space confined to or defined by, biological characteristics; it is the position a subject, any subject, can assume towards the symbolic order."8 It appears that writing allows the Goncourts to exist 45 within this space.

The Eighteenth and Nineteenth-Century Woman

After the death of their mother, the Goncourt were given over to their faithful housekeeper, Rose Malingre.

On August 16, 1862 Rose died. Although not a date of prime interest to historians, the psychological and sociological repercussions of her death articulate, prefigure, incite or perhaps retard, the emotional development of the brothers. Within days after her burial, the brothers uncovered sadistic and erotic information on the double life she had been leading: devoted maternal figure and street trollop. This traumatic discovery prompted them to conclude on all contemporary women.

II y a deux femmes dans la femme: la femme d'abord,— et la femme des regies. La premiere est un animal doux, bienveillant, devouee par nature; la seconde, un animal fou, mechant, trouvant un apre plaisir aux souffrances de ce qui lui est associe dans la vie. Et c'est ce dernier animal qui, toute la vie, prend une semaine sur chaque mois de la femme, et qui, a quarante ans, pendant cinq, six or sept ans, remplacera presque absolument 1'autre. (4:199-200)

The painful knowledge that Rose engaged in what they considered to be unconventional sexual activities with an indiscriminate number of younger men made all women suspect to the Goncourts. Yet, her nymphomaniac habits were supported indirectly by the Goncourt in her role as "mother" to them. Reconciling the dual nature of the female sex became yet another horror for the young writers. The idea of female gender that is constructed in their J and novels would appear to radical feminists as a male attempt to control female sexuality. Clearly, the real and imaginary mother accounts for the

‘madonna/whore dichotomy’: the "twin images of woman as, on the one hand, the sexual property of men and, on the other, the chaste mothers of their children..."9

The repugnant discovery rendered them incapable of differentiating among women and consequently they grouped all women together in one static lump as the

Goncourt maxim, "II y a des hommes, il y a une femme" suggests.xo

Even though they find it in their hearts to somewhat forgive Rose, her stained image and unsavory habits influenced both the future of their lives and their writings. An August 21, 1862 entry gives a picture of two overwhelmed men:

Pauvre creature! Nous lui pardonnons, et meme une grande commiseration nous vient pour elle, en nous rendant compte de tout ce qu'elle a souffert ...Mais pour toute la vie, il est entre en nous la defiance du sexe entier de la femme, et de la femme de bas en haut aussi bien que de la femme du haut en bas.^ Une epouvante n9us a pris du double fond de sgn ame, de la faculte puissante de la science, du genie consomme", que tout son etre a du mensonge. (5:157)

In contrast to this maligning passage which reflects the emptiness of the lower classes and moral laxity beneath 47 respectable appearances, is a sensitively constructed memorial of Rose filled with pure and innocent childhood memories:

Quelle perte! Quel vide dans notre interieur! Une habitude, un devouement de vingt-cinq ans, une fille qui savait notre vie, ouvrait nos lettres en notre absence £ qui nous racontions nos affaires. Tout petit j'avais joue au cerceau avec elle, et elle m'achetait, sur son argent, des chaussons aux pommes sur les ponts. Elle attendait Edmond jusqu'au matin, pour lui ouvrir la porte de 1 1appartement, quand il allait, du temps de ma mere au bal de 1'Opera. Elle etait la femme, la garde- malade admirable, dont ma mere avait mis en mourant, les mains dans les notres...Elle avait les clefs de tout, elle menait, elle faisait tout autour de nous. (7:228)

Here, our interest is quickly circumvented from the innocent or manifest to the sexual or latent content.

The two opening exclamatory phrases refer to their lives as empty, thanks to the hole left by her death. They then refer to her as "la femme" given over to them by their mother. These references to women and emptiness produce an interesting intersection of readings. First she is seen as the good, nurturing mother. Then their language reinstates her presence as negative, evidenced by "perte" and "trou", even though they still call her "la femme." Yet she is unable to give what the mother gave. Rose’s position as housekeeper is one which more or less blends into the woodwork. In the next passage Rose is further removed from a position of respectability as she approaches an inert status: 48

C ’etait un morceau de notre vie, un meuble de notre appartement, une epave de notre jeunesse, je ne ^ sais quoi de tendre et de grognon et de veilleur a la fa^on d'un chien^de^garde que nous avions 1'habitude d'avoir a cote de n o u s , autour de nous et qui semblait ne devoir finir qu'avec nous. (5:147)

The nominal syntax and the repetition of appositional phrases reinforce the associations of Rose with objects.

Consider the chain of subjects: "un morceau," "un meuble," "une epave," and "un chien de garde." The striking absence of any human agent or subject suggests the total lack of consciousness. Among the most remarkable features of these two passages is the series of descriptions which associate Rose, and therefore women, with objects, apart from humanity. These images reinforce the reduction of women to a primal, bestial level marking them as only capable of unrestrained indulgence and instinctual appetites.

The Rose episode with its attendant implications of promiscuity and sexual perversions introduced the public to a pessimistic theory of female sexuality. Her voracious and insatiable sexual appetite both intrigued and horrified the brothers. Nonetheless, they tried to rationalize or at least comprehend her actions. They came to believe that the uterus was the distinctive factor. They see this as a sort of commander, a divining rod, or a frenzied voice which takes over. The

Goncourt have done more to personify the uterus as a 49 living, speaking, and independent organ than any other writer. If "Rose" were a case study in the style of

Freud's Dora, her sexual history, the brothers would suggest, could read as follows:

Et toute une existence inconnue, odieuse et repugnante, lamentable, nous est revelee. Les billets qu'elle a signes, les dettes qu'elle a laiss^es chez tous les fournisseurs, ont le dessous le plus imprevu, le plus surprenant, le plus incroyable. Elle entretenait les hommes, le fils de la cremerie, auquel elle a meuble une chambre, un autre auquel elle portait notre vin, des poulets, de la victuaille...Une vie secrete d'orgies nocturnes, de decouchages de fureurs uterines, qui faisaient dire a ses amants: "Nous y restons, elle ou moiP' Une passion, des passions d la fois de toute la tete, de tout le coeur, de tous les^sens, et ou se melaient les maladies de la miserable fille, la phtisie qui apporte de la fureur a la jouissance, l'hysterie, un commencement de folie. (5:155)

Here, masculine syntax does not hold but slips and gives vent to a new order. By exploiting all possibilities of expression, syntax has exported the brothers from their own discourse to speak the uterus.

Madness ("des passions a la fois de toute la tete,"

"l'hysterie," "un commencement de folie") and intense violence ("de decouchages de fureurs uterines," "de la fureur a la jouissance") heighten the sense of loss of control while instilling concrete images of disorder and filth. Rose's life and highly revealing death only confirmed to them Gautier's maxim that "la prostitution est l'etat ordinaire de la femme, je l'ai dit" (6:81). 50

We read the recurrent fear of female sexuality in

the following entry dated August 7, 1876, which relates

an outing:

Le lendemain, je repartais pour Paris et le college...et quinze jours apres, la femme du notaire etait la cause...de ce que je me deniaisai un dimanche de sortie avec Mme. Charles, une creature i. degouter a tout jamais de 1*amour physique, une courte femme, au torse rhombodial, emmanchfe de deux petits bras, de deux petites jambes, qui la faisait ressembler sur son lit, a un crabe renverse sur le dos (11:52).

Comparing the naked female body with the image of a

crab reinforces themes of unleashed promiscuity and

rottenness. This entry must have been instigated by

Jules who, of the two, was the one who attended the university. Although this maligning representation of

female has its roots in her body, the brothers see two

sides to her; they recognize a split in the female body:

II y a deux femmes dans la femme: la femme d'abord et la

femme des regies...La seconde, est un animal fou, mechant, trouvant un plaisir aux souffranees des autres

(4:199).

The principal syntactic characteristics of these extracts is the total eclipse of the female subject by

abstract nouns. From this writing a new theory of

female emerges which positions her as bestial; physically and intellectually she is doomed to

inferiority. But, she speaks! The two figures, Madame de Goncourt and Rose

Malingre represent respectively for us the good mother and the bad mother. The natural mother represents the productive mother. She symbolizes fecundity. Rose, their adoptive mother, provides us a picture of all that is to be feared in a woman. Whereas the sex of Madame de Goncourt was useful and productive, Rose's sex was threatening and capable only of destruction. Madame de

Goncourt, the silent woman represents the chaste and honorable woman. Rose Malingre, although more dynamic, supports, in this universe the falsification and distortion of human values and relations. As such she can be considered an aggressive figure of disorder and ultimately of destruction.

Languages of Exchange: Women and Jewish Men

Two very rival and divergent concepts of female have structured the Goncourt brothers' writing. Once again the Goncourts place the reader between two opposing dimensions: "l'authentique femininite" and

"femelles." They name "la voix uterine" the frenzied voice of the female. The themes of women in society and the polluting power of the prostitute are reflected in the Goncourts' theory on language. This is certainly the point on which the whole problematic turns. Their 52

meditations on the nineteenth-century woman are shaped

by the existence of a distinctive female language which

is unintelligible to a man. Making noise, the brothers

maintain, is a natural past-time for women. Condemning

the females' perversion of silence they write: "Parler

pour parler c'est la femme. Les hommes chantent quand

ils sont entre eux, la femme chante quand elle est seule

pour parler" (4:119).

Under cover of an off handed remark the messieurs de

Goncourt have managed to elevate their own personal

taste into a dynamic principle. Female is structurally

linked to a voice and a producer, albeit a discordant

noise or a destructive chant. In contrast, we see

reflected the melodious chorus of the male voice.

Language or clandestine chatter is on one level, a

female weapon, not unlike the uterus. This is the voice

that plagues the brothers. They hope to destroy the dangerous voice because it is out of their reach or comprehension. In the brothers descriptions of

Javanese, there is an attempt at scientific reasoning to

explain, not only the origins, but the heredity and

properties of the distinctively female language,

Javanais:

Au milieu de ce plaisir, un froid glacial, une aggression instinctive des femmes, qui rentrent les griffes aussitot qu'on montre les dents. Toutes ces femmes, par moments se mettent a parler java nais. Chaque syllable interlignee par un -va. Les prisons ont 1'argot, les bordels ont le javanais. 53

elles parlent ca tres vite et c'est inintelligible pour les homines. (2:126-27)

This is another point at which sexual and social

themes intersect in the J. The Goncourts ascribe this

language to a single authorizing source: the prostitute.

Their perceptions of women are clearly formed through

sexuai themes. Of course, grasping the totality of

existence was a necessary complement to the naturalist

novelist's role. Naturalists believed that language could not be treated in isolation. This is perhaps a good place to seek answers to the questions of the

Goncourts naturalism. But, here, in the brothels, it is more a question of sex, not class which defines language and its users. What is primarily a discourse based on economics (the prostitutes spoke it to confuse clients), is, in fact, transformed into a pseudo-scientific one:

Curieuse origine de la langue javanaise, la langue argotique de toutes les impures de Paris: inventee a Saint Denis par les pensionnaires pour se cacher des sous mattresses. Mais un javanais plus complique que le -va apres chaque syllable: celui- ci est un redoublement, apres chaque syllable, de deux syllables qui en prennent la desinence. Par example, 'Je vais bien:' 'Je de que vais dai gai bien dien guien.'langue impossible, incompre hensible, bardelee de diphtongues et comme une brosse dure qui vous passe dans les oreilles!

Maria nous apprend ceci. (2:229-30)

Their reasoning is not delivered in the true spirit of naturalism. The fact that the brothers were not interested in the language for etymological, scientific or even prurient reasons, but only for personal reasons: that they wanted to destroy the language, not glorify or

understand removes it from true scientific reasoning.

Relating themes of unbridled and even doomed sexuality

to the existence of language and which claims to paint

female reality is significant: here gender (the female body) informs the creation of language. At the site of

language the Goncourts place the prostitute. In this

secret or private form of communication women transcend male dominance and resist the silence these structures have imposed on them. This loud display of sexuality is particular to those the brothers termed "femelles." The

subtle psychology retraced in this entry goes beyond the simple fact that the brothers do not understand her

language. There is a grave difference between misunderstanding and fear. When confronted with themes of female sexuality and voice the brothers retreat, flabbergasted. Javanaise, a strictly female language approaches "babble"; baby talk. Maria revealed to the brothers the patterns which structure the language. The rhythmic pattern is considered a form of language, yet it is not meaningful. The properties of Javanese approach what Julia Kristeva calls the "semiotic," in language which which she places as a rival to the-

Symbolic, much like other critcs do the Imaginary. For

Kristeva, the semiotic is the 'other'of language (of the

Symbolic) and is closely bound with the mother's body.12 55

For the Goncourts, "la femininite authentique" revolves around the silent, dead woman, the mythical figure who inhabits their discourse. This desire to mold an ideal image of the female informs the writing of

La Femme au dix-huitieme Siecle. The work offers a serious view of life in this century by reporting on lower, middle and upper classes of eithteenth-century women. It is striking that the Goncourts' rewriting of history does not include the peasant woman. This is especially curious from a socio-economic point of view, because feudalism was still operative in France.13

The Goncourt brothers are clearly not interested in confronting the topic of sexuality with regard to the revered eighteenth-century woman. Synonymous with degradation and decline, the sexuality of the peasant woman is effaced. The blank page of her story becomes then a vehicle for the symbolic regeneration of humanity. Their classic sentimentalism is excited by idolizing "la femme." By depicting the perfect woman as an a-sexual creature, they discover their own counterpart. In their truth, everything is brought together: woman as a carnal creation and woman as a vehicle for capitalist gain. Crucial to her self definition is the detachable sex which the Goncourts grant her. Like a worker who leaves the tools of the trade behind at the end of the working day, her sex is 56 seen as inconsequential. Theorizing on female sexuality in this way creates ideology through negation: woman is above all not a sexual being; she can put her sex on when she wants revenge. And second, the eighteenth- century woman is essentially a counterpart to the brothers. She is like them: a-sexual and highly productive. Leaving her sexuality aside, the brothers seek to conceptualize women in terms of a-sexual production (suggested by her value in the workplace), as opposed to the nineteenth- century woman who performed

"typically female work" understood in this context as sexual promiscuity in the public place.

The negation of the working-class woman's identity

\ \ is sealed in La Femme au dix-huitieme siecle: "Dans les rudes metiers de Paris, dans les commerces en plein vent, dans les durs travaux qui forcent les membres de la femme au travail de l'homme (...) un etre apparait qui n'est femme que par le sexe et qui est peuple avant d'etre femme."14 The linking of economic structures of production to sexual discourse produces the highest degree of oppression. The repression of sexuality is re-inscribed here in terms of class structure. Woman's presence is valued for its production only. Seen in this context, her sexuality is consumed by the creation and exploitation of one social class. The progression of the Goncourts' thought moves us from a sentimental level to a sociological one. Due to the authors' fixed preoccupation on capital, we end up totally dismissing difference between female and male. In terms of the workplace, women can just as easily be men. The female masculinization process suggests that she is the product of a split self: the sexual and the a-sexual; the former is suppressed at all cost in the brother's writing and daily meditations on life and history. Schor remarks this same process in Germinie Lacerteux, a novel that she considers to be the inaugural text of naturalism.

She centers on the relationship between a maid and her mistress and uses this relationship as one way of defining naturalism. Focusing on gender and class she defines naturalism in this text as a moment in representation when "the axis of class difference comes to lean on the axis of sexual difference, thereby creating a new type: la femme du peuple."xs

The masculinity of females is again written into their discourse when the Goncourt attempt to define the most female of all occupations, motherhood. De Beauvoir locates motherhood as a space, in which "woman fulfils her physiological destiny; it is her natural

"calling."xs Here we witness the Goncourts' challenging nature when they annex motherhood to fatherhood. The following description emphasizes the absolution of all maternal responsibilities: 58 ^ A La maternite d'alors ne connait point les douceurs familieres qui donnent aux enfants une tendresse confidente. Elle garde une physionomie severe, dure, grondeuse dont elle se montre jalouse; elle croit de son role et de son devoir de conserver avec 1’enfant la dignite d'une sorte d'indifference. Aussi la mere apparait a la petite fille comme 1*image d'un pouvoir presque redoutable, d ’une autorite qu'elle craint d'approcher. 17

As in the description of the female worker, the mingling of a female and male discourse produces a kind of absence or a loss, of self-awareness or identity. The

Goncourts stance is essentially expressed in the last few words, "d'une autorite qu'elle craint d'approcher," where tenderness is rearticualted in terms of masculine and indifferent authority.

The Goncourts were most impressed by the eighteenth century aristocrat woman. Their admiration for her is based on a comparison of the tarnished nineteenth- century woman:

La femme du 19eme siecle n'a conserve, de la precedente que l'interet pour les biens materiels et a abandonne toute envie de copier l'aristocratie luxieuse, talenteuse et desinteressee^qui n'existe plus. Inversement, on saisit l'interet que les Goncourts portent aux aristocrates de L'Ancien Regime. Elies representent a elles seules la quintessence de 1'authentique femininite. Les autres, ce sont des femelles.1®

The aristocrat attracts primarily because she is shrouded in artifice. The brothers fastidiously attach themselves to the outer shell of her make-up, her dress and her company. In the following entry Edmond and

Jules describe one of the most adored women of the 59 century:

Ici c'est la Princesse de Beauvau, habillee de violet tendre, un fichu noir au cou. Celle la qui laisse trainer derriere elle la queue de son ample robe rouge, cette vieille grande dame de si belle mine sous un petit bonnet rabattu par devant, est la comtesse d'Egmont, la mere.1®

A socio-cultural interpretation is useful here. Immedi ately, we are confronted with a powerful vocabulary which insists on social class. This perspective is achieved through the repeated references to princess and countess. Additionally, the safe image of women, clothed in ample, heavy dress erases any mark of sexuality that may be underneath. Predominantly it is her wit, and her overall humor which attracts the

Goncourt men. The most amicable woman of the time who frequented Le Temple, Madame de Boufflers, intrigued the brothers because of her language: " ...sa causerie etait surtout charmante et brillante quand elle jouait des theses deraisonnables."2°

It is evident that the eighteenth-century aristocrat appealed to the brothers because she posed no threat to them or to their masculinity. In fact, she was confined to history books and classical paintings where she was bound to remain. She threw them no undecipherable language and her sexuality was dismissed.

In a curious way this woman is most like the brothers.

They too were bound to their writing salon where they surrounded themselves with artifacts and remnants of another century in their attempt to create for

themselves a similar salon life. Highly intellectual,

literary questions appealed to their aristocratic

sensibilities. They paid much more attention to this part of their identity than they did to their sexual

identity. In essence, the eighteenth century woman was most like them and the nineteenth century woman most unlike them. This binary opposition becomes even more complicated when we take into consideration that with each description the brothers approach or distance their self and their sexuality through a thematic polarization of the female. They define themselves first with regard to women who are not what they are, and secondly they permit women to be only what they are. This perpetual moving away or approaching a forbidden fruit suggests that the curious act of self actualization through projection finally does reflect predominantly male and unconscious structure of desire.

The act of analysis occupies the center of the J.

Yet the male voice is indeed indeterminate since the narrative never truly reflects on predominantly male structures of desire. The subject of the analysis defers speaking of himself to speak first of things feminine. Here we find a pronounced repression of the self. Finally, when the subject does address the problem of male desire we discover a language coded with erotic and economic figures of discourse. A complemem- tary union is made between male sexuality and the pro motion of wealth or power in society. The same economy that indicted females operates here in replacing male presence with a negative value. It is through the vocabulary and imagery of the their anti-semitism that repressed structures of male desire are uncovered. To state it in the most basic terms, the Goncourt brothers choose the Jewish male as the best example of both the weakened libido and libidinal economics. The conflict and rivalry between the brothers and Jewish males enlivens their personal drama. The themes of money and religion demonstrate a marked concern with socially broader as well as personally threatening issues. The

Goncourts seek to establish a corollary between the fortunes of their antagonists and their history. Money, they maintain is the most distinguishing feature of the

Jewish consciousness:

II ajoutait que le caractere de la race juive differe absolument de la race aryenne en ce que chez cette race, toute chose au monde a une evaluation en argent. Or, pour le Juif, la croix est telle somme, 1'amour d'une femme c'est une telle somme, une vieille savante, c'est telle autre somme. Ainsi dans une cervelle Semite tout est tarife: choses honorifiques, choses de coeur, choses quelconques. (19:108)

The earliest reference to the Jewish people, strongly suggesting that the brothers are somehow intrigued yet intimidated by this class of men, appears in 1862, the 62 year in which they discovered Rose's other life. Unlike the initial comment which tries to rationalize and clarify the quick and successful rise of Jews in

Christian society, what follows is a provocative slur:

Un mot qui dit tout sur les Juifs, qui eclaire leur fortune, leur puissance, leur rapide ascension, en ce siecle d'argent. Mires apprenait a St.^Victor que dans l'fecole Juive, ou il avait ete eleve £ Bordeaux, on ne donnait pas de prix de calcul— parce que tous l'auraient merite. Cette revelation fait palir meme le mot profond de vieux Rothschild: "A la Bourse, il y a un moment ou, pour gagner il faut savoir parler hebreu". (5:179)

In addition to the Goncourts' distrust and jealousy of

Jewish males, these quotations reveal, a recurrent fear of language. The image of the Jewish male as a chattering machine recalls the frenetic voice and activity of the female. Both speak languages which are unintelligible to Edmond and Jules. The direct links between the personal fortunes of the Jews and their historical background are repeatedly stressed throughout the J^ Like "femelles", Jews are described as a force which gains power in the direction of misguided and dangerous values. The Goncourts' apprehension however is softened when a doctor at one of the celebrated dinners at the restaurant Magny on March 16, 1865 offers a plausible theory. Obsessed with Jewish presence in society, almost to the point of madness, the brothers are intent on believing that increased capital leads to disaster through self consumption: 63

1,'autre jour a' un diner d'homines, l ’on se demandait pourquoi les Juifs arrivent a tout— et si facilement a ce qui est 1'ambition de tous: 1'argent. Un medecin qui se trouvait la' emit l ’ide'e que la circonscion, en diminuant chez eux considerablemnt le plaisir, diminuait beaucoup la jouissance et 1'occupation de la femme. (7:63)

Medical advice is here proposed as the standard for

interpreting Jewish wealth and success. With this is mind, the Goncourts attempt to recreate the Jewish

consciousness by assigning a privileged place to the male genitals. Money is now considered a substitute for sexual or even familial pleasures.21 Since Jewish males have little or no desire/capacity for orgasmic pleasure, as medical truth advises, there must be a transference of sexual energy into, cashflow. So, Jewish men, in this instance are "joueurs" who have no "jouissance."

Sexual energy is not wasted but rechanneled or rearticulated in terms of capital. In Hebrew terms virility is measured exclusively on an economic scale.

Money becomes the indelible mark of male power. So, by amassing wealth, and assigning monetary value to every thing, the Jewish male symbolically recoups what tradition and religious custom took away. One cannot help understanding from this that, in the event of circumcision man renounces a natural function (sexual satisfaction), and reformulates his desire in terms of surplus. The process recalls Lacan's view of the phallus as replaceable signifier: 64

The identification in question concerns the marking of a part of the body, not in the sense that it becomes dead tissue, but rather in the sense that it no longer functions according to the laws of biology. One such part is the phallus, long the subject of considerable mystery, precisely because its workings seem to be different from the workings of other parts of the body. The phallus appears to be marching to its own tune, at times in discord with the will or intentions of the subject; it obeys, one might say, the Other; it functions as a part of speech, as a signifier.22

The Oedipal Model of the Subject

From this look into the Goncourt brothers' life and

literary life as presented in their J, we arrive at an

interesting theory of male and female sexuality. The

accumulation of images points to a female sexuality which proves to be much more active as suggested by the

"vagina dentata" and the "speaking" uterus, which

"opens up," and "bleeds." Male sexuality is admittedly more dormant. Here the gulf of difference has proven unbridgeable as male genitals are either infected,

inactive, flat or atrophied. The Goncourts' attitude toward capitalism is equivocal, for money is seen to be both productive and destructive. To them, sexuality is

strictly anatomical— it can be removed. This one simple cut easily transposes female to male in both a psychological and linguistic system. Sex, like money can be spent, lost, misplaced or parted with; it is an accessory, practically an obstacle to getting to the 65 real individual.

The J's framework is based on the explicit difference between male and female. The juxtaposition between the two moves the J indeed, towards a resolution of the many complexities and ambiguities which informed the brother's personality. The problematic of the self and male desire as depicted through the themes examined in this chapter go beyond a rhetorical game into the realm of psychological truths.

Our first clue is recognized through textual representation. One may rightfully argue that what holds true for the Jewish male has nothing to say about

Jules and Edmond. Exactly. Out of all their contemporaries, none was more dissimilar to them than the Jewish male. If anything he would be an extension of all that rivals their existence; a strong contender.

Now, it is also very true that the Goncourt brothers seem excessively concerned with Jewish presence and sexual functioning in private society. Identifying

Jewish males first as a manifestation of a deficit and then as a rival consciousness heavily reports on the brothers' unconscious. They appear to be making up or overcompensating for their own weaknesses. The discrepancy between absence and intimacy, deficit and plenitude, male and female that is set up in the text reveals an Oedipal model of the subject albeit through a 66 chain of substitutions on both a linguistic and representational level. The obvious connection is the over stressed pathos between sex (genitals) and surplus

(money) since both can be parted with or lost.

Mutilating images of the body instinctively color the discourse.

Our next clue lies in conventions of language which inform us that the name Madame de Goncourt signifies a married, gentrified woman. Economically speaking it looks as though she married well. In reality we already know that this is not the case; the inherited or gentrified part of her was always hers. Monsieur

Goncourt, Sr., in other words attempted to validate himself through the accepted, but sly appropriation of the mother's signifier (de).23 This act of theft embellishes or supplements him and consequently leaves his wife void, and without personal signification. She becomes the non-representational, the silent female.

Traditional representation now claims that only he is presence, she absence. Her nobility (de) is simply added to her husband. He now becomes the signifier, signifying the plenitude that was originally hers. No longer the possessor, she assumes her visible lack and submits to the dictates issued by patriarchal discourse.

Due to the early death of her husband she was obliged to be father to the boys, thereby functioning as a tradition male. This brief history suggests that what she lost was that which defined her as female: her name and her maternal function. It is precisely to this site of nothingness that Edmond and Jules refer. This mutilation of a name ultimately leads the brothers to recognize dismemberment in their own bodies. They are no longer a part of their mother, but separate from her as she no longer exists in name or function. From this shocking moment they attempt to gain access to her. By constructing the non threatening, sexually dysfunctional

Jewish male figure and thereby dismantling the rival figure, the Goncourt brothers aggrandize their self and gain easy or unblocked access to the mother's body. In

Freud's terms Jules and Edmond cannot be "the mother's phallus,....cannot please her absolutely, be her sole principle of pleasure, except on the condition that he be excluded from the masculine gender...and this is what he demands."24 By creating a weakened male, the brothers decenter the phallus and satisfy their own desire through language.

A dramatic twist in this "case history" is the appearance of Rose Malingre, the boys surrogate mother.

Unlike their natural mother, Rose exhibits her phallic proportions. She is temptress, a visible carrier of sex. The repugnant discovery of her sexual appetite horrified as well as threatened the brothers. Maria, Jules' midwife friend revealed to them Rose's other life and taught them about female biology. They stagger once again between a phallic mother and the castrated body of a mother. Their strong desire is to restore their mother to her original proportions; to mend her mutilated body and to take revenge on the father. As blatant as Rose's display of sexuality is the brothers' insistence on portraying themselves as women, united through uterine discourse. To date, Freud has best explained the significations of this fantasy; "Rescuing the mother acquires the significance of giving her a child or making one for her— one like himself, of course."23 It is precisely through writing that they are able to fantasize this desire. According to Freud's theory, this fantasy is played out very well. What interests us is fantasy's transgression of specific gender based restrictions. Therein, the meaning of

"saving life" can vary according to whether the fantasy is framed by a man or a woman. It can mean either: making a child, bringing it to life (in a man); or giving birth to a child (in a woman).26 Freud's scenario for rescuing the mother provides a safe frame for implementing the Goncourts' fantasy while accommodating sexual inhibitions— the fear of female sex and the obsession of self representation as productive females. Through the weaving of differences and difficulties, the Goncourts project becomes valid. This validity is primarily linguistic as Luce Irigaray asserts: "Language by adopting its/these "annexes"— also ocular, uterine, embryonic— adds to its wealth, gains

"depth," consistency, diversity and multiplication of its processes and techniques."2"7 The depth that language gains is a result of a descent that the brothers take into the female cave or womb. Returning to an earlier comment regarding the brothers fear of women, "autant pour leur fraternite que pour leur oeuvre," we realize that what they also perceive as threatened is their language. To neutralize this threat they make woman the object of investigation. Through their language, a language which is dubbed and inscribed in female synthesis and syntax, a consciousness is revealed, one which prefers to recast woman as the non threatening, silent mother who allows her child access to her. The system of journal writing here interpreted and the system psychodynamic reading applied restores the imaginary dimension of the text, where there is no language. 70

Notes to Chapter I

1 Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, preface, Journal: Memoires de la vie litteraire. 21 volumes. (Paris: Fasquelle et Flammarion, 1956). All references from the Journal will be taken from this edition, unless otherwise indicated, and will be cited in the text according to volume and page number.

2 ^Lazare Prajs, La Fallacite de 1 1 oeuvre romanesque des Freres Goncourt (Paris: A.G. Nizet, 1974) 21.

3 Jacques Lacan, Ecrits, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, Inc. 1977), 19. "Concours" is defined as the primordial coming together which is then precipitated into aggressive competitiveness. The Goncourts writing, I suggest, reverses this second stage.

4 Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), 142.

5 Henry Ceard, introduction, Lettres, by Jules de Goncourt (Paris: Flammarion, 1930) 25-6.

6 The Boston Women's Health Book Collective, The New Our Bodies Ourselves. 3rd. ed. (New York: Simon and Schuster, Inc. 1984), 406.

7 The theme of flight or the desire to be transported to another world, reflected here by Edmond as desire to be "loin de mon moi contemporain" is the identical wish that speaks^Coriolis' decision to go to the Orient: "Je suis ennuye de moi" (49). For both Coriolis and the Goncourts, desire is clearly associated with romantic escapism.

8 Julia Kristeva as quoted by Gayle Greene and Coppelia Kahn, eds. Making a Difference (New York: Methuen, 1985), 73 71

9 ibid., 3

10 Caradec, Verve. 14.

11 Robert Baldick, Pages From the Goncourt Journal (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 36. Javanese, a linguistic system formed of instinctual sounds (one syllable sounds) arranged in a rhythmic pattern (after every syllable), shows certain affinities with the verbalizations produced by infants. Baldick's translation is useful: "For example, 'How are you?' becomes 'How dow goware dar garyou doo g o o ? '"

12 In the preface to Lettres, Ceard applauds the Goncourts for affecting these innovations in the French language:

M. Edmond de Goncourt donne excellemment la raison et la formule du style complique e t de l'ecriture a fremissements dont lui et son frere furent les inventeurs...le raffinement des esprits, et le developement suraigu de la sensiblilite...des effets nouveaux, multiples, intenses,...qui accepte toutes les vocales, s'accommode de toutes les constructions... vivante et qui chante une langue a la fois musicale.

Ceard's description of the Goncourts' language which considers it as a continuum of sounds, almost musical in quality, approaches the 'semiotic.'

13 The Goncourts' description of the peasantry in an entry dated July 27, 1871 shows the psychological motivation behind the ommission of this class of women:

^ A V La superieure_de l'hopital disait a ma cousme que 'les paysans a nombreuses families ont de leurs enfants^la notion diffuse qu'un lapin peut avoir de sa portee. L'un disait 'Est-ce bien six ou sept enfants que nous avons?' Une autre, s 'embarrassant dans les morts et les vivants, ne pouvait se rappeler s'il en avait quinze ou dix-huit.' (10:26)

The habits of peasants, here aligned with those of rabbits, put into view a bestial and primitive view of sexuality. Peasant women then, were not considered "la 72

femme authentique" but were "femelles." Their attempt to use scientific reasoning as their basis falls short. They construct a "pseudo-enquete" based on heresay.

14 Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, La Femme au dix- Huitieme Siecle (Paris: Flammarion, 1982), 229.

15 Schor, Breaking. 128.

16 De Beauvoir, Deuxieme Sexe, 540.

17 Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, Femme, 50.

18 ibid., 26.

19 ibid., 81. The Goncourt brothers idolization of the eighteenth-century aristocrat is discussed at length in the section "La Societe-Les Salons" (75-114) in La Femme au Dix-huitieme Siecle.

20 ibid., 82

21 While on a train, the Goncourts focus on a family and give the following description (16:137-8):

II y a ... un gros banquier juif qui ressemble etonnamment a Daikoku, au dieu japonais de la richesse...en face est son fils,..qui se mouche dans un foulard rose ressemblant a une cravate de maquereau... accompagne de sa fille,...qui a l'air legerement filliasse et qui se couche sur la poitrine de son pere, dont la large main l'enveloppe et lui caresse le corps, auquel le lacet du chemin de fer donne le mouvement d'un corps de femme qui fait 1'amour.

This passage, by subverting the reflection of reality through the use of linguistic artifice, annihilates the family and recasts it as an incestuous economic system.

22 Schneiderman, Jacques Lacan, 60. 73

23 Roger Williams, The Horror of Life (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1980), 50. Williams' isolation of the "particle de" in the father's name as a result of a theft, refers us to the Lacanian notion of theft and sacrifice. This emphasis on "de" recalls the Lacanian notion of the 'desir de la mere,' wherein Lacan plays with double signification rendered rich in French. "Le desir de la mere" means both "desire for the mother" and "desire of the mother." Lacan believed that children both desired the mother and desired to be, conversely, what the mother desired. This play on words leads to the assertion that the brothers, through the nature of language, reorganize the family's claim to its original aristocratic connection.

24 Stuart Schneiderman, ed., trans. Returning to Freud (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), 205.

25 Freud, Sexuality. 57.

26 ibid.

27 Luce Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman, trans. Gillian C. Gill (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), 140. CHAPTER II

Differences with Zola

The subject of this chapter, gives new perspectives

on Emile Zola, his life and his involvement with the

bourgeoisie and the modern novel. In order to

illuminate Zola's history, one must restate and refine

the old puzzle pertaining to the origins and practice of

Naturalism. My aim is to prompt a reader to a greater

awareness of the particular tensions written in this

discourse. To expose this great literary tradition is

to understand, first of all, that many writers have

conspicuously claimed to be its progenitor. Mallarme's

belief provides us with an appropriate response: "Pour

.A en revenir au naturalisme, il me parait qu'il faut

entendre par la, la litterature d 1Emile Zola...le mot mourra en effet quand Zola aura acheve son oeuvre."1

The Goncourt-Zola personal relationship, as it is

represented in the Journal and selected letters is the

basis for showing the on-going and often times malicious

debate over the emergence of naturalism and the dismal

effects writing and success wrought on their friendship

and professional lives. One of the major questions

facing my inquiry does pertain to poetics and asks

74 whether stylistics alone is indeed the only motivation

for comparing the art of Zola with that of the

Goncourts. Therefore, in plotting the internal

diffusion between the reality of Zola's universe and the

Goncourts I hope to make manifest the structures of

narrative. This position hopes to affirm the quality

and importance of both difference and resemblances while

answering questions about literary competency,

historical perspectives, narratology and the writing

subject.

The title of this chapter is consciously ambiguous.

First in the sense that "differences" on one level

refers to the commonly understood meaning of misunder

standings as in between Zola, Goncourt and the critics

with respect to naturalism. Second, my desire is to

establish the many differences in Zola himself. Here, I

have used the word differences to refer to inconsis

tencies in Zola's life and literary life. The story of

the Rougon-Macquart family for example, involves the willful and unconscious appropriation of the novelist's

life into his fictional plots. In order to impart a

sense of history to my readers I have chosen to approach his life and literary life in a purely chronological manner. After providing the reader with some orien tation towards the nineteenth century, I offer a detailed study of narrative, emphasizing the use and 76 construction of gender and genre in Zola's literary machine. The synthesis of this information provides a picture of what Zola meant by naturalism, his textual and personal relationship to his "subjects" both male and female, textual and sexual and his thoughts on sexuality and the politics of desire.

Havelock Ellis maintains that Zola is highly enigmatic, in a purely physical regard. Later, he in fact, identifies Zola more as an ethnic enigma. The inability to assign an origin to Zola results from the

"considerable and confused amount of racial energy that was stored up in Zola. At once French, Italian and

Greek."2 The confused family strain identifies and very well underlines what we are trying to demonstrate: that

Zola is a composite son, a complex and intricate human being, most of whom lies beneath the surface of what we readily accept as the true version of Zola. The ethnic barrage also suggests to me that just as human energies can be coordinated and fused into one working body,

Zola's writings similarly reflect a quite eclectic yet integrated social order and narrative universe. These signs, then, appear to be our clues to the beginning and the end of the story.

December 14, 1868 is the officially accepted date of the first face to face meeting of Emile Zola and

Edmond and Jules de Goncourt. The brothers invited Zola 77

to lunch that day. Prior to this luncheon the brothers

had only secondary, albeit quite favorable knowledge of

Zola through their shared associations with the

periodical press, major newspapers and magazines. From

time to time, the brothers' novels were the subject of

some of Zola's best articles. Edmond and Jules deemed

it very appropriate, because of the unsolicited praise

and public acclaim that Zola had showered on them over

the years, to refer to him affectionately as their

"admirer." It is a well known fact that Zola did admire

the brothers for their unique literary abilities. He was even reported to have consulted with them regarding

his own work in progress. For this reason, they

considered him their "pupil."

When he arrived for lunch, the story goes, the brothers were startled, taken completely aback, in awe

of his physical appearance. A key passage from the J, describes Zola as "somewhere in between." Description

here clearly serves the describer and not the described.

The Goncourts' descriptive gesture within this context

entails a risk: as they generate description, in opening up Zola as a display piece, they ironically reveal more about themselves:

Notre impression toute premiere fut de voir en lui un normalien a l'encolure de Sarcey, dans le mouvement, lecjerement crevard, mais en le regardant bien, le rable jeune homme nous apparut avec des delicatesses de modelages de fine porcelaine, dans les traits de la figure, la sculpture des 78

paupieres, les curieux meplats du nez, en un mot un peu taille en toute sa personne a la fa^on des vivants de ses livres, de ses etres complexes, un peu femme parfois en leur masculinite. (8:154)

Other possibilities are suggested by the ambiguity: since we know that the Goncourt brothers did not always identify as men, their images of self were constantly projected onto others in order to validate their own highly female consciousness. That Zola is repeatedly defined as an oscillation, more feminine than masculine, seems consistent with their desire to see themselves as the center of the universe. This also contributes to creating doubt in the mind of the reader, or aligning the reader with the Goncourts. Evoking the fiction alized Zola removes him from contemporary society and refers us back to the Goncourt phobia of the contemporary woman.

Through the Goncourt's description the reader is given initially, an unforgettable and candid picture of

Zola, the schoolboy "un normalien a l'encolure de

Sarcey." Second, his very essence and subjectivity are in question due to the strange amalgam of weakened male and dominant female traits, and his strong embrace of both fictional and non-fictional characteristics. Even a cursory glance at this substantial description causes us to distrust or at least question the objectivity with which Zola is represented. Closer reading alerts us to 79 recurrent themes of misrecognition and fear. In these instances, the Goncourts' misreadings move the reader from a postulate of repetition as authority to misreading as annihilation. The rigid view of the world suggests that the Goncourts' aristocratic ideology attributes an ancillary role to Zola in the same way as bourgeois ideology excluded women from serious consideration and therefore labeled them insignificant.

Refusing to be swept away or taken in by physical characteristics and personal style, Zola was really more interested in literature itself, self expression and its collective history as his reply suggests, "Et puis comme nous sommes les derniers venus, nous savons que vous etes nos aines, Flaubert et vous. Vous! vos ennemis eux-memes reconnaissent que vous avez invente votre art, ils croient que ce n'est rien: c'est tout"

(8:156).

The language of his reply reinforces the formation of a hierarchical structure with the obvious suggestion of an apprentice following just footsteps behind on the same path as the master craftsman. This piece of criticism, in its most rudimentary form, attributes some significance to the specificity of Zola's art. By

J accepting a translation of "aines" as masters, and thereby associating itself on the paradigmatic axis of wisdom, age and authority we begin to see movement towards the formation of a classical Oedipal model.

According to the reply, Zola admits that the Goncourt are the rightful founders of "an" art, "their" art, and are cast in the role of teacher or father. (The very fact that Zola never named the art becomes significant in his defense of naturalism). It is to this site that

Emile Zola, the schoolboy, refers in mimetic function of his father. It is clear from this example that the

Goncourts' prime source of interest is not in identifying Zola with literature but with imitation, strongly suggesting that he is not an original but a derivative.

Since Freudian precepts have been helpful, thus far, in structuring the development of this chapter and the Goncourt-Zola relationship, I find it useful to view

Zola, at this point in his development, through the

Lacanian image of "l'hommelette/l'omelette."3 Seen through the brothers eyes, as our initial passage confirms, Zola is clearly an undifferentiated mass with respect to both his sexual and literary self. In other words, Zola is still rough around the edges, lacking any definite literary style and not yet sure how to stand on his own. The quality of this description, seized in the space of difference between observation and judgement, cannot conceal the backward leap to a personal ideology or even pathology. In granting to Zola the status 81 "undifferentiated," the Goncourts attempt at defining him fix him in a pre-linguistic stage. This portrait renders him groping in "literary dependence."

Four years later, on June 3, 1872, the J records yet another memorable luncheon with Zola. This time,

Edmond alone persisted in inciting and circulating harsh commentary on the pathetically deteriorating physical and literary well being of Zola. Reportedly suffering from the advanced stages of rheumatism of the joints which caused his hands to shake, Zola was unable to even bring a glass of wine to his lips. His sickly physiognomy afforded Edmond the perfect occasion to categorically comment on the general degenerating status of the nineteenth century man of letters. According to

Edmond:

Jamais les hommes de lettres ne semblent nes plus morts^qu'en notre temps, et cependant le travail n'a kte p],us actif, plus incessant. Malingre et nevrosifie comme il est, Zola travaille tous les jours dev neuf heures a midi et demi et de trois heures a huit heures. C'est ce qu'il fait dans ce moment avec du talent, et presque un nom, pour gagner sa vie.... (10:94)

Identifying Zola as the model for the degenerating state of the artist puts back into motion the meaning of narrative as an extension of the body. When Edmond projects onto Zola a nervous personality type, he is, once again, maximizing Zola's female qualities. By weaving the names "Zola" and "Malingre" together, the J unconsciously creates new significations: the symbolism 82 of the former is intensified as we recall that Rose's family name was Malingre. In this universe, sickly and nervous have a complex textual as well as sexual significance: by their close association they accumulate images of female destruction. Masculine genius is silenced by the associative images of a- productivity ("morts") and failure ("cependant le travail n'a ete plus actif, plus incessant"). These few brief lines illustrate once again that the Goncourt insist in relating the body, its functions and sexuality to the theory of literature and writing. This passage not only marks time in the once amicable relationship between the Goncourts and Zola, it also cements a highly androgynous image of Zola. In psycho- sexual terms, his mis-recognition or inability to properly identify ("et presque un nom") suggests that

Zola has not yet made the appropriate object choice. In his refusal to align himself he is condemned to a- productivity on both a personal (sexual) and professional (textual) level.

Correspondance: Emile Zola and Jules de Goncourt

Jules de Goncourt died on June 20, 1870. According to his brother, Jules died "du travail, et surtout de

1 'elaboration de la forme, de la ciselure de la phrase..."4 The friendship that existed between MM. de 83

Goncourt and Zola was due, primarily to Jules' instigation. When Edmond writes about the brothers' lives together, we are dealt new insights into the writing subject: "Tout le temps de notre existence a

\ v / / < deux, dit-il, mon frere a ete 1'epistolaire de nos correspondances, des lettres signees Jules comme des lettres signees Edmond et Jules... mais la forme, la vivacite, et 1'esprit des lettres lui appartiennent entierement."s Critics have considered Jules' habit of letter writing as a window unto the world of novel writing. All of their novels, with the exception of the first, En 18 , appeared in the 1860's. Jules died just before the outbreak of the Franco-Prusssian war. The next description captures the dismal effect of death on the narraitve:

Although Edmond continued to produce novels down to 1884, these latter works lack all the qualities of the earlier ones, either because Jules had always been the brighter spirit or because the habit of collaboration was so strong that once it was broken Edmond found himself unable to achieve anything significant.s

Jules not only more gracefully penned and signed the note inviting Zola to lunch, he added his personal note of sincerity, style and vivacity to letter writing and novel writing alike. Writing, like friendships came more easily to Jules than to Edmond. Conversely, disagreements or inflaming personal inadequacies came more easily to Edmond, than to Jules. On the basis of 84

such chronological and qualitative determinations the

following theory of relations emerges: that the

controversy regarding the origins of naturalism was a

heated and personal matter which brewed for years

between Zola and Edmond after the death of Jules. This

theory will be substantiated by demonstrating that

Edmond's version of naturalism and Zola's version were

dynamically opposed in both their theoretical and

practical applications. According to Prajs, the

Goncourts' theory of literature tries to avoid "le

vraisemblable conventionnel" as much as it does

thoughts of logic. For them, injecting into the

narrative, at strategic points, "les bouffes de vrai"

is sufficient.7 Brady does not consider MS naturalism either, since, in this novel, the brothers "abandonned naturalist style for a more feminine, more fugative style: Japanese."®

The conflict between Edmond and Zola goes far beyond static questions of literary rivalry. Naturalism only begins to tell the tale of the many issues, personal and otherwise, over which Zola and Edmond were

frequently at odds. Jules, as we have established was the silent or absent partner in the misunderstanding.

In order to plot the antithesis, it is necessary for modern criticism to do what only death could achieve— separate the two brothers. "Reading" Jules alone gives a 85 rare opportunity to see him outside of the shadow of his older brother. Through careful study of selected letters written to Zola by Jules from 1848- 1869 we will attempt to grasp the dramatic rise and fall of a friendship. My examination of these letters reveals

Jules1 most intimate and uncensored thoughts regarding his work, colleagues, and, his reactions to life’s most devastating and rewarding moments in the precious few years of his life.

Lettres, opens with a solemn correspondence to

Louis Passy on September 5, 1848, the day that Madame de Goncourt died. The next fifteen letters are also written to Passy and we retain from these a vivid and depressing portrait of Jules: lonely, abandoned and seemingly without expression of ambition or purpose.

His most delicate and sincere closing "rappelle-moi au bon souvenir de ta mere" reminds us that Jules is but a boy, frightened, fighting isolation in his personal life, and seeking the affectionate comfort of a mother.

Of the one hundred and sixty-two letters collected in this volume, only five mention Zola and these are the five addressed to Zola.

The first, dated 27 February 1863, is the longest and the most impersonal. The unqualified salutation

"Monsieur" is evidence enough to assure us that at this date, there are no affectionate or even close ties 86

between the correspondents other than what we understand

as purely the business of the matter.10 As Edmond

indicated, Jules wrote for both of them and here the use

of the personal pronoun "nous" throughout the body of

the letter gives veracity to his statement.

The second letter, written February 5, 1868, barely

two months after they met, provides a striking contrast

to the first. This letter opens with the highly

expressive and affectionate salutation "Cher monsieur

and tres cher confrere," a salutation which indicates

that a close friendship now exists between them. Here

Jules, is anxious to bestow favorable compliments on

Zola for his brilliant Therese Raguin. Jules concludes by commenting on contemporary trends in literary inven

tion and promotion which brings the writer even closer \ to his "cher confrere": "Nous sommes a vous et a votre

livre de toutes nos sympathies, avec vous par les idees,

les principes, 1'affirmation des droits a l'Art Moderne, au Vrai et a la Vie. Et croyez-nous vos amis."12

Confirming the fact that yes, Jules, Edmond and

Zola did share a certain affinity in their writing styles, this letter gives a fresh and congenial portrait of the writer. Jules is complimenting Zola on his success, purely and simply. The tone of this letter does not remind us of recrimination; on the contrary we read only admiration. One year later, on January 17, 1869, a fourth letter is written to "cher monsieur" thanking him abundantly, and in advance, for his support of-their next volume which was about to appear on the shelves. Jules imparts to his friend Zola a piece of the anticipated success of the novel: "Si le succes lui arrive, je tiens a vous dire que vous y aurez ete pour beaucoup, et que nous garderons toujours, pour ce service si bien rendu, une reconnaissance sincere et bien cordiale. ":L3 This letter, the most expressive of the five, is the only one signed simply "J. de Goncourt." Jules' letters to Zola shed significant and revealing light on the nature of writing, the famed art of "ecriture a deux" and the fraternal relationship. The "nous" that so strongly characterizes their writing seems to-function here more as a trademark than as a sincere and scientific point of reference. Could not the "nous" of the letter signify the habitual inclusion of Edmond as a mere a formality, something that Jules cannot shake? Highly inconsistent with Jules' single signature is the plurality in the body of the letter. On one level Jules speaks for

Edmond and himself (nous) transmitting his most intimate thoughts. Yet, on another level, Jules' letter resembles a sort of undercover attempt to express only his self. It is perfectly logical to surmise that perhaps Jules did not show these letters to Edmond in an 88 ongoing struggle to stand on his own without the intimidating fear of his brother.

Gender, Genre and Naturalism

Between the "nous" of the letters and the "je" of the signature, lies the defense of one man: Edmond,

"widowed" in 1870. This year was marred by dramatic endings and savory beginnings for Zola and Edmond de

Goncourt as well as for the French nation at large.

Zola was acquiring a band of faithful followers in the

Russian empire but, curiously enough, he was still virtually unknown in his own country. The Franco-

Prussian war broke out this year just two months before

Jules' death; Zola became closely associated with the

Impressionist painters this year. On the literary front, a small group of writers including, Daudet,

Flaubert, Goncourt, Zola and Turgenev was forming; all were committed to closer to understanding and perfecting the new wave in literature, naturalism. Naturalism connoted a momentous movement in literature because of

Zola's "indefatigable "plugging" of the word in a succession of newspapers and magazine articles in the late seventies."14

The Age of Realism gives solid critical evidence pointing to the Goncourts as the first to ride the tide in the direction of naturalism. This seems to be exemplified by the young Zola, who avidly referred to both Flaubert and the Goncourts as the founders of "an" art. Standard fare for the naturalist writer is serious and sustained documentation of the contemporary scene, what the French call "une enquete." Since, the brothers came to novel writing via history writing and, since the undeniable sources of history are life's documents, it is logical then, that the brothers were already well versed in the careful and detailed art of documentation and only transferred it to their novel writing. But, their own formula for writing set early in the J is convincingly a-naturalistic: "le roman est de l'histoire qui aurait pu etre" (5:26). The innovation that one grants to the Goncourts is that instead of relying on their own private knowledge to document the contemporary scene, they extended their knowledge by adding touches of truth in and their "special inquiries," became, chronicles of heresay. In the J, they admit that the ✓ whole of their "oeuvre" rests on "la maladie nevrose"

(3:248). Absent from their writing was the imprint of the prestigious stamp sealing both careful documentation and scientific hypothesis on which naturalism was based. ✓ ^ Naturalism then is not "une fa^on speciale d'ecrire" so much as it is "une methode de penser, de voir,

y S S' d'etudier, d'experimenter, de resoudre scientifiquement 90 la question de savoir."15

Perhaps the Goncourts' Germinie Lacerteux is the most likely source for the naturalist novel, the one the brothers refer to as the model for everything that has been produced since under the name naturalism. Germinie

Lacerteux abounds in significant details which define naturalism, as we have come to understand it through

Zola's use of the genre or subject. Germinie Lacerteux

(1864) is the fictional account of a tragic woman who, not surprisingly, is nymphomaniac and a member of the lower classes. Since, as the brothers admit, they do not invent, we are safe in accepting Germinie as the literary Rose. In Germinie Lacerteux. the brothers inadvertently plant, and, in large plots, the seeds of

Zola's naturalism: documentation, science (the themes of medicine and sickness) and democratic spirit. The preface to the novel endeavors to prove that it is one of the earliest manifestos of naturalism:

Vivant au dix-neuvieme siecle, dans un temps de suffrage universel, de democratic, de lib^ralisme, nous nous sommes demande si ce qu'on appelle "les basses classes" n'avait pas droit au Roman. Si ce monde sous un monde, le peuple, devait rester sous le coup de 1'interdit litteraire et des dedains d~auteurs qui ont fait jusqu'ici le silence sur l'ame et le coeur qu'il peut avoir.16

Naturalism, like any other commodity could be reproduced through the correct portions of democracy, scientific determinism and realism. Naturalism was a coveted commodity; it sold big and the returns on it were 91 significant. Scientific determinism was a central philosophy to the French in the late 1860's and 1870's.

The straightforward declaration of principles that

Germinie Lacerteux prescribed for the novel are the same seeds as the ones that Zola carefully watered and transplanted to create his own profitable hybrid. One may be tempted to accuse Zola of only pushing to obsessive and unrestrained lengths what the brothers had tapped. For if the Goncourt theoretically permitted the lower classes to enter their novel, Zola opened the gates to the mob and more specifically, its psychology.

Where the Goncourts advocated observation as part of the novelistic practice, we never see Zola abandoning his practice of obsessive note taking. And, finally, where the Goncourts added disease and sickness to their plots,

Zola strewed the genetic predisposition that produced the surface maladies of poor mental and physical health.

The Goncourts only created plots; Zola created sub-plots

(discourse).

In this attempt to situate the basic differences and tensions between Zola and the Goncourts, a J quote by Zola to Flaubert is most useful in illustrating the writers' indulgence,

Vous, vous avez une petite fortune qui vous a permis de vous affranchir de Ipeaucoup de choses...moi, ma vie, j'ai ete oblige^de la gagner absolument avec ma plume, moi j 'ai ete oblige de parser par toutes sortes d'ecritures, oui d'ecritures meprisables...Eh, mon Dieu, je me moque comme vous de ce mot naturalisme et cependant, je PLEASE NOTE:

Page(s) missing in number only; text follows. Filmed as received.

UMI 93 s' A le repeterai, parce qu'il faut un bapteme aux choses, pour gue le public les croie neuves... Voyez-vous, je fais deux parts dans ce que j'ecris, il y a mes oeuvres, avec lesquelles... puis il y a mon feuilleton du Bien Public, mes articles de Russie, ma correspondance de Marseille, qui ne me sont de rien, que je rejette, et qui ne sont que pour faire mousser mes livres. (8:109)

Zola's own awareness of his humble origins and his impoverished years in Paris are directly contrasted by the lavish lifestyle lead by both Flaubert and the

Goncourts. The clash between writers is one of exuberance versus principle. According to Zola, we understand naturalism as a rigorous concern for the truth, became more than a maxim; it became the organizing principle in life and fiction. Zola honestly defines his concept of the reading public and his own literary invention. Zola's vision of the creative potential of the truth is magnified by his interaction with the public. Unlike the Goncourts, he wrote for for a larger public: "mon marteau c'est le journalisme, que je fais moi-meme autour de mes livres."

One final and pleasing note on which to end the practical and popular side of the quarrel over the founding father of naturalism is anecdotal in nature.

This time a culinary device is used to teach a literary lesson. A dinner, regarded as the founding dinner of the naturalist school was introduced by the following menu: 94 / Potage puree Bovary

✓ V Truite saumonee a La Fille Elisa •* \ Poularde truffee a la Sainte-Antoine

Artichaut au Coeur Simple

Parfait "naturaliste"

Vins de Coupeau

Liqueurs de l'Assommoir

Participating in the dinner were: Edmond de Goncourt,

Henry Ceard, Huysmans, Maupassant and Zola. The dinner was to announce to the public the new literary army.

Despite all Edmond's claims to having already mastered

the discourse, the Goncourt men are mentioned only once.

Flaubert's novels are mentioned three times and three

references to Zola are made. If, as the menu suggests,

Zola is not the uncontested leader of the group, he

certainly fares much better than Edmond. Zola, as

leader of the new group is much easier to swallow than

Edmond.17

In 1887 another, more bitter feud broke out between

Zola and Goncourt still over the appellation

"naturalist."3-8 This time, Zola pulls out his

scientific ammunition to give still more support to his philosophy of literature since his purely practical discourse repeatedly fell on deaf ears. Zola never

fully engaged in the argument due to the fact that he,

in his own heart, never really felt that he had founded 95 a school, or, for that matter, that a school had ever truly been established. Le Roman experimental emphasizes the structure of his creativity:

C'est que j'ai dit tant de fois que le naturalisme n'etait pas une ecole, qug par exemple il ne s'incarnait pas dans le genie d'un homme ni dans le coup de folie d'un groupe, comme le romantisme, qu'il consistaient simplement^dans 1 1 application de la methode experimentale a 1'etude de la nature et de 1'homme.19

Zola's bias for popularizing naturalism had to do, in my opinion, with his prophetic vision regarding the regenerating power of the arts and the creation of a paradise through human creativity which would dissipate class strife in France. After the bloody days of the

Paris Commune in 1871, Zola was the mouthpiece for the people. The political seizure of power propelled Zola to encapsulate naturalism. It was time, he believed, that the arts were given their due, and that the people were entitled to more than just a censored glimpse of

"official art." For the man in the streets, Zola believed that Art was something not to be trusted; a rich man's entertainment; a myth, like a religion that had been found out.

As man of Letters, philosopher, art critic and burgeoning scientist Zola wanted Art to be recognized for its function as "assistant to the natural sciences." Zola taps poetry from a scientific spring.

Living in an age highly stylized by science and 96 determinism Zola reflects his social optimism through the application of the experimental method to literature. New technological advances were being made in the fields of medicine and science; Zola, the visionary conceived of the same prestige for the / ✓ literary world: "Puisque la medecine qui etait un art

✓ A devient une science, pourquoi la litterature elle-meme A \ / ne deviendrait-elle pas une science grace a la methode experimentale?"20 Zola's vision of the creative and restorative potential of literature is magnified by its associations with the qualities of science:

The progress of medical science in the nineteenth century through men like Claude Bernard had been so sensational that it was inevitable that philosophers and writers should begin to wonder if increased knowledge of the functions of the body would not also uncover the functions of the brain.21

Zola was certainly concerned with the exercise of authority and, if medicine was to account for the physiological processes, Zola examined the role of medicine and its affect on the mental, spiritual and moral processes. As a result of his serious study of the prevailing philosophies of the day (Hippolyte Taine,

Auguste Comte and Claude Bernard), Zola found the means to bridge the gap between experiment (science) and literature (art) thus raising the novel to a new and unprecedented level of prestige. Zola shows further evidence of applying his scientific experimentation and 97

method through his calculated choice of the family and

genetics as the structuring element for his Rougon-

Maquart cycle. He sub-titled the cycle, "L'Histoire

naturelle et sociale d'une famille sous le deuxieme

empire" to substantially emphasize his theory of the

interdependency of genetics, the individual and familial

socialization. Adopting a scientific model allowed him

to completely reject the worn out metaphysical model of man. In place of the metaphysical man, the abstract man, the natural man, the physioligical specimen.

In the Preface to Therese Raguin, Zola elaborates on

and celebrates his model of literature, "Tant que j'ai

ecrit Therese Raguin. ]'ax oublie le monde, je me suxs perdu dans la copie exacte et minutieuse de la vie me donnant tout entier a 1'analyse du mecanisme humain."22

Regarding the importance of sustained documentation he writes: "A coup sur, 1'analyse scientifique que j'ai tente d'appliquer dans Therese Raguxn ne les surprendrait pas; ils y retrouveraient la methode moderne, l'outil d'enquete universelle dont le siecle se sert avec tant de fievre pour trouer l'avenir."23 The analogy established between the novelist and the scientist or, the practice of imposing scientific strata on the novel is the most distinguishing feature between realism and naturalism. According to Zola, common denominators shared by the literary genres are hard to 98

find because:

Le naturalisme fait foin de ces restrictions - la: pas de reserve, et pas de bornes, pas de limites pretendument esthetiques. Les convenances n'ont rien a voir ici. Les choses sont ce qu'elles sont. On doit^JLes rendre comme elles sont et tout donner de la meme fagon: s'il y a de 1'ignoble, il fautx dire 1'ignoble. Ne rien cacher. Boire le tout a la lie.24

The patterns and emphases which emerge from Zola's

fictions and novels delineate values, not most commonly associated with nineteenth-century bourgeoisie. His reputation rests largely on the humanism eloquently described in his proletarian novels, which expose his essentially political critique against bourgeois convention and hypocrisy. Zola's fictions not only permit the lower classes to enter the narrative but foreground the overabundance of social problems in urban industrial existence. Zola displays extreme sympathy and understanding for the plight of the lower classes.

Still another difference between Zola and the realists is in his vision: "Zola ne se comporte pas en homme de lettres: il n'a pas des soucis d'ecrivain, mais des applications de chroniqueur."2S

Scientific metaphors cannot here be rehearsed in detail. As a base, they provide a useful register in redefining the occupation of the novelist. From the day that science crossed the choppy water into the writer's craft, the art of writing has evolved into a new practice: like physicians, writers operate on 99 characters. Actively experimenting with human feelings and personalities as they are shaped and reshaped by society brings up still another dimension favoring scientific reasoning for the novel. In the absence of a practical metaphysics, Zola, in an about face, turns to biology to come up with the perfect composite of man.

Seeking a perfect composite of man, Zola attempts to bury the metaphysical man and resurrects the purely physiological specimen.

We emerge from reading Le Roman experimental with a dynamic model which structures commonalities between

Zola and the scientist. Where Claude Bernard describes the medical observer and experimenter, Zola spies the novelist. Setting a character in motion is, for him, the equivalent of active laboratory testing. The perfect fit that Zola cut out for the novelist and the scientist is challenged by F.W.J. Hemmings in The Age of Realism. Hemmings seizes the comparison between the pathologist who dissects dead bodies with the writer

(Zola) who performs psychological operations understood as dynamic in a static environment. This analogy falls short because:

The experimental research worker in the natural sciences deals in a reality external to him; he can arrange the conditions of an experiment that he sets up, but he has no control over the issue. The creative writer, however carefully he may observe the real work and transpose it in his work, and however scrupulously he adheres to the internal logic of his characters' behavior, in the last 100

resort invents everything, including the way his character react to the circumstances in which he has chosen to place them. This is another way of saying that the realist deals in an interiorized reality. Everything in the world outside has to be filtered through his individual consciousness.26

Hemmings makes a plausible argument expressing concern about the force of the writer's own consciousness in the literary portrayal of individuals. In my examination of

Zola's treatment of social problems and class structure,

I am concerned with the representational value or historical validity of these narrative truths. The narrative cohesiveness of his represented vision and the ways his vision is articulated through his individual consciousness is of primary importance. Like Hemmings,

I have come to believe that the problem of consciousness is very relevant in the case of Emile Zola; unlike

Hemmings' I do not feel this problem poses an impasse in the creation of truth in Zola's narrative.

The relation established between gender and genre in naturalism leads us straight to the answer. In Zola's creative vision, the theme of sexuality is the spot in his narrative where his political and aesthetic preoccupations converge. Zola's image of femininity is as many critics agree consistently ambiguous. She consumes in one novel and turns around and consoles in the next. She is the characteristically untamed or suffering mother. In pushing these reflections still further, one comes to realize that she is "patriarchal" 101

meaning that she has been made to serve the ideologies

and interests of patriarchy.27 To date, biographers and

literary critics have been unsuccessful in their

attempts to definitively conclude on Zola's fluctuating

or splitting image of female and female sexuality. The

female image interests us for a few reasons: first

because of its public value. Without a doubt, female

representation is a gross producer of meaning,

especially in a capitalist urban society, or Paris circa

1860-1890, where Zola lived and worked. Another major

issue which confronts our study of the genre of

naturalism and its productions, is the eventual return

to a male voice, the novelist, both subject to and part

of patriarchal society. This sexed alignment has prompted me to take precautionary action in maintaining what Susan Lanser calls a "critical awareness of gender

in narrative voice,...the gender of the narrator affects

the reader's acceptance of narrative authority."2®

Lanser's work in poetics was as a result of the homologous relationship she spotted between social

identity and text, or between the writer's circumstances

and narrative structures. My concordance with Lanser on

the effectiveness of the narrator has pivoted my

research in a kindred direction. Where Lanser's

argument relies on the belief that "all unmarked narrators are assumed to be male...as they are also presumed, white, heterosexual and (depending on the period) upper or middle class,"29 mine asks a similar question. Lanser concludes by asserting that writing is

"gender bound;" is it true then, that reading too, is

gender bound? This question can be asked because of the

reciprocity recently discovered between the acts of reading and writing. In the case of Zola, critical disregard for gender in reading and in writing has to be operative. For our particular study of Zola, Lanser's highly provocative statement leads to an impasse, and by extension, the following question takes us to a new path: What happens to ideology, that is meaning produced through representation, when it is filtered through an unmarked voice, in turn, an androgynous voice? Such a question inevitably returns to hermaphroditism of the author. The proliferation of androgyny in my discussion of both Zola and the

Goncourts bespeaks a fissure in the once valid system of classification according to the sexes. What Barthes says in reference to the characters in Sarrasine, is knowledge that applies itself to the discourse of naturalism, too: "the symbolic field is not that of the biological sexes; it is that of castration: of castrating/castrated, active/ passive..." Barthes belief that characters are "pertinently distributed in this field," negates the existence of the biological 103

field."30

Physically, Zola's sexuality was in question

according to the Goncourt brothers. He teetered as they

called it. In Zola, Edmond and Jules saw not quite a

female, yet not quite a male. It is safe to conclude

that either the brothers were impervious to remarking

some distinguishing feature that freed Zola from his

teetering position, or, that Zola, in fact totally

lacked clearly marked male attributes. They were

intrigued by Zola and by the fact that he was "like his

characters." Jean Borie skillfully recreates this

impression by establishing a symbolism between Zola and his characters, "Souvent, les personnages de ✓ Zola se definissent par ce qui leur manque, par les caracteristiques que 1'auteur leur refuse, autant et plus que par celles qu'il leur accorde."31 Borie's statement supports the Goncourts' vision of Zola which defined him by what he wasn't or by what he lacked. The co-existing male and female traits he espouses helped

shape his vision of the world. For, in Zola's world, what appears feminine may have a masculine reality and vice-versa. Even the sex act for Zola, is not what it ✓ seems: "Ainsi, il existe deux mots pour designer l'acte

A sexuel, ou plutot deux "versions" de cet acte, l'une / virile, masculine, le rut, 1'autre en depit de la grammaire, feminine, le co'it."32 104

Aligning iny reading with androgyny offers an all encompassing critical perspective. Looking at characters through the eyes/consciousness of an androgynous narrator clearly dismisses dominance or privilege to either sex. In all fairness to both male and female bodies I suggest Barthes' symbolic field as the structuring element of difference in Zola's narrative. This manner of approaching characters is applicable to Zola since naturalism proposed that its practitioners grasp the totality of existence, language included.

In Zola's Crowds, Naomi Schor maximizes the affect of narrative while expertly applying a linguistic hierarchy to quicken interpretation. She credits A.J.

Greimas for reshaping our thinking about characters which transcends our own anthropormorphism. Greimas' structuring of the character has been accomplished "by setting up a hierarchy going from the "actor" (the individual, individuated character as he appears on the surface of the text(...), to the "actant" (a metatextual metalinguistic construct based on the functions characters perform. The study of Zola's characters and plots can be accomplished in the most fascinating way possible by a system of classification. I understand her to be advocating a return to function rather than to gender and the body. It appears from what we have just 105 seen that gender can be coextensive with a single role, the most simple distinction male/active, female/passive.

Considered in this light, I do not see Schor calling for a total dismissal of references to sexuality. Far from being peripheral, gender is a unifying theme in Zola's fiction. Suggesting that readers refer to gender after function belies another truth about genre and the sexes in Zola's universe. Zola's characters are lying in wait, as if in some narrative purgatory; uniform and undifferentiated. His characters are in truth, transplants: they adopt a masculinity or femininity as they develop. We admire Zola's characters for their progression or movement: they enter their sexuality, they just don't put it on. Thus, Chantal Bertrand

Jennings has pioneered a significant revisionism when she writes that "the most ideal woman of Zola's fiction

"is" the poor orphan."3-4 The orphan is so perfect a choice because she can be removed from her origins and readily placed or transplanted into a new race, moment and milieu where she undergoes rapid and intense transformation. The model in L 'OEuvre, Christine

Hallegrain is the archetypal orphan in Zola's narrative

Zola's first wife, Alexandrine was also orphaned.

Just as Schor considers gender a sort of affliction in characterization, David Baguely presents a lively and convincing argument against the de rigueur and rigid systematization of generic categories. He expresses the hope that the practice of literary criticism will see

"genre" as a kind of affliction of literature, a sum of moribund conventions from which naturalists strive to extricate themselves."35 Both Schor and Baguley emphasize the hazards connected with literary research especially as they relate to naturalism. Schor asks us to be mindful of the limitations associated with gender classification (these are extraneous to aesthetic appreciation and readability). She refuses any reductive practices in literature, opting always for complexity. Alongside Schor, Baguely impacts with a literary practice which eschews the conventional. While she argues away gender he argues away genre as an obstacle to understanding. He skillfully draws our attention to a more valid distinction that Jean Marie

Schaeffer proposes between genre which is "une pure

. / / * categorie de classification" and genencite' which he calls "un facteur productif de la constitution de la textualite."3S Similarly, the word "gender" sets up an obstacle. Just as Schaeffer moves from genre (a static notion) to genericite (a productive mode) we may instate the same idea of production with the neologism

"gendericity," which becomes a productive factor in the constitution of sexuality. If it is only through genericite that textual codes be presented in their 107 entirety, then it is only through androgyny as consciousness or, gendericity, that sexuality or body politics be represented in their original complexity.

Through reliance on both we can gain access to all productive structures in narrative. My desire is to circulate first a textually bound reading relying equally on "genericite" and gendericity to yield the productive aspects of the narrative.

Emile Zola Restored

Zola's own life as we know it, presented both in and out of his fictions is highly inconsistent.

Although he enjoyed popular success, critics constantly harangued him. Hailed as a great social reformer, and friend to the working classes, we are also familiar with

Zola's imperialistic side. The kind experimenting man photographed riding a bicycle was accused of sadistic voyeurism and pederasty by the Goncourt brothers.

Hemmings is a master in squeezing juicy details into his biographical account of Zola. He takes the reader to the parlor, to the men's room where the relaxed atmosphere of sumptuous food and rich wines brought out the bravado in a man. Indeed, if we are to believe what

Edmond de Goncourt reported, we are left with the impression that Zola had no moral sense. Hemmings gives a circumstantial account that he had slept with wives of his best friends, or that he was plagued by a desire to go to bed with a very young girl, not a child, but a girl who had not reached puberty. The same man who fought and condemned the systematic exploitation of

female sales clerks and clientele in Au Bonheur des

Dames, was allegedly guilty of exploiting women in his life.37 Similar contradictions exist in Zola's life.

The divergent textual/sexual relationship Zola enjoyed with women can begin to be understood and best resolved by "looking at Zola's writing as a deep-seated sub conscious or even unconscious necessity and analyze the functioning and meaning of his female characters within the system of his fiction rather than as reflections of reality."38 Jennings' comment, with its attendant focus on the repressed or unconscious dimension of Zola's writing allows us to shift our focus for the moment and concentrate on the psychological development of Zola, leaving the narrative aside. Jennings structures her study of Zola's women by relying on two points of view: that they are patriarchal or that they are equated with

"Other" as the "embodiment of a rival conscience which constitutes a particular danger."39

This famed or perhaps infamous incongruity in

Zola's life regarding his life's fictions and his fictional and real involvement with females and 109 sexuality has prompted me to present the hidden Zola, the man behind the camera. Taking into consideration the arguments and theories presented to this point I feel that the best, the most efficient and original manner in which to present Zola is framed or textualize as a figure of matriarchy, or "in the service of women."

This displacement will render an explicit portrait of a

Victorian male. In order to facilitate this reading the approach to the repressed essence of Zola is through a female dialectic which takes the family as the point of origin for its articulation. This structure is suggested as the mediation between individual psyche and society.

A painting of Francesco and Emilie Zola with their young son Emile, executed by an unknown artist in 1845 is an interesting departure point for framing this discussion of Zola. Unfortunately it is one of the few family portraits available; for this reason alone it deserves commentary. When Zola was seven years old, in

1847, his father suddenly died of an attack of pleurisy.

The painting is highly symbolic for more than just the apparent historical data it betrays. Emile, aged five, is standing close to his seated mother, their hands joined in an affectionate gesture. There is a marked similarity between Madame Emilie Zola and her son in their eyes, and faces. Zola's father, Francesco, is 110 seated as well, next to his wife, yet distanced from her. Any signs of intimacy in the portrait are, without contest, emanating from the mother/son relationship.

Zola's closeness with his mother is also reflected through the process of naming. Zola's mother's given name, Emilie, considered linguistically is a female derivative of Emile. The father's original family name,

Zolla, is also truncated. Francesco Zola, aged forty- four when he married Emilie Aubert was -born a citizen of the ancient Republic of Venice. He was descended from a distinguished military family, whose original name was

"Zolla." When he transplanted his family from Venice to

Aix-en-Provence he altered the family name to Zola. The purpose undoubtedly was to facilitate the family's acculturation to France. Thus, the name Emile Zola is a truncated version of both his mother and his father's name. The disparaging fact is that Emile never was able to wear his father's original name; he was conscious throughout his lifetime of a total misrecognition of the father, a man he scarcely knew, and a too solid resemblance with his mother. Her family was well established "as working class immigrants who under the

July Monarchy were leaving the nearby country districts in great numbers to settle in Paris."'40 This brief look into the Zola family helps our understanding of

Emile, at once aristocrat, and at the same time, working Ill class.

Zola's young life at the age of five was already one marked by great confusion and rude awakenings.

Sexually abused at age five by a twelve year old servant boy, an Arab named Mustapha, Zola's conceptions of sexuality and God began to form simultaneously.

Admittedly guilt ridden and ashamed, Zola nonetheless was still curious in a sadistic way. The feelings aroused in him by the Arab servant were associated in Zola's mind with God, guilt and punishment with the body. "When threatened with God's ire for stealing fruit or telling some unpardonable lie, he would imagine this same venerable, yet frightening patriarch striding down from the wall, switch in hand and administering the memorable corporal punishment he so richly deserved."41

Zola's fears bore simultaneous association of pain and pleasure, God and sexuality concentrating on the early history of Zola, Angus Wilson focuses on the death of the father which made it impossible for him to achieve the success for which he and his family were prepared.

Consequently the father son relationship is blurred.42

Urban renewal of the capital was in full swing in

1858 when Zola arrived, on the insistence of his mother, in Paris at the age of eighteen. Since his father's death his mother was a domineering figure in his life.

During those very lean years, Zola's family was 112 comprised of his mother and maternal grandmother. His arrival in Paris inspired him to write many depressing letters to his boyhood friends in Aix-en-Provence. His repeated concern was his mother, and how he would manage to care for her. A typical letter of this period reads:

N \ , > "Je suis encore a la charge de ma mere, qux peut a peine suffire a elle-meme. Je suis oblige de chercher un travail pour manger et ce travail, je ne l'ai pas encore trouve, seulement j'espere 1'avoir bientot."43

From this fragment, the analysis of a troubled, unstable Zola, not sure exactly how to continue, surfaces. Up to this point his life was totally dominated by his mother's desires. His desire to emancipate himself from a totally dominant mother contrasts sharply with his need to continue to be what she desires. As an individual he hardly existed at all and what did exist, we discover, was a highly repressed and immature young man, really an appendage of his mother. His situation is such that he longs for his old friends in Aix, wants to be a man of letters and, is feverishly shaking off the dominating image of women.44

Instead of falling in love with women he sublimated his sexual energy into love affairs with poetry, landscapes, dramas and fiction. He remained with his mother and circuited all his enthusiasm into his writing. He devotedly created a lifestyle for himself 113 that responded to his artistic desires. This forging of a new life put him back in touch with his old artist friends who had, by this time installed themselves in

Paris.

Manet's "Dejeuner sur L'Herbe" (1863) is one of the earliest sources known to have evoked or rekindled

Zola's sexual excitement. The central female figure with her bare breasts "blue" from the cold and strong arms, and the rosy nymph-like woman bathing in the pond revives "the sensual pleasure he used to experience as a boy when he went bathing in the deep, tree shaded waters of the Arc. Manet's masterpiece delighted Zola because it "hinted at a link between narcissistic delights and the more overtly sexual excitement suggested by the model's bare arms, powerful thighs and heavy breasts."45

It is generally agreed that Manet's painting violated many, if not all of the taboos of the period for its overly exposed sexual content. Viewers immediately question the composition for its overt and covert properties. Contemporary feminist theorists put forth some answers by way of suggesting that the painting is a vehicle for exploiting the female body which reinforces the idea that it is only a construction of a male perspective and therefore what is truly female is really missing from the picture. 114

Likewise, the painting instilled new meaning into

Zola's life. Religion became irrational to him; the

female body, lush and fertile much like the provincial

countrysides, and much like a temptress was calling him

forward. A renewed sense of idealism and vitality took

back its rightful place in Zola's life in realistic

proportions in 1864. His first book, Contes a Ninon was

a modest success. The real success story it seems, lies

in the body of Gabrielle Eleonore Alexandrine Miley, the

woman with whom Zola fell in love. A strong and

striking parallel can be drawn between Gabrielle, who

the world has come to know as Alexandrine and the most

ideal woman of Zola's fictions, the orphan. Hemmings

sorts out this tightly woven genogram, expertly

indicating that it was primarily due to Madame Zola's

insistence that her son and Alexandrine meet.

Alexandrine was a seamstress. Investigations have shown

that Zola's mother took in similar work when she had the

chance, which brings us to the following version of the

relationship engineered by Madame Zola: it seems that

Alexandrine had the tenancy of a respectable and much

larger apartment close to the Zolas. At the initial

time of their meeting, she was much better off

financially than they were. Their shared "trade" was

instrumental to Madame Zola's plot of hemming in Emile

and Alexandrine. The Zolas moved in with Alexandrine 115 smoothly accommodating Madame Zola's desire for a more spacious apartment. Zola, like a finished garment was delivered, by his mother to a woman one year older than himself and who was, to boot, more successful. History provides the added dimension allowing the assessment that Zola's first wife and his mother are of the same fabric. Figuratively, with the adoption of Alexandrine,

Zola only traded one mother figure with another. This exchange explains their degenerating sexual relationship which was never satisfying.

By 1875 Zola's domestication became so intolerable that he feared he would not have the strength to finish the Rougon Macquart. Madame Zola finally moved out of her son's life and Zola was completely turned off by the domestic lie he had been leading which included a lack of physical, emotional and spiritual intimacy. Sex became a duty out of which was born Zola's most serious dissatisfaction with his marriage: its childlessness.

Fast approaching fifty Zola longed to be young again and to finally experience true love. Art critics are eager to point to Manet's "Dejeuner Sur l'Herbe" as the inspirational factor motivating his relationship with Alexandrine since both appeared around the same time. If Alexandrine did step out of a Manet painting, then Jeanne Rozerot was the embodiment of Ninon. For, in 1877 at the age of twenty, she was hired as a maid for the Zola household by Madame Zola. Within weeks she became Zola's mistress. Madame Zola, Sr. died in 1880.

Symbolically, the death of his own mother ended Zola's marriage to his first wife. Alexandrine and his mother were fruitfully replaced by Jeanne and the two children she bore him. Zola was confident and peaceful with the new found liberty in his life that a satisfying love relationship brought forth. Yet, the attitudes of others like Edmond de Goncourt, Ceard and Daudet regarding Zola's pretense was not so satisfying.

Collectively they accused him of hypocrisy, slyness and exploitation. Every mannerism, even his physical ugliness was sneered at. The source of the spite against Zola, was his alleged mistreatment of

Alexandrine, who stayed with him through the lean years.

It is precisely inconsistencies like these that don't add up in the historical framework. Although his

"friends" were harsh and insistent in their criticisms of the Zolas and particularly at the time of their break up, they were never terribly fond of Alexandrine. On the average they found her to be the embodiment of bourgeois pretensions. The truth is more concretely associated with jealousy on the part of Zola's friends who could not tolerate his success and elected Jeanne to be the sacrificial lamb. Zola's own guilt and regret is reflected in a letter written to Jeanne wherein he 117 confessed that he can no longer lead a double life.

The situation is resolved through an interesting turn of events: Alexandrine urged and encouraged Zola to include her, as he had never done before, in his new life. For example, she asked Zola to bring Denise and

Jacques to visit her. Immediately she took pride in these children whom she paraded through Paris on her regular walks. Alexandrine allowed Zola to continue his new life with Jeanne while she niched out her place in their lives, somewhat like a grandmother to the children. All these biographical indices point to the fact that Alexandrine had taken the place of Zola's mother long before she had died. His own mother in fact diminished his need for a wife and in turn the wife diminished the mother. Another important date and fact in the Zola/Jeanne Rozerot relationship is the appearance of 0, the novel that most critics point to as the reason for the split in Zola's relationship with his friends. For Joanna Richardson, is "almost certainly a record of Zola's own detachment from Alexandrine."4-7

The Jeanne Rozerot episode in Zola's life is important and essential to my final comments on the real differences between the Goncourt brothers and Zola.

Zola's courtship with Jeanne restored his virility and happiness. His friends admit that they had never seen him so idle, so trim, so well groomed— ever. Through 118

Jeanne Zola had come to the conclusion that there were

things in life more important than literature. Through

Jeanne Rozerot Zola was able to recapture the viril

component that he had been lacking. He had been

severely saturated with mother figures. His aim or

desire was to no longer represent the mother but to

signify the father. Zola linked his century to a mother

big with child. He confessed to Edmond de Goncourt in

January of 1889, when Edmond referred to Zola as a slave

to literature, just the opposite. Zola, who had devoted himself to authorship, had in the process, forgotten how to live life. He assured Edmond that he was starting to give in to his yearnings for life and would no longer a slave to the novel. Coaxing Edmond at that moment over to a window and pointing out to the street where a young woman passed, Zola asked "Now isn't that more important than a book?"'43 Of course, Edmond wholeheartedly disagreed. This is one of the real differences between

Zola and Goncourts: Zola loved women, Goncourt loved

literature.

From a purely literary point of view, differences between Zola and the Goncourts are in evidence.

Regarding the initial controversy over MS and O, Brady's own words, centered on the character of Chrisitne give

A credence: "En fait, nous savons par Zola lui-meme / / ✓ que ce changement est motive par le desir de creer une 119

'femme d'artiste' aussi differente que possible de celle y decrite par Goncourt, Daudet et d'autres.

MS is a novel about power; O is a about humanism and faith in progress through science and art. 1886, the year O was published, was a year full of uncertainty and change for Zola. More than any other novel, 0 is autobiographical. Zola wrote about the artists he knew.

MS is escapist literature on both a temporal and spatial level. The reader revels in art of centuries past and in space we are shipped off to the Orient. The intent of MS was auto-erotic: through Manette the brothers were able to appeal to their own desires and prejudices while masquerading about art. From the opening chapters in MS we are given a pathetic view of the artist and this is only reinforced as the novel progresses. With Zola we are given a candid picture of reality, of contemporary

Parisian and provincial life with no disguise, without filters. Zola wrote for a public; the Goncourts wrote for themselves. Zola admits that 0 is a profound psychological study through which he takes a stand on art, literature and the human condition. The Goncourts' art is self indulgent, aristocratic and in the end, phobic. 120

Notes to Chapter II

1 F.W.J. Hemmings, "The Origins of term Naturalist; Naturalisme," French Studies, 8 (1954): 109. In Concepts of Criticism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963), Rene Wellek considers naturalism the doctrine of Zola, one that "implies a scientific approach and a philosophy of deterministic materialism." Wellek cites Zola as opposed to the other realists who were in his perspective, "far less clear or unified in their philosophical affiliations" (234).

2 Havelock Ellis, "Zola: Man and His Works," Critical Essays on Zola, ed. David Baguley (Boston: G.K. Hall and Company, 1986), 67. Jean Borie adds a similar comment in Zola et les mythes (Paris: Seuil, 1971), 9, when he makes references to Edmond de Goncourt who considered Zola to be the representation of "la duplicite italienne."

3 This paragraph is steepted in Lacanian terminology to describe Zola: "1'hommelette/I'omelette" literally means either "little-man" or "scrambled eggs." The play on words Lacan has created is used to describe a state of being, where for the subject, the infant, no definite boundaries exist between itself and object. The "infans" stage for Lacan is synonymous with a lack of language. Infans means speechless.

4 Jules de Goncourt, intro. Lettres (Paris: Flammarion, 1930), 25.

5 ibid., 22-23.

6 F.W.J. Hemmings, The Age of Realism (Sussex: The Harvester Press Limited, 1978), 173.

7 ^Prajs, Fallacite, 16-17. The entire quote is: "la theorie du roman des Goncourts: l'essentiel secret romanesque consiste a "^viter le vraismemblable conventionnel et la demarche logique et attendue. Contre ce risque de/'mensonge romantique' selon 1'expression de Rene Girard, ils considerent qu'il 121 / ' suffit d'injecter dans le cours du recit^des bouffees de vrai, sans souci du contexte, d'une maniere illogique, comme l'est le cours de 1'existence lui-meme."

8 Brady, "L'OEuvre," 326.

9 Jules de Goncourt, Lettres. This closing or some very close variant of it is expressed in many of the letters written to Louis Passy, one of Jules' childhood friends.

10 ibid., 247-8. In this letter, Jules is thanking Zola for the article he wrote praising Germinie Lacerteux.

11 ibid., 301-2.

12 ibid.

13 ibid., 331.

14 F.W.J. Hemmings, "Origins," 109-110.

15 Yves Chevrel, Le Naturalisme (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1982), 27

16 Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, Germinie Lacerteux, preface (Paris: A.G. Nizet, 1968), 1-2.

17 Robert Baldick, Pages From The Goncourt Journal (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1978), 231.

18 For a detailed history of the "Manifeste des Cinq" see Hemmings, Age, page 359. Briefly, La Terre, published in 1887, was the subject of the debate. Zola's novel was criticized for its lurid erotic content and thus was not considered naturalism. To some critics, this date marks the end of the age of naturalism. 122

19 Emile Zola, Le Roman experimental (Paris: Garnier Flammarion, 1971), 90

20 ibid.

21 Alan Raitt, Life and Letters in France, The Nineteenth Century (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1965), 29.

Emile Zola, Therese Raguin, preface, Nouvelle edition (Paris: Fasquelle, 1910), iv.

23 ibid., vii.

24 Alain de Lattre, Le Realisme selon Zola (Pans: Presses Universitaires, 1975), 13. De Lattre brings this up in contrast to a scene in Madame Bovary (Emma’s death) where feelings of disgust and agony are only evoked but are then dispatched into another new referent; into a new signifying chain.

25 ibid., 24.

26 Hemmings, Age, 180.

27 Brian Nelson, Zola and the Bourgeoisie (London: Macmillian Press Limited, 1983), 54. Nelson continues: "His ideal womanseen as a loyal wife, devoted mother and efficient "menagere" is defined by her relationship to her mate." To support his view that all of Zola's ideal women become bourgeois women, he cites Henriette Sandoz in L 'OEuvre.

28 Susan Lanser, The Narrative Act (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 166.

29 ibid., 166-167.

30 In Zola's Crowds, Schor addresses the proliferation of androgynous protagonists in nineteenth- 123 century French novel which she believes questions the validity of traditional male/female roles in society. Extending her knowledge in the direction of the author and narrator, bespeaks a similar concern. She proposes instead, drawing on Roland Barthes' advice regarding a new symbolic field of 'castrated/castrating and active/passive."' She concludes by locating sexual difference not in the biological but in the ethical.

31 Jean Borie, Zola et Les mythes (Paris: Seuil, 1971), 33. Borie's approach to Zola's fictions situates them as elaborations of the Oedipal myth. This persepective derives from his belief that bourgeois society is characterized by two repressions: lower classes and the body. He believes the novels have two functions: cathartic and documentary.

32 ibid., 11.

33 Naomi Schor, Zola's Crowds, page 36. Schor continues her argument against gender in classification by crediting A. G. Greimas who in a "Copernican revolution" has set up a hierarchy going from the "actor" (the individual, individuated character as her appears on the surface of the text...to the "actant" (a metatextual, metalinguistic construct based on the functions characters perform). Here we see Schor rejoining Barthes for whom the important role of a character lies outside of gender restrictions. By placing characters in the realm.of language they automatically transcend gender repression.

34 Chantal Bertrand Jennings, "Zola's Women: The Case of a Victorian Naturalist," Atlantis 10, No. 1 (1954), 27.

35 David Baguley, "Zola and the Bane of Genre," L 1Esprit Createur, 25, No. 4 (1985), 77.

36 Baguley quotes Jean Marie Schaffer's article "Du texte au genre. Notes sur la problematique generique," Poetigue, No. 53 (February, 1983), 15.

37 F.W.J. Hemmings, Life and Times of Emile Zola (London, Elek Books Limited, 1977), 91. 124

38 Jennings, "Zola's Women," 27.

39 ibid.

40 Hemmings, Life, 18.

41 Philip Walker, Zola (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985) , 7-8.

42 Angus Wilson, Emile Zola (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1952), 3. Wilson pinpoints Zola's greatest failure as not emancipating properly from his mother and that he insisted in providing his wife with an understudy in the home in the person of his mother. He defends Alexandrine and wonders what else she could have been but the "androgynous companion" of his childhood idylls.

43 Zola, Zola par lui-meme (Paris: Seuil, 1966), 22.

” A Emile Zola, Zola par lui-meme (Paris: "Ecrivains de Toujours" Seuil, 1966), 12.

45 Hemmings, Life. 42.

46 ibid. See pages 44-45 for an account of the illegitimate history of Zola's first wife.

47 Joanna Richardson, introduction, Zola (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1978), 113.

48 Hemmings, Life. 79.

49 Brady, "L'OEuvre," 159. Brady adds, in a note, "C'est pourquoi Christine ne sera ni un modele, ni une femme fatale." PART II

Maiden Texts:

Fiction and Sexuality

125 CHAPTER III

Manette Salomon

Les Artistes was first mentioned in the Goncourt

Journal in 1861 as the novel that would open up in an artist's studio. Just before publication, L'Atelier

Langibout was the newly proposed title of the novel that intensely mixed the elegant colors of the art world with the washed out inelegance of the Parisian bourgeoisie.

Finally, the work was christened Manette Salomon, marking the victory of a Jewish woman as central character in 1866.1 Manette provides, not so much the subject matter of the novel as she does the dynamic that continually shapes and reshapes the plot.

From its inception, the novel, as its various projected titles indicate, asks questions: will this be about an entire class, the instruction of a particular style of art, or an intimate portrait of individual and female psychology? The scope or intention of the novel is tied closely with this issue of textual authority.

This is the real subject of this chapter.

The problem of narrative design is a legitimate concern. We can come closer to accepting either of the proposed titles, initially. The first twenty chapters

126 127 plot the routine and internal structure of a studio in

1840. The personal relationships of a group of young artists studying there is the essence of the opening chapters. In dynamic fashion, the reader is introduced to a company of artists, complimentary figures who are all metonymicaly classified by social stereotypes. The opening chapters move slowly and are bogged down by an overabundance of precision and detail that inundates the reader with boredom and overexposure. The naturalist demand of presenting a slice of life is exaggerated.

To treat the second issue of overexposure, I resort to a related image: the underexposed. Beneath the artifice of the overexposed lies the underexposed, which is eclipsed as a true source of authority in the novel:

Manette. As a result of hiding her, she does not even enter the narrative until chapter forty-seven, almost halfway through the novel. Her appearance is accepted as epiphany— we have waited so long for her. To most critics, her presence in the novel is but a device to create the stereotyped "femme fatale."2 The inter related question of her control of and in the text is not even approached. Robert Ricatte, a leading

Goncourt scholar, suggests that MS is organized according the following internal structure:

1. Un atelier sous Louis-Philippe (38 Pages) 2. CORIOLIS EN ORIENT, PREMIERE BOHEME D'ANATOLE (91 pages) 3. Coriolis orientaliste; Manette, le modele et la 128

maitresse (72 pages). * 4. CORIOLIS A BARBIZON, LE TRIO DANS LA FORET (69 pages). 5. Coriolis peintre de la vie moderne; Manette, la mere et la Juive (61 pages) 6. CORIOLIS EN LANGUEDOC, SECONDE BOHEME D'ANATOLE (36 PAGES). 7. Degradation de Coriolis (41 pages)3

Ricatte's outline purports that MS is constructed in

such a way that it revolves around and returns to a

static figure: Naz de Coriolis. From this brief

outline we learn that the apparently stable figure of

the three, Naz de Coriolis, is not what he pretends to

be. In fact, his random flight forward ends in

degradation. This portrait of Coriolis imparts a

certain poetic truth for the novel as a whole. This

pattern of degradation and decline from which Coriolis

is fashioned emerges as the formula "for the realist and

naturalist novels of the next two decades."4 Ricatte's

outline additionally sets up the relationship between

Anatole, the would-be-artist, admittedly more concerned with leading an artist's life than with art or even life

itself, and Coriolis. Early in the novel the narrator

tells us that "Au fond Anatole etait moins bien appele par l'art qu'il n'etait attire" par la vie d'artiste. II

revait l'atelier" (32).

Countering the two male plots of ambition (Coriolis and Anatole) in Ricatte's interpretation, is the much more complex female sub-plot, namely Manette. Her

inferiority can only be understood as the structural 129 opposite of the males. Ricatte allows her only secondary status and yet, her flight forward is truly neither random nor redundant. Her evolution is calculated and orderly. She is first seen as model then mistress. In her second evolutionary stage the maternal and the spiritual aspects of her character are highlighted. Her ambition exceeds that of her male counterparts. Even though her entrance into the narrative is as an object of male desire, she manages to achieve a new status, appropriating and validating herself through her heritage and body.

The critical discourse surrounding the Goncourts has identified "le talent vaincu par la femme,"s as the major sustaining theme in MS. This theme has been the prescription, de rigueur, for two of their earlier novels as well— En 18— (1851) and Charles Demailly

(1860). On the basis of these assertions, MS is considered more as imitation— as something less potent or strained. Manette's originality, in other words, lies in an uncompromising inquiry into the originality of the novel. The similarities which exist between MS and the other Goncourt novels have been interpreted as symptomatic of the author's phobias. In Ricatte's terms: "Ce retour monotone d'un tel theme doit traduire quelque obsession."6 Symptomatic of these obsessions is the excess in discourse in MS. Elements of excess are 130 fundamental to a new understanding of MS. As the first

true object of excess I propose Anatole Bazoche, who

links together the related questions of authority, authenticity and paternity.

Anatole Bazoche: Anarchy and the Play of Fiction

Anatole Bazoche is a convincing authority figure because he is true to form: "a perfect collusion of form and content.'’7 His last name, Bazoche, serves to build a whole range of possibilities regarding human activity.

His name is symbolic, "for the "Bazoche"— a clerk's guild of the Middle Ages was famous for its practical joking."® My approach to Anatole is from inside. We enter his prankish world of joking to take part in the momentum of its movement in order to grasp the impact of its own originality. Such an approach pays particular attention to Anatole's dialogue which helps the reader to become more attentive to messages or items of signification that were formerly invisible. Anatole functions as a processive figure through which a whole system of signification is opened.

Anatole spends most of his time conjuring up schemes and pranks, most of which are dangerous and vengeful. His humor is not healthy, but low— literally it is corrosive and one dimensional. He consistently 131

reminds the reader of the impending and strong

antagonism directed toward women. One may also predict

that the pessimistic structures built up from Anatole's

violent remarks and pranks claim that love, marriage and

family are not only obsolete and meaningless but are the

horrors of life. His whole purpose in life revolves

around Vermilion, a domesticated monkey.9 Commenting on

Georges Seurat's "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La

Grande Jatte" (1886), Edwim Mullins draws our attention

to the hypocrisy surrounding the public face of

nineteenth century marriage. In truth, Seurat's

painting questions appearances of reality and the

incandescence of marriage. His conclusions are derived

from the composition itself for, at the end of the woman's lead a monkey dangles. According to Mullins,

"Seurat knew art history and was perfectly well aware of what that meant: a monkey is a symbol of human lust."10

Just as Mullins identifies Seurat's paintng as a portrait of nineteenth century hypocrisy, the meaning of

Anatole's monkey is not dispatched into signification until much later in the narrative. The pair

Anatole/Vermillon is textualized as fraternal or familial. The hermeunetic code is broken in Chapter One

Hundred and Fourteen, when Manette manipulates Anatole into an attempted seduction. Finally he emerges as a desiring subject and Vermilion as a true symbol of his 132 master's lust. Anatole and Vermilion, two complementary figures order the narrative and expertly foreshadow

Anatole's clumsy seduction of Manette. We learn early on that "Anatole etait ne avec des malices de singe"

(38). It appears that Vermilion is the concrete expression of the abstract Anatole.

As the action of MS begins we are jetted to the

Jardin des Plantes on a snowy, grey day in the beginning of November. The account of the day ends with a familiar description of Anatole who "passe ses journees au Jardin de Plantes pour y etudier les postures et les cris des animaux qu'il imite."11 Here, for the first time we see Anatole in a ludicrous position which emphasizes both his penchant for mockery and pits him against the established order. Several textual details, up until this point neglected in criticism of MS, support this insight. On this particular day he has posed as a tour guide leading a group through an aerial view of Paris from a belvedere. This scene best represents his lack of sentimentality. He has no interior, no shape, no outline. Like a chameleon,

Anatole conforms to any situation, corrupt or not. He creates fictions for himself. In a bold attempt to legitimate himself as tour guide, he feels compelled to gain mass appeal. He appropriates himself first through his use of language, the result of which is clumsy and 133 invalid. What Anatole's first words, "Time is Money!"

"...Spoken here!" "Rule Britannia" and "All Right," (20) suggest is that in the presence of language there is still the absence of any syntactic or semantic truth. ✓ Anatole spews cliches, all in English and for no apparent reason. He reverently returns to his native

French to impress the rest of the crowd with his manners and his insights into the masses, "C'est toujours doux S de retrouver sa langue dans la bouche d'un etranger"

(20). Anatole's fictional scenarios serve to legitimate him albeit through illegitimate means. His is a strong and inappropriate use of language.

In the first chapter, the perspective is, paradoxically enough, his. Like the meandering crowd of tourists, we too, are captivated by Anatole's moving descriptions of the city. He institutes a unique and original mode of learning, unique not only in its charade but in the fact that he gives us access to information unavailable through any other mode of learning. His perspective dominates and his vision is our vision. Through Anatole's plea of "Confiez-moi votre oeil, je n'en abuserai pas," (20) we discover that human discourse is not entirely in agreement with itself. Here, his language escapes intentionality and meaning. When placed in a relationship to a series of sites, Anatole's use of language brings up certain 134

possibilities and limitations about his own psyche. The

language spoken by the subject "slips." One of the most

striking examples occurs as he places himself in

relation to a site to conceive his text. I refer to the

moment when he offers a view of Montmartre. He perverts

the sounds of the word to bear on "mons martyrum" (21)

the implications of which infinitely exceed the signs

originally intended by the site or speaker. When he

focuses our attention on La Salpetriere, "ou l'on

enferme les femmes plus folles que les autres" (22), we

again recognize Anatole revealing an inner truth or

ignorance. As he attempts to use scientific reasoning

as conviction, he fails, falling instead into an

unorthodox structure of false labelling and miscomprehension of history and females.

Both of these examples open wide a window on

Anatole's psychology which suggests from the beginning

that women are pathetic and that the artist is a social monster. His obtrusive behavior is effective; he is a master in directing the crowd and placing himself at the center of discourse. The practice of promoting himself by way of illegitimacy, playing pranks on others for personal gain, and incessant joking at the expense of

others revives a practice found in one of the earliest

novels in western tradition, Lazarillo de Tormes (1554).

All Lazarillo's pranks were aimed at personal survival. 135

True to picaresque tradition Anatole engages in trickery to stay alive. His stratagems literally enable his life to go forward just as they generate the narrative.

However, Anatole in fact is not that ambitious. The money he solicits from the crowd of tourists is given to a charity; perhaps initially generous, but not ambitious, and in a sense, he cleanses himself of his false position. In the next chapter we see Anatole reunited with the group of artists, all wondering where to dine and how to pay. Here, he effectively repeats

"j'ai l'oeil" (23) as he leads the group into a local cafe. Regarding the evolution of the picaro in modern literature, Peter Brooks writes:

By the nineteenth century, the picaro's scheming to stay alive has typically taken a more elaborated and socially defined form: it has become ambition. It may in fact be a defining characteristic of the modern novel (as of bourgeois society) that it takes aspiration, getting ahead seriously, rather than simply as the object of satire (which was the case in much earlier, more aristocratically determined literature) and thus it makes ambition the vehicle and emblem of Eros, that which totalizes the world as possession and progress.12

Brooks' meditation on the nineteenth century picaro suggests that the earlier Anatole is indeed a vehicle of satire constructed from the Goncourts' aristocratic ideology. In fact, he makes fun of nineteenth century characteristics of getting ahead, evidenced by his duplicate stages of bohemianism and his ignorance of the established order. His actions set change in motion 136 only because they reformulate the real. He is constantly wrapped in another fiction.

The position of authority which Anatole occupies in the opening chapter is short lived. The moment he is set in motion among women he is deflated or dethroned.

He is similarly menaced by an overabundance of paternity figures who threaten to remove him from his privileged place in his own scenarios. Anatole Bazoche was the son of a widow, left without fortune, but as a "trouveuse d'idees et de dessins" (31) was inventive enough to make her own small fortune. In the absence of a father,

Anatole suffers from a series of father substitutes.

His mother's role in her son's life is imposing; she overcompensates for the lack of a father. She commits the faults inherent to fatherhood when she claims authoritative status. Meanwhile, the paternity of his teachers claims the same authority over him. While his mother envisioned a military life for her son, mostly in a vain attempt to put him in contact with a strong governing body, Anatole was determined that the only ranks he would ever enter would be the ranks of the studio: v II y aspirait avec les imaginations du college et les appetits de sa nature. Ce qu'il voyait, c'etait les horizons de la Boheme qui enchantent, vus de loin: le roman de la Misere, le debarras du lien et de la regie, la liberte, 1'indiscipline, le debraille de la vie, le hasard,^l'aventure, l'imprevu de tous les jours, l'echappee de la maison rangee et ordonnee, le sauve-qui-peut de la 137

fainille et de 1'ennui de ses dimanches, la blague du bourgeois, tout I'inconnu du volupte du modele de la femme, le travail qui ne donne pas de mal, le droit de se deguiser toute l'annee, une sorte de carnaval eternel; voila les images et les tentations qui se levaient pour lui de la carriere rigoureuse et severe de l'art (32).

According to Brooks, Anatole is a figure of satire— he

satirizes art. His mother, finally agreeing to his desires, enrolls him in instruction with M. Peyron, a celebrated "eleve de David qui consentait a recevoir

Anatole sur le bien qu'on lui en disait" (33). After only three days, Anatole refuses to return to the studio. It turns out that Peyron's studio was for female students and that Anatole "humilie dans sa qualite d'homme" (33) swears to never return to a place he considers, "une pension de Parques" (33). In mythology, "Parques" were infernal goddesses whose mission was to cut short mortels' lives. This event comments on the cultural structure of the text. As controlled objects of and for male vision, women are acceptable; as contemporaries, they threaten. This initial act of removing women from the text as producers and mothers can be traced to the personal phobias of the

Goncourts. Consequently, Anatole is placed in

Langibout's studio where he is warmly welcomed by the other male students and applauded for his quick wit.

Immediately he is nicknamed "La Blague" (42). For

Pierre Sabatier, the name "La Blague est de sa nature 138 sarcastique et mechante; elle veut tout abaisser, tout violer, tout profaner, et son plaisir est d'autant plus vif qu'elle a reussi a detruire un objet plus sacre."1

The perpetual act of caricature is the only art

Anatole practices. In Langibout's studio he gains quick acceptance by telling irreverent stories of his youth which target women as the object of his contempt. For the others, Anatole becomes synonymus with a

\ "proletariat energy" — a force: "La Blague, c'est a leurs yeux, 1*esprit et l'arme de la democratie, et quelque chose comme force collective, irresponsable et nefaste."3-4 Through his storytelling, Anatole is restored to a level of authority. We begin to get a glimpse of how he nurtures this authority: instead of relating the horrifying experience of being thrown into

Peyron's studio with the goddesses of hell or death, he forgoes any mention of this to assert his own threatening masculinity. The first story he shares with his comrades, to consummate a virile image takes place during an awards ceremony:

s ' A Au college, c'etait les memes niches diaboliques. Un professeur, dont il avait a se plaindre, ayant eu 1'immprudence a une distribution de prix,xde commencer son discours par: "Jeunes athletes qui allaient entrer dans l'arene..."— Vive la reine! se mit a crier Anatole en se tournant vers la reine Marie-Amelie venant voir couronner ses fils (38).

Immediately the sounds "entrer dans l'arene" triggered in Anatole's frame of reference the suggestion or 139 command "entrez dans la reine", suggesting sadism, violence and aggression toward women.

This anecdote demonstrates that his discursive practices are strictly unbound. No rules or limits protect his grammar in the production of meaning. All is play to him. It follows from this profoundly challenging and exposing play on words that Anatole's playful abolition or perversion of sense is not a true act of creation. We know that language precedes, in this case Anatole, and in general, any user. Therefore, his "art" in the strictest sense of creation is not original but mimetic. It follows from these intuitive and ethical postulates bodied forth by Anatole that all is play to him. His is a corrosive use of language which undermines true invention and signification.

This series of events comments on the controversy already raised by Anatole's presence in the narrative.

In fact, we begin to see early in the novel a structure which juxtaposes creativity and imitation, true artistry and stagnation. Our understanding of his speeches, complete with ellipsis and double entendres structures his unconscious.

In Chapters Thirteen and Fourteen, Anatole is dismissed from Langibout's studio for making a mockery of it in front of all the other students. Taking this cheap "shot" at the studio is the psychoanalytic 140 equivalent of usurping the father's authority. This subversive act forces a regression in the narrative:

Anatole's mother returns to save her son from expulsion.

Her defense of her son convinces Langibout to reinstate

Anatole. However, Langibout has no use for a preconceived notion of the mythical Anatole and considers him,

Le vivant exemple du singulier contraste, de la curieuse contradiction qu'il n'est pas rare de rencontrer dans le monde des artistes. II se trouvait que ce farceur, ce paradoxeur, ce moqueur enrage^du bourgeois avait pour les choses d'art, les idees les plus bourgeoises, les religions d'un fils de Prudhomme. Pour un homme de ce temperament et de ces idees, il y avait un grand reve: le Prix de Rome (67).

Langibout's statement clearly juxtaposes high ideals of art with the base aspirations of the bourgeois— clearly incompatible desires. The end result of this contra diction in character is further revealed through the introduction of Chassagnol, the newest member of the group, "the Goncourt mouthpiece, the socialist who hates the bourgeoisie."15 A chance meeting on a Paris street corner opens up dialogue between Anatole and Chassagnol.

Anatole coaxes him into a cafe to deliberately chide him with his good news: his work had just been approved by the committee in charge of awarding the prix de Rome.

The apparently gratuitous choice of Chassagnol as

Anatole's victim serves another purpose. Whether as a consequence of his own highly confident and socialistic 141

attitude toward artistic creation or not, his discourse

is centered around the demanding bourgeois aesthetics

associated with the prize. Chassagnol calls Rome "la

Mecque du poncif!...oui, la Mecque du poncif...un •

atmosphere d'asphyxie" (73) and the path to permanent

"embourgeoisement" (72). Recipients of the award are

all the same. Anatole would become "une honorable

mediocrite...comme des autres" (73). In the absence of

a satisfactorily established substitute for "l'ecole de

Rome," Chassagnol proposes "la vraie ecole [c'est]

✓ ✓ A 1'etude en pleine liberte selon son gout et son choix"

(72).

Chassagnol follows Anatole home that night,

theorizing on art until Anatole, to silence him, offers

his bed. The two remains together for three days until

he abandons Anatole,

pour s'en aller avec un autre ami quelconque, gui etait venu s'asseoir a leur table de cafe. C'etait son habitude, une habitude qu'on lui avait toujours connue^de passer ainsi d'un individu, d'une societe, d'un camarade, d'un cafe a un autre cafe, d un autre camarade, pour se raccrocher aux gens, quand il les retrouvait, comme s'il les avait quittes la veille, les quitter de nouveau quelques jours apres, et s'en aller nouer avec le premier venu une nouvelle intimite d ’une moitie de semaine (74).

The Chassagnol/Anatole relationship introduces the first

true structure of rivalry between discourses. The proliferation in Chassagnol's discourse of signifiers deprecating both Rome and the recipients of the prize 142 are in sharp contrast with Anatole’s defense of it. The polarity shown here is undermined when Garnotelle, not

Anatole, is the recipient of the award. Brady considers this a fundamental framework for plotting difference between MS and 0. He initially focuses his attention on the bond established among artists in O. This abstract element, as he calls it, "the undifferentiated group ego mass" the glue, or the a priori part of O's script never develops in MS. We witness no core, no shared ambitions, only isolated authority.xe

The implications of Chassagnol's speech and habits are deserving of further exploration in the traditional style of Freudian psychoanalytic approaches. This exploration is governed by linguistic experience while centering on the analysis of the personal psyche of the author with regard to this character. When we first see

Chassagnol in Chapter Two he is a stranger to both

Coriolis and Anatole. Coriolis asks "Qu'est-ce que c'est ce monsieur-la, hein? qui a l'air d'un vieux foetus?" (24) to which Anatole replies,

Connais pas...mais pas du tout...Je l ’ai vu une fois avec des eleves de Gleyre, une autre fois avec des eleves de Rude...II dit des choses sur l ’art, au dessert, il m ’a semble...Tres collant..Il s ’est accroche a nous depuis deux ou trois jours...il va ou nous mangeons...Tres fort pour reconduire, par exemple...Il vous lache a' votre porte a' des heures indues...Peut-etre qujil demeure quelque part, je ne sais pas ou...Voila (24).

Now, during the time that Chassagnol spent with Anatole, 143

the entire conversation was dubbed with theory on art:

Deux jours et^deux nuits, Chassagnol ne quitta pas Anatole, emboitant son pas, 11accompagnant au restaurant, au cafe, vivant sur ce qu'il mangeait, partageant ses nuits et son lit, continuant d parler, a theoriser, a paradoxer, intarissable sur l^art, sans que jamais un mot lui "^chappait sur lui meme, ses affaires, la famille qu'il pouvait avoir, ce qui le faisait vivre, sans qu'il lui vint jamais a la bouche le nom d'un pfere, d'une mere, d'une maitresse, de n'importe quel 'etre a quivil tint, d'un pays meme qu'il fut le sien. Mystere que tout cela dans^cet homme bizarre et secret, dont la science meme venait on ne savait d'ou (74).

Reading this as Chassagnol's unconscious allows us to

situate the text in a shifting space between repression

and memory. He aligns himself with art in an attempt to

eclipse heredity. His incessant theorizing approaches

a therapeutic dimension, almost a talking cure. After

three days, Chassagnol leaves Anatole and the narrator

refers to the next day as "le lendemain de cette

separation" (74).

It is impossible to ignore the network of play

existing between the conscious and the unconscious

implications in these last remarks and the structure

these figures of discourse introduce to coincide with

the polarity already hinted at between the Goncourts and

Chassagnol. Thus, it may be extrapolated one step

further through the introduction of the individual organism, the body, which occupies consistently a substantial place in the Goncourt brothers' writing.

That Chassagnol is first described as an "old foetus" is 144

intriguingly significant because, in the long run this

identification is helpful in determining the broad

evolutionary picture of this character. Chassagnol, in

the end, abandons art altogether; he is dead creatively.

All he ever produces are fairly eloquent discourses on

the practice and theory of art. A similar experience is

immediately recognizable in the stages of the Goncourt

brothers' writing. No other confluence of fiction and

reality could better dramatize the Goncourts' literary

gesture. The brothers' novels have been considered the

introduction, even the threshold one has to pass to get

to the more powerful naturalist novels of a Zola and

Huysmans or a Maupassant.1-7

The unusual configuration perceived here between

author and character is a product of substitution.

There are two signifying centers in this argument, two

key concepts or words: Grant's statement that

Chassagnol is the Goncourt mouthpiece which leads to the

conclusion that the Goncourts, like Chassagnol, are an

old fetus. By definition a fetus is an unborn or unhatched vertebrate only attaining the basic structural

plan of its kind. Usually, when a fetus does not develop properly it is because of some abnormality in

chromosomal pairing. Considered in this context, the matter of comparison becomes still more serious when the various failed attempts of the Goncourts are 145 highlighted. Overpowered by the genius of Becque, they had. not been instrumental in advancing Naturalist theater. Publications of both Charles Demailly and En

18 were aborted due to the ubiquitous incidents of simultaneous political unrest; their network of friends was never stable, rather they attached themselves to a stunning and prestigious group of brilliant conversationalists. From these considerations it follows that their own personal evolutions both literary and personal were stunted. Jules never developed a mature sexual relationship. Due to a severe case of venereal disease he, in fact, restricted his sexual encounters. Edmond, it is reported, was paralyzed when, at a young age he saw his younger cousin engaged in sexual activity. His own first true sexual encounter left him with a permanent disgust for the female body.

The only real success was the consistent and consuming love affair they had with their J. Highly effective as textual partners, their success was fleeting. Jules' early death had a devastating effect on Edmond. Together they survived as one highly inflexible, phobic and neurotic personality. Like

Chassagnol, who completely drops out of sight, an equally dense mystery surrounded the brothers. Zola once referred to Edmond, after the death of Jules, as a

"fastidious old bachelor."13 Their one true devoted 146

friend, Alphonse Daudet called Edmond an old widow. An old fetus then does not seem impossible.

MS is a text sparked and sustained by repetition and doubling of plots. This pairing assures focus.

Additionally, that which is fundamental, the elaboration of a core group of artists is easily recognizable through these surface structures. However, rather than a core in MS, we have a hollow: the very space hollowed out by the group long before the entrance of Manette.

Coriolis' group of artists is displaced by a simulacrum that attempts to mirror the referent but is emptied of its significance. Adding to this deficit is Garnotelle who is reified as le prix de Rome. Zola considers him to be "le peintre correct et mediocre qui reussit sans talent avec une habilite rusee de negociant de vins."1-9

This highly uncomplimentary description of Garnotelle does not stem from any personal malice, since other critics have registered fairly identical character izations of Garnotelle. Maligning Garnotelle comments more on the negativism associated with Academicism.

Garnotelle is simply the ideological vehicle constructed to expose all that the brothers despise. He is clearly the enemy with narrative respect to Chassagnol. The narrator admits that "Garnotelle montrait l’exemple de ce que peut, en art, la volonte sans le don, 1'effort / ✓ ingrat, le courage de la mediocnte: la patience" (75). 147

He is Rome, the banal and the habitual. Now, it is obvious that with the introduction of these three artists the bridges are burnt between any core group of artists.

In an effort to bridge the gap and efface this paradox, the Goncourt offer the carefully cut profile of

Naz de Coriolis, the elegant and gentrified central artist figure who embraces all the qualities essential to the true artist. When we first meet Coriolis ("le dernier enfant d'une famille de Provence, originaire d'ltalie, qui, a la Revolution de 89, s'etait refugie a

1'ile Bourbon") he is desperately bored with Parisian life (48). He decides to embark on a project totally different from all that presently surrounds him.

He explains to Anatole,

Je vais me promener en Orient...Oui, j'ai besoin de changer d'air...Ici, je sens que je ne peux rien faire...Ce gueux de Paris, c'est si charmant, si prenant, si tentantl Je me connais et je me fais peur: Paris finirait par me manger...II me faut quelque chose qui me change...du mouvement...Je suis ennuye de moi, de ma peinture, de 1'atelier, ...II me semble que je suis fait pour autre chose. (49)

In contrast to the calculated Garnotelle, Coriolis is a hot blooded, hot tempered, impetuous, but self searching Creole. At first it appears that Coriolis is in search of the exotic, that a change in domicile and sensation is what he seeks. It becomes apparent, however, that in addition to his search for the exotic 148

in art, he has suffered the break-up of a love affair

and feels the true need to be alone. Coriolis admits

"c'est bon pour se reconnaitre et se trouver..." (49).

He connects the need for the exotic with the loss of a female and loss of self. The plot he has devised for himself serves as a figure of displacement, desire

leading to change of position.20

The plotted .introduction of the Orient is a deviance or transgression of the canon. The pioneering efforts of an aristocratic artist in a far off country mark an original in French literature. This alerts us to aesthetic facts which demonstrate that the Goncourts who were the first to openly sing the praises of the

Orient. According to Sabatier: "IIs ont aime le japonisme parce qu'il se plait a deformer pittoresque- ment la nature et a construire de curieuses et horrifiques caricatures."21 What is clearly conceived in a fictional space is the opposing school to academic art. Given the brothers' delight in detailing the obscene and the morbid as well as their nightly use of opiated tobacco, their inflated sense of imagination extends far past the traditional in artistic endeavors.

Since the Orient, at this time, was unexplored territory for Westerners, what better way to observe and introduce its nuances and sensations than through the steps of their aristocratic conqueror, Naz de Coriolis. Ultimately the stubborn question that keeps returning, is indeed the way that Coriolis is hooked to the real: the language of the authors. One may ask if, after all, there is not an intended connection between de Goncourt and de Coriolis? Think of the brothers and Coriolis: both have and demonstrate a capacity for hard work, the talent and the calling to turn out true masterpieces.

The appearance of nobility ("de") is written into both names: "La signature Naz de Coriolis, mise au bas de ces tableaux, faisait imaginer un gentilhomme, un homme du monde et de salon, occupant ses loisirs et ses lendemains de bal avec le passe-temps d'un art" (162).

Why then, are we lead to the Orient to leave the plot suffering from its total obsession and resolute concentration on Anatole? To this end, I shall speak of

Coriolis' departure to the Orient as essential as is

Garnotelle's to Rome, to show the literal break up of the group. This movement leaves Anatole in Paris as the center— the point to which we all return.

Writing the "Voyeur"

Coriolis's first masterpieces are written. Through his letters to Anatole we recognize Coriolis as a subject who is trying to produce in order to recapture

"le moi." In his first letter (Chapter XII), Coriolis begins

by describing, through a series of vivid tones and

watered down colors a lush palatial city. It is here,

in this city that Coriolis experiences a rebirth. He * writes: "Je me sens prendre au collet par 1*autre moitie

de moi-meme, le monsieur actif, le producteur, 1 ’homme

qui eprouve le besoin de mettre son nom sur de petites

ordures qui l'ont fait suer..." (56). His mode of

thought and being, evidenced here by my emphasis on

activity and production, casts Coriolis in the

light of a true artist, struggling to capture himself in his new representations. This letter is also noteworthy because it functions as an agent of cultural production with its even juxtaposition and description of two

analogous scenes: a ritualistic slaying and a "harem

scare-homme-scene." In both, as well as in the scene of writing, the figure of a powerful male dominates our vision.

Coriolis writes that the slaughter is "affreusement

joli" (57) paying particular attention to the blood shed which begins as a trickle and aggrandizes to a fountain of blood:

un flot de sang jaillit qui rougit la pierre et s'en alia faire de grands ronds dans l'eau que lappaient les chiens. Alors un enfant qui etait Id, un bel enfant, au teint de fleur, aux yeux de velours, prit la bete par les cornes, attendant son dernier tressaillement; et de temps en temps il se penchait un peu pour mordre dans une pomme qu'il tenait dans une main avec la corne du petit 151

chevreau...Non, je n'ai jamais vu de plus affreuse- ement joli que ce petit sacrificateur avec son amour de tete, ses petits bras nus qui tenaient de toutes leurs forces, mordillant sa pomme au dessus de cette fontaine de sang, sur cette agonie d'un autre petit... (57)

The emphasis is quickly deferred from the action of the butcher and passively tranquilizes into the pool of blood. The ritualistic slaying becomes, for Coriolis, true creation: "Enfin, tout de meme, mon vieux, c'est bien dommage de faire des tableaux quand on en voit continuellement de tout faits comme celui-ci" (56). In

Coriolis' letter, then, the real begins as an object to be described. Framed, this letter is a masterpiece.

The fact that he describes the scene as beautiful, rather than trying to produce the reasons for such a slaughter, attests to his belief that rituals are to be accepted as the established law. The only option he has is to follow it up with another piece of writing, his letter. It is the representation of his attempt to write which propels the novel. It is as if Coriolis drew the ink for his stylus from the pool of blood.

His writing refers to another true creation in the last paragraphs of the letter: a harem scene, the very connotation of which implies a male appetite. Coriolis spies on this scene through a peephole:

Apres cela, il faut bien avouer que je suis venu ici le coeur un peu ouvert a tout: avant de partir, il y avait une dame qui m'y avait fait un petit trou pour voir ce qu'il y avait dedans...Ah! en fait d'amour, veux-tu mes impressions femmes 152

ici? Voici. En allantAen caique a Therapia^ je suis passe sous les fenetres d'un harem. C'etait ^claire d gigorno, comme nous disions pour les vins chauds de Langibout; et sur les raies de lumiere des persiennes, on voyait se mouvoir des ombres, des ombres, tres empaquetees, les houris de la maison, rien que cela! qui dansaient et sautaient sur de la musique qu'elle se faisait avec une epinette et un trombone1 Ahl mon ami, j'ai cru voir l"orient de l'avenir! Et je te laisse sur cette image (58).

The male voyeur presents female nudity as essentially problematic and veiled. Here, woman is presented for the enjoyment of man and testifies to the ideological values attached to the reproductive organs. In the specific case of Coriolis, I am asking how this fascination with cloaked or masked genitals is manifested in his visual image, as he calls it, "mes impressions femmes." The harem scene can be considered a euphemism, and a displacement or a metonomy for another lack; the lack of the body opening through which

Coriolis' desire finds satisfaction. When Coriolis sees the naked yet veiled women, he remarks no visible defect; instead, the opposite: the absence of defect which presents the perfect female. Questions of the invisibility of female fertility and the artist's incapacity to represent that are of prime importance.

Thus, the representation of woman in high art forms is a disparaging field for feminist art historians. In the particular case of Coriolis, misrecognition, the event of the slaughter, his fascination with blood and masked female genitals order themselves in a way that structures the act of misrecognition through repression.

The slaughter becomes a reminder of his own fear of castration. The added inability to recognize female sexuality signifies a desire to understand her as complete, restored to an original state. If we agree with Freud, that it is the voyeur who receives the mark of castration, then the above image of masked female organs, a synecdoche for castration, exposes Coriolis as very lacking, in talent. Or, if we accept what Luce

Irigaray tells us, then we enter a new range of discourse, which attempts to equate the sadomasochistic fantasies of the blood of the slaughter as a symbol of the desire to penetrate, violate and slash and ultimately refuse castration. In this instance we need not choose between readings. If we see things from either perspective, we realize that the male figure, power and authority dominate the scene. The representation of the written word is important, because while writing, the subject distracts himself from the text to plunge into a form of self-observation. Reading then, not for plot, but for the flow of his writing ends up framing the crossroads that delineates Coriolis'

Oedipal tensions.

Coriolis ends this letter to Anatole with a very fervent "ecris-moi n'importe quoi de Paris, de toi, des 154 amis,--des betises, surtout: ca sent si bon a l'etranger" (58). His plea underlines his desire for prolonged telling. The "n’importe quoi," the undifferentiated "stuff" that he demands from Anatole also strengthens our familiar image of Anatole, the one who can easily supply "anything." Through the act of letter writing we receive a straightforward account of narrative events presented in their chronological order.

Simultaneously we have a narrative of inner feelings and actions. Coriolis' epistolary words create a discourse independent of their intended function in the letter writing.

According to Ricatte, Coriolis's departure for the

Orient coincides with the first stage of Anatole's bohemianism. In this stage we see Anatole in a state of perpetual emancipation: from his mother, Langibout and

Garnotelle and Chassagnol. His true desire is to

"s'etablir peintre" (79). From this point on, the studio takes on amplified importance. In this privately delineated space, Anatole functions as a myth of foundation, or origins. His friends, surprised to find him at work, taunt and minimize his efforts. In his

"costume d ’artiste" they say he looks like "I*homme qui a un chef-d'oeuvre dans le ventre" (102). Their suggestion presents a version of the creative process as one of deformation; the outstretched body gestates and 155 delivers like a female one. Desire to paint or create, represent or procreate takes on an aggrandizing aspect in Anatole's world in two ways. Physically, he is inflated and morally he rises above his friends' ridicule. But since Anatole must protect himself against both temporality and others, who are all expressions of a desire for the same thing, he directs his desire to a single object, himself. He becomes the object of his own desire. If Balzac's La Peau de

Chagrin was intended to explore the essential connection between desire and deterioration, and to uncover the representation with which desire can exert its intrinsic force on the road to diminution, MS creates ascensive desire: desire extends Anatole. The power of the images associated with Anatole's first artwork is there to bring desire back to reality. His fascination with his first painting, "Le Christ humanitaire," referred to as his "lanterne magique" (102), wanes as his attention is transfixed onto the traditional acrobat figure, Pierrot.

Anatole is mesmerized by the resemblance:

entre Pierrot et lui, il reconnaissait des liens, une parente, une communaute, une ressemblance de famille. II aimait pour ses tours de force, pour son agilite, pour la facon dont il donnait un soufflet avec son pied. Il 1'aimait pour ses vices d'enfant, ses gourmandises de brioches et de femmes, les traverses de sa vie, ses aventures, sa philosophie dans le malheur et ses farces dans les larmes. II 1’aimait comme quelqu'un qui lui ressemblait, un peu comme un frere et beaucoup comme son portrait (105). 156

Anatole recognizes his double in Pierrot. His desire to paint is both motivated by and sustained by the force of narcissism. Through his choice of subject, Anatole finally succeeds in creating an idealized version of himself: his fiction now roots him in family and community. By inscribing himself in a family, Freud would consider that Anatole places himself in the family triangle, and completes his Oedipus complex. "It may be significant, as Roland Barthes notes, that the child appears to "discover" the Oedipus complex and the capacity for constructing coherent narrative at about the same stage in life."22 As his narrative develops, the theme of the "little child becomes a man" unfolds:

N \ "Il pensait a de nouvelles suites de dessins, a de petits tableaux; et tout au fond de lui il caressait

1'idee de se tailler une specialite, de s'y faire un nom, d'etre un jour "le Maitre aux Pierrots" (105).

Meanwhile, the hastily finished "Le Christ Humanitaire" was returned to Anatole, after a prospective buyer refused the asking price, which on a referential level removes him from Judas, the one who did manage to sell

Christ. Instead of trying to sell it, at this point, he

"effaca et barbouilla toute la toile furieusement jusqu'a ce qu'il eut fait sortir du corps divin un grand

Pierrot, l'echine plie, l'oeil emerillonne" (106). 157

This scene deserves thoughtful examination because of its bizarre fabrication of ancestry. Anatole's myth of creation reinforces the Freudian fantasy: "of being an adopted child whose biological parents are more exalted creatures than his actual parents..."23 This scene is also a reminder that Anatole has relinquished his relation to reality. By his conscious choice of himself and not the other, Anatole shows that he is tied up with his own identification. An opposing structure of desire is seen in La Peau de Chagrin where, "the only possible preservation of this self whose most profound desires can be realized by the talisman is in the renunciation of desire."24 Desire for Rastignac is destructive and signifies a death wish. For Anatole, the question of the desiring subject is directly concerned with the construction of the ego and personal claims to legitimacy. Freudian psychology proposes a fundamental thesis that one will not give up what was once enjoyed: "Among other things, he is unable to give up his infantile notion of his own perfection."25

Anatole's discovery of the Pierrot's magical powers and capacity to realize his desires serves as a substitute for the lost narcissism of his childhood when he was his own ideal. We realize that Pierrot was constructed in a state of alienation. Therefore, through Anatole's total identification with Pierrot, he 158 enters a social system and therefore the semblance of a family unit. Anatole, it seems, makes a place for himself inside of a traditionally acceptable social unit.

One final comment on Anatole refers us back to the previous passage where we are told that he liked Pierrot

"pour ses vices d'enfant, ses gourmandises de brioches et de femmes..." (105). Anatole's description of the

Pierrot is so favorable that it helps to establish the fact that through Pierrot Anatole validates and asserts himself. In the above example this process of validation is clearly indicated through the dialectic of the self in which to assert one's subjectivity is to treat the other as object. The result of this doubling is the reductive introduction of "brioche" and "femme" in the same phrase. Reified as though it were a piece of bread, woman, like a brioche, is the object of a master's gourmandise.

Anatole Bazoche has come to life mostly through his own personal fantasies and narrations. His narrative act makes use of the intersubjective nature of language to expose his conception of females. Clearly this is more than a psychoanalytical study. With due respect to prior concepts of male authority established in the novel, my aim is to show how a female reading of the text challenges those male readings. In practice, 159 in his art, he dismissed the model,

✓ * ✓ N Anatole n'avait jamais ete pris par 1'etude d'apres nature. Il ne connaissait pas ce ravissement d'attention par la vie qui pose la devant le regard, 1'effort presque enivrant de la serrer de pres, la lutte acharnie, passionee, de la main de 1'artiste contre la realite visible (103-4).

Chapter Twenty Nine is a brilliant study which follows the fantasies that preoccupied Anatole in his fruitful attempts at degrading and erasing the female subject.

In this chapter, Anatole is seen, again at work, but this time for a well known embalmer, celebrated for his wizardry in reconstruction. This chapter is pointedly brutal, not only because of its subject matter but because of its subject: a decapitated woman. For official reasons and since the body was never recovered, the police have searched out M. Bernardin to reconstruct the victim's head in order to facilitate identification. Bernardin bargains with Anatole for his help. Intrigued, Anatole meets Bernardin at the morgue as the good apprentice. His initial step inside the morgue gives support and justification to my previous statement regarding Anatole's flight away from reality.

We find him at work this time on a dead subject. His actions here in the morgue are consistently and alarmingly symbolic of merciless killing of women and along with them, what they represent. Beautifully constructing dead forms reinforces one of my impressions: that Anatole is threatened by females. In 160 other words, for Anatole they are better off dismissed, mutilated, violated or dead. His desire for the dead woman is highly paradoxical, because in his most brilliant attempts at suppressing this element he brings her back to life thereby creating another masterpiece for Bernardin. Anatole's personal discourse and activities make a favorable appeal to misogyny or asexual desires. Truly these events lead one to ascertain that a psychic functioning is imposed on textual codes.

The related themes of paternity, fraternity and repression operate synonymously in the novel. This becomes apparent when we turn our attention back to the relationship between Anatole and Coriolis. In Chapter

Thirty-Six, Coriolis, after discovering that he has inherited a considerable sum of money from an uncle, returns to Paris, inviting Anatole to live with him. We see Coriolis exhibiting control over Anatole on both an economic and parental level: "Anatole etait rapatrie par Coriolis qui avait voulu absolument lui payer ses dettes a Marseilles et son voyage (144). So far, our elaborate concentration on Coriolis, centered around his letters, has helped us to concretize how he experiences his society albeit from a distinctively alienated position. Now he lives with Anatole and Vermilion, the domesticated monkey, and for the first time we see 161 ostensible yet sometimes questionable progress in the development and direction of human plots and paternalism. This chapter draws our attention to a mock marriage while it actively encourages Coriolis to reveal his feelings on women, love and the artist's life. In this studio, Anatole and Vermillion are unquestionably the symbolic substitution of all that is incompatible with Coriolis' lifestyle, for, "Dans le compagnonnage , / / d'Anatole, il voyait une gaie et amusante societe de tous les instants, qui le sauverait de l'enlacement d'une maitresse, et aussi de la tentation d'une fin qu'il s'etait defendu: le mariage" (145). This description of the new life shared by the two men hints at both psychological and social truths. Coriolis' suggestion that Anatole is his society situates Anatole, as well as Vermilion, as vehicles of repression. His constant presence restores Coriolis to a healthy psychical life on the surface. Coriolis' reasons for not marrying are not sentimental; he argues in a very pragmatic and logical manner the incompatibility of marriage, a bourgeois plan, with the life of an artist:

Coriolis s'etait promis de ne pas se marier, non qu'il eut de la repugnance contre le mariage; mais le mariage lui semblait un bonheur refuse a' 1'artiste. Le travail de l'art, la poursuite de 1'invention, 1'incubation silencieuse de 1'oeuvre, la concentration de 1'effort lui paraissaient impossibles avec la vie conjugale, aux cotes d'une jeune femme caressante et distrayante, ayant contre l'art la jalousie, d'une chose plus aimee qu'elle, faisant autour de travailleur le bruit d'un enfant, 162

brisant ses idees, lui prenant son temps, ^le rappelant au fonctionnarisme de mariage, a ses devoirs, a ses plaisirs, a la famille,jau monde, essayant de reprendre ei tout moment l'epouse et 1'homme dans cette espece de sauvage et de monstre social qu'est un vrai artiste.

Selon lui, le celibat etait le seul qui laissat a 1'artiste sa liberte, ses forces, son cerveau, sa conscience (145).

This passage has framed the literary Journal.

Encoded foremost in this description is the index of desire. By the very fact that Coriolis recognizes the properties of marriage, which he terms "un bonheur" except when coupled with the desires of an artists, downplays his negativity. It is hard to believe that the pioneering Creole would shy away from any challenge.

Such a view of the narrator moreover implies a certain mastery of every consciousness in the novel. Here we see the narrator exercising the right to be the perfect father— the one who dialogues with his son. Coriolis' response gives excellent rhetorical expression to the same sentiments that the Goncourts expose in their J.

His resolute renunciation of marriage and the family comment on the change that has been carved in the function of the family in the artist's sheltered world.

Judging from this we realize that women and family are the constructs of conservatism and authoritarian ideology. A just premise for an artist's life is that it subordinates sexual interests to higher, more aesthetic or spiritual goals. Here Coriolis equates 163

sexuality with a demonic force; like the effect of

Rastignac's desire, Coriolis fears a part of him would diminish each time he weakened. If the family is the agent of repression, then Anatole is the unfaltering and constant emblem or reminder of that lack. For, over and over again, Coriolis refers to Anatole as a "society" that would rescue him from the perils and trappings of mistresses and marriage. By advocating or symbolizing the semblance of a family with the annexation of Anatole and Vermilion we begin to see Anatole performing the psychoanalytic task of making conscious the unconscious desires which are the underlying and repressive motivation for Coriolis' existence. The inner play of desire and denial, constructing a family and negating its existence occupies a substantial place in this scene. It is significant to note that his rejection of the notion of the family is not economically determined.

Coriolis1 emphasis is moreover on cultural production.

At the same time, Coriolis transmits and projects his desire for paternity to a future time, leaving the social monster, the artist aside. However, when the narrator interrupts and tells us a little more about A ✓ Coriolis, who "Sans etre tendre, [Coriolis] etait de ces hommes qui ne se suffisent pas et qui ont besoin de la

\ A x* presence, de 1'habitude de quelqu'un a cote d'eux,"

(145) we see a different version of the man who could be an artist. His life with Anatole, Vermilion and the

"family" that is loosely and unsatisfactorily

constructed proceeds therefore from a collective

decision. The notion expressed earlier, that marriage

and family are incompatible with the artist's life is

negated. My conclusion is that Coriolis is informed by

conventional and not personal notions. In his

particular situation, marriage, family and domesticity

are not the impediments to his success as an artist.

With or without them, Coriolis is an uneasy and

unproductive artist. At one point he imagines himself

Manette's husband: "Un mari qui voudrait empecher sa

femme de se decolleter pour aller dans le monde, eh

bien! ca lui serait encore plus facile qu'a moi

d'empecher Manette d'oter sa chemise pour se faire

voir..." (194). His desire betrays the conventional

fallacy he aspires to uphold. This is more clearly

determined with the introduction of Manette, who

immediately charges him with a desire for everything

that he has, up to now, sublimated.

Manette Salomon: La 'Juiverie'

Coriolis first sees Manette on a crowded bus. The device of the overcrowding generates a plenitude out of which Manette emerges as the object of Coriolis' 165 desire. Her reification foreshadows his consequent desire for ownership. From first glance he is attracted to her statuesque quality, her pose. That she remains so well posed despite the pushing and shoving on the bus impresses Coriolis. For him, she transcends, at first glance, human qualities. As she passes him to exit at her stop he remarks, "Ce n'est pas facile d'avoir du style, une femme, en omnibus..." (179). His initial reaction to her frames her as a mythical composition complet with "des gestes de statue" (179).

It is no coincidence that Manette is introduced to

Coriolis at this point. We see him, in the chapters subsequent to the meeting (chapters XLII-XLVII) celebrating success. In the salon, Coriolis reads victory for himself: "II arriva a ses tableaux...Tout

A A x* disparut; il eut ce premier grand eblouissement de sa

\ chose ou chacun voit en grosses lettres: MOI!" (160).

Out of blindness or obstructed vision emerges the ego.

In the next chapter he reads intimidating truth into one of his painitngs: "Puis cette peinture avait contre elle le nom de son auteur, ce qu'un nom noble ou d'apparence * nobiliaire inspire contre une oeuvre de preventions trop souvent justifiee. La signature Naz de Coriolis..."

(162). Coriolis now enjoys the status reserved for the master. His victory brings out an integrated artist: the aggrandized ego (MOI) and the speaking 166 subject (Je— Naz). This permits him to deny the Other— refute its existence. Unlike Lacan, Coriolis does not understand that the total integration of the personality is but a myth and that he is a product of another's speech.

His initial reaction to Manette is as object.

Immediately we are sensitive to a vocabulary which obliterates or at best represses the woman behind the striking pose. We find out, through Coriolis' incessant inquiries, that she is "La Salomon" (179), "The Salomon girl." This moment of identification is crucial as it confers upon the reader a dynamic and dual development quite different from what we have already seen. "La

Salomon" produces a Manette dislodged from her autono mous statuesque position as Coriolis prefers to imagine her. A linguistic and genetic approach read he encoded into a family system, a community, a tribe. Here, kinship presents itself as the primary organizing structure of the novel. In contrast to the alienated

Naz de Coriolis, who identifies himself more with his personal politic or his heroic artist image, separate from the others, Manette cuts a striking challenge.

The narrator supplies Coriolis' most intimate thoughts regarding Manette. The power of observation becomes the mark of distinction here. Coriolis is immediately curious about this woman. His expression of 167 her is jumbled. He experiences her as an intangible series of inconsistencies; a true collusion of opposites. Her presence on the bus this evening introduces a true structure of anomaly:

Tres charmante cette femme...et c'est drole, pas Parisienne...Des manches courtes, pas de gants, pas de manchettes, la peau des bras...une toilette, on n'y voyait rien dans sa toilette...et je m'y connais...une tenue de grisette et de bourgeoise, avec guelque chose dans toute la personne de deroutant, qui n'etait pas de l'une et qui n'etait pas de 1'autre (178).

As she exits at her stop, Coriolis steals another look at her. Still confused, he remarks yet another contradiction: "Brune et des yeux bleus bizarres" (179).

So far this seems to be Coriolis' story of intrigue and the erotic which calls on his powers of interpretation.

He retreats, kneels in awe in front of the stumbling block. Even though his initial experience of her is as a composite, his reflections point to inherent contradictions for which he finds no answer. His recognition is impeded by a pronounced sense of miscomprehension "avec quelque chose dans toute la personne de deroutant" (178). Coriolis manipulates

Anatole into writing a letter to Manette asking her to pose. When she does not appear at the appointed time,

Coriolis and Anatole decide to walk off their disappointment. They approach a carnival, a masked celebration equally "deroutant." Little by little it becomes apparent to them that the festival in question is the celebrated "carnaval des Juifs" honoring the

feast of Purim and the victory of Esther. Manette is

present, disguised. In her masquerade she-does however

afford both the reader and Coriolis a valuable pose: a

religious and devoted Jew. When Anatole points her out,

"-Tiens la Manette..." (181) Coriolis is only concerned with why she did not show up to model. Difference does not register with him. This goes to the heart of my argument favoring a text that takes on a dynamic female and religious element the moment Manette enters.

Equally important is the resulting signification bodied forth from the doubling of plots. For simultaneous with

Manette's non-appearance at Coriolis' which he only understands at this point as a flat out refusal is the religious event of Purim celebrating the Jewish flight to freedom engineered by the masquerading of Esther.

Here, on three separate levels (plot, history and linguistics) a religious and female reading of the text shows promise.

Just after the carnival, Coriolis persuades Anatole to again contact Manette. Manette's response to

Anatole's claim that she did not show up to model is both a strong affirmation of self and a victory. She minimizes her responsibility to Coriolis or any artist, for that matter, by explaining her religious commitment and then questions his aggressive manner of trying to 169

force his control over her. Her response as reported by

Anatole to Coriolis introduces a twist: "Mon cher, elle

* est furieuse...11 parait que notre lettre n'etait pas

signee...elle m'a dit qu'il n'y a qu'aux chiens qu'on

ecrit sans mettre son nom...Et puis, elle s'est encore vexee que nous ne lui ayons pas fait l'honneur d'une

feuille de papier a lettre toute neuve" (182).

The letter, itself intended to dominate, has transformed Coriolis into a weakened object rather than the writing subject. By demanding a signed letter, according to Shoshana Felman, Manette plays the role of the terrorist: as such: she demands that one speak in clear language. By demanding "complete language" she terrorizes, in effect, Coriolis to surrender his name.

Manette compels the language of the text; she forces

Coriolis to surrender his name. The ghost writer becomes a flesh and blood creation.25 Like the new psychoanalytic critic Manette has learned that an act of language is made up as much by its so called utterance as by the cuts and gaps that utterances frame up. The device of letter writing was designed to bring artist and model together. Having already spoken his desire to recover "le moi productif" and to sign his name to something, this clumsy omission interests us for the death it wills to the signifier. The threat of death is felt all the more strongly as we learn that Coriolis 170 forfeits his expression of desire. What is more,

Coriolis' onomastic oversight coupled with his inappropriate use of language via another releases him from a signifying position in the text.

After he respectfully presents his excuses to

Manette she reconsiders his offer and decides to model for him. Up to this point we have been given a highly private view of Manette as a member of a family and a religious community. Thus far, she finds her true nature outside of or apart from a man's world. She is an individual who has no association with sex. But as she enters the studio a new and unseen dimension takes shape. As she takes up her pose and prepares for the work of art, the female and spiritual aspect which previously defined her is dropped, like the last garment from her body. She becomes, in the hands of Coriolis, in every detail and movement, an artist's prize. He fumbles for words as he tries to express the perfected state of grace and movement Manette offers him. He reduces her to a condition: a series of lines and forms where,

y A La creature bientot publique qui va se livrer toute aux regards des homines, a les rougeurs de 1'instinct tant que son talon ne mord pas le piedestal de bois qui fait de la femme des qu'elle s'y dresse, une statue de nature immobile et froide. Son sexe n'est plus rien qu'une forme • (183).

This scene points automatically to the recurrent theme 171

of immobilizing or eliminating female sexuality. In its most extreme form, this passage is a "silencer" to the woman who insists on defining her own personality. The

focal point emerges in this context through a man's premonition which views female sex as menacing and only has recourse to representing it as "immobile" and

"froide" for his own self preservation. Although

Coriolis equates frozen or silenced sexuality on the surface as a demand for artistic competency, commentary on art becomes, in this context, a displaced index for self-commentary. Expressing the non-representational dimension of female sexuality, that which falls out of sight, is indeed defaming to women, but comforting, it seems, to man. This takes on even greater significance because of its value as a repetition of the harem "scare homme" scene where Coriolis first confronted images of cutting and masked female genitals. Here, for the second time he isolates something irreducible. When

Manette take up her pose, she returns Coriolis to the harem scene and forces the artist to confront an identical problem. As a psychoanalytic procedure, recording images of cutting and shrouding female genitals is a ruse that hopes to make possible the establishment of the law.26

I suggest that this initial session between Manette and Coriolis is offering a truthful observation about 172 the way nineteenth century artists look at the women they paint and how they expect women to look at them.

Since the artist is fully clothed and thus protected, the models are exposed and unprotected. The situation in the studio exposes problems of representation between the sexes, problems which will reemerge in the ateliers of twentieth century art.27

When Manette is objectified for the eyes of the artist she is without sex. Truly she is there to provide an image of the artist himself, a most favorable one, according to this which suggests that the driving force of the artist's project is desire for self, the divided self seeking unity. This, Lacan will analyze as the desire to produce the other, to appropriate the other, the object-substitute. Yet his desire for unitary cohesion is betrayed by a discourse of division.

First the division is brought about by the canvas itself, the separating medium. The second trap resides precisely in the dismantling of the pose. Manette is demystified as a model as soon as "la femme revient et se retrouve a mesure qu'elle se rhabille" (184).

At this point in her evolution, Manette is most at ease with Coriolis when he perceives her as a work of art; he can either own or sell her, but always from a distance. As a professional model, Manette, we must believe, is used to maintaining this indifference. She 173 is used to offering her body. The inconsistency lies therein the eyes of Coriolis who perceives her differently according to her position with reference to his gaze. The canvas, the separating medium which

Picasso identified, is the same obstacle preventing

Coriolis from integrating art and life. From the moment he becomes professionally involved with Manette he seems to tear down the separating medium and no longer tries to separate the two. Coriolis misreads: he expects the language of art to be the language of life. The act of reading, the attempt to seize and hold the signified takes place off screen and on. For Coriolis this suggests the illusion of total mastery, of seeing everything. "As the reader will recall, the Master is indeed the incarnation of the very principle of censorship and of a limit as constitutive of authority as such: of the authority of consciousness itself as mastery."2a

Manette challenges Coriolis' desire to control her

V on and off screen. Her remark: "Vous n'avez droit gu'a ✓ ma nudite pour vos cinq francs...(189) re-figures her into the discourse as a primary signifier. In his search for mastery, Coriolis demands that Manette model exclusively for him. He fixates on the sensuous details of her body, the body that has circulated and which carries, imprinted on it, the gaze of all the artists 174 who have preceded Coriolis. The commotion over mastering her body stems not from artistic or sexual desire but out of a desire to silence, censor or limit.

Coriolis pictures her body as a plot, a converging dialogue of responses which minimizes his presence and expertly signifies the presence of the many artists who have gone before him. Of major concern is Coriolis' obsession with reading Manette and then recognizing and waging war, a war of prestige, with the world referred to by her naked body. His reading of Manette serves to bring out the underlying interdependence between meaning and power:

II s'etait change en une sorte d'appetit ardent, irrite, passionne, de cette femme; et des le lendemain, Coriolis se sentait devenir jaloux de ce modele, du passe et du present de ce corps public qui s'offrait a l'art, et sur leguel il voyait en ne voulant pas les voir, les yeux des autres. Des coleres auxquelles ses amis ne comprenaient rien, l ’animaient contre ceux qui avaient fait poser cette femme avant lui. II niait leur talent, les discutait, parlait d'eux avec une injustice rancuniere, comme des gens qui, en lui prenant^, d'avance pour leurs figures un peu de la beaute de cette femme, 1'avaient trompe dans leurs tableaux (193).

What, indeed, is the cause of Coriolis's fear? The above passage suggests that he is dwarfed, or risks being shamed by the other artists. For Coriolis, meaning, his meaning, can only appear through violence.

In addition to his desperate attempts at discrediting the others, Coriolis tries to persuade Manette that only under his control will her true expression gain value. His attention to her is divided between revulsion and attraction: he is fetishistic and phobic; a conscious signified and its contradictory extension or double.

His entire effort aims at controlling her: "Pour l'enlever aux autres, il avait pense a la prendre tous les jours, a la tenir dans son atelier, sans en avoir besoin, et, en travaillant a peine d'apres elle: il lui payait des seances ou il ne donnait que quelques coups de crayon ou de pinceau" (183-4). My understanding of his effort is paradoxical, the very act of "reading"

Manette turns out to be a potent exercise in the art of repression. In this case, love of art becomes a pretext for the repression of a signified. Coriolis, I suggest, is perfect evidence for Mullins' view of art as a master/slave dialectic wherein "to rule women of necessity means the denial to women of any qualities which, once acknowledged, might threaten the power of the ruler."2® Manette's body, the same one acknowledged by other artists is the object of his rule. The structure obviated here through surveillance and control is the classic master/slave relationship.30 What is thus kept under surveillance and control is the female sex. In the end, Coriolis steps far outside the bounds of artistic concerns, into conventional rules and uses art as a false medium to control sexuality. He pretends to need her body for his paintings when in fact her body 176

only has meaning for him when it is not in use. His own

naturalization of Manette will be accomplished through

his own general rule of slavery which he tries to impose

through marriage. Upon this compulsive desire, the

desire for control and censorship, Coriolis lays the

seeds of Manette's sabotage.

Before marrying Coriolis, Manette agrees to move in

with him. Coriolis interprets this as a true victory

for himself, implicating a reappropriation, or true

ownership. The problem with this set-up, counters

Manette, is that it is suffocating, and this explains

why she has not given up her apartment in the rue de

Figuier-Saint Paul. Her assertive behavior causes him

frustration, jealousy and anxiety. He mostly resents

the idea that her alien identity functions beyond his

control:

Coriolis voyait^la, de sa part, une idee de mefiance, une reserve de sa liberte, la garde d'un pied-a-terre, la menace de ne pas rester toujours. Puis ce logement lui deplaisait encore pour £tre la cause des absences de Manette: sous le pretexte de le nettoyer et d'y etre le jour du blanchisseur, elle allait y passer une journee chaque semaine (197).

Manette is a sign of treason; her actions, understood

as dissemination threaten the law of the signifier, that

is, of the phallus. The entire corpus of Coriolis1

thought is expressed as an attempt to confront absence.

Here is also the moment where we begin to see the monotony of the ignoble: Coriolis, certain that Manette 177 has deceived him, follows her one night. His assessment of her, that she is going out to model for another artist, gives him the unmistakable appearance of mastery, namely that he has it all figured out. Losing sight of her, he wanders into a dark alley and crosses through a heavy doorway illuminated by a flickering light. Inside:

II apercut un grand chandelier autour duquel des tetes d'hommes en toques noires, en rabat de dentelle, psalmodiaient sur des grands livres, avec des voix de nuits, des chants de tenebres. Il fetait dans la synagogue de la rue Notre-Dame de Nazareth (201).

Instead of having it all figured out, Coriolis' vagaries bring him from blindness to awareness. Manette is the first woman he sees. Suddenly, he is overwhelmed by another, more feasible possibility,

* * * * Puis, peu a peu parmi les sensations eveillees en lui par ce culte, cette langue, qui n'etaient ni son culte ni son langage, ces prieres, ces chants, ces visages, ce milieu d'un peuple etranger et si loin de Paris dans Paris meme, il^se glissa dans Coriolis le sentiment d'abord indetermine et confus, d'une chose sur laquelle sa reflexion ne s'&tait jamais arretee, d'une chose qui avait toujours et£ jusque la pour lui comme si elle n'etait pas, et comme s’il ignorait qu'elle fut. C'etait la premiere fois que cette perception lui venait de voir une juive dans Manette, qu'il avait sue pourtant etre juive des le premier jour. Et avec cette pensee, il remontait a des souvenirs dont il n'avait pas conscience, A des jpetits riens de Manette qui ne 1'avaient pas frappe dans le moment, et qui lui revenaient maintenant. Il se rappelait un petit pain sans levain apporte un jour par elle a 1'atelier, puis un soir, ou en remontant avec elle, tout a coup, auJaeau milieu de l'escalier, elle avait pose le bougeoir sur une marche, sans vouloir, jusqu'au coucher du soleil du lendemain, toucher A rien qui fut du feu (202). 178

The ironic twist here is that Coriolis, in the / / event of being "deroute," lost or wandering in Paris gains insights into the initial confusion Manette presented and the initial chaos first presented in the experience of language. Here we are made aware of a

Saussurian relationship: the recto/verso relationship between Manette/Jew. The bitter revelation that humanity avoids and that he has tried to repress interests us for its psychoanalytic and feminist perspective. His painful confirmation that she is

Jewish and that her language is not his language posits a separating medium between the desiring subject and the object of his desire. The artifice which surrounds her

(the prayers, the dress, and the synagogue), remove her from him on a multiplicity of levels. Socially, linguistically and culturally they are separate and different. Phallogocentrism can no longer repress the ambiguities, "des petits riens de Manette." This scene of recognition accomplishes a totally self present truth which materializes Manette Salomon. This is precisely the distressing and bitter identification that Coriolis had hoped to avoid, or at least keep veiled. For

Coriolis, this sort of identification is devastating and mutilating. As Manette takes on heightened significance and proportion "il se degageait en lui, du fond de 179 * l'homme et du catholique, des instincts de creole, de ce

sang orgueilleux que font les colonies une impression

indefinissable" (202). No longer "dercjute", Coriolis is

still dwarfed by her ascent. This overview helps us to understand how often words fail him. This time he is

left with "une impression indefinissable" (203). Such a gap in the text affirms a Lacanian perspective on

language and subjectivity: "To the extent that what is spoken rarely coincides with what the ego intends to communicate, there is a splitting between ego and subject."31 His experience at the synagogue is evidence of splitting. As he relinquishes his Catholicism, his ethnicity, his drive to colonize and his language, he assumes a less stable position because he is not the speaking subject, but the weakened ego.

Returning to Ricatte's outline we remark the coincidence of Coriolis' venture to Languedoc, just prior to his final degradation and decline. We remark a change, a regression in Coriolis, which anticipates his departure : "Il avait des desirs d'enfant...11 s'enfongait, s'enfermait dans l'etroite personnalite de

, S * m son moi, avec cette absorption entiere, avec cet egoisme profond...(338-9). According to Ragland-Sullivan, "As the unconscious subject of identifications and narcissism, the moi assumes a place of privilege over the speaking subject, rendering the latter opaque and discontinuous."32 The choice of Langue/doc, as opposed to any other region in France, helps to unify the discourse with its obvious suggestion of "langue" understood as language, the subject and meaning of speech, the "je." Psychic clusters around this word point to an endless array of condensations and displacements that reach all the way back to Coriolis' and even the brothers fear of language. Lacan hypothesized that the mirror stage comes to an end when the child no longer sees images as though they were real but passes to a stage where words instead are used for their representations. In other words, the mirror stage swells over into the Oedipal conflict. Barthes believed that the subject at this point starts to use language, to create fictions for himself. This passage, in other words, is one from a state of "nature" to culture and language. In Lacanian terms this is the passage from the Imaginary to the Symbolic.33 Thus, by detaining

Coriolis in Languedoc, right before his final decline, the text foreshadows his true demise at the hands of language. 181

Notes to Chapter III

1 Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, Manette Salomon (Paris: Union Generale d'Editions 10/18, 1979). All references to the text will be taken from this edition.

2 ibid., preface, 15. Henry Juin believes Manette to be more than the "femme fatale." She is, for the Goncourts, "le reflet de ce que les Goncourt pensent de la femme justement."

3 Robert Ricatte, La Creation Romanesque Chez Les Goncourt (Paris: Armand Colin, 1953), 38. Ricattte's structuring of Manette Salomon, not unlike Brady's outline of L 'OEuvre. relies, above all, on the male plots for its synthesis.

4 Robert Baldick, The Goncourts (London: Bowes and Bowes, 1960), 35. Baldick strongly believes that the Goncourts were the first to write Naturalism, evidenced here by the pattern of degradation and decline. He cites Germinine Lacerteux as the novel that first exhausted this theme.

5 Ricatte, Creation, 309.

6 ibid., 310.

7 Baldick, Goncourts, 44.

8 R.B. Grant, The Goncourt Brothers (New York: Twain Pblishers, 1972), 88.

9 Baldick, Goncourts. Jules too, according to Baldick had a pet monkey named Koko which he purchased in 1854. The particular events of Koko's death had faded from Jules' mind at the time of writing MS. However, Baldick does point us in the direction of 182

naturalist investigation when he reports that whenever the brothers heard that a monkey was dying in the Jardin des Plantes, they would rush over to document the shape and scope of the death.

10 Mullins, Witch, 188. Mullins' meditations on Seurat's painting can be extended to comment on Vermilion as Anatole's alter-ego. In one scene, the monkey tries to paint, but can't, much like his master.

11 Ricatte, Creation 326. MS ends in parallel fashion, with Anatole, still imitating the sounds of animals. On the level of plot this reinforces the fact that Anatole is a static character who never advances outside of his own frame of reference. On a more psychological level, the implications of Anatole's use/abuse/ and misuse/suppression of language are topics open for later research.

12 See Peter Brooks, Reading For the Plot (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc, 1984), 39, for a more detailed sketch of the evolution of the picaro in the nineteenth-century French novel. Brooks' insights into the picaro and my extension of his theory as a vehicle for understanding Anatole, suggests that he is indeed the product of an aristocratic consciousness; a creation of the "earlier, more aristocratically determined literature."

13 Pierre Sabatier, L'Esthetigue des Goncourt (Paris: Librairie Hachette, 1920), 110.

14 ibid. See also pages 88-96 for additional insights into the nature of La Blague. See MS Chapter XII for a specific description of Anatole Bazoche as La Blague.

15 Grant, Goncourt, 94.

16 Patrick Brady, "Womb-envy, Counterscript, and Subversion: From L 'OEuvre to Les Noeuds d*arqile." L 'Esprit Createur, 25, No. 4 (1985), 66.

17 Prajs, Fallacite, pages 226 and 241. Prajs 183 believes that the Goncourt created a new art but that their 'laboratory attempts’ would finally see fruition in the narrative of Zola, Huysmans and Maupassant. Prajs also believes that the Goncourts' style, what he calls "un discours enregistre" bastardizes the novel form. Thus, the Goncourts' writing approaches theatrics. According to Prajs, "Le personnage Goncourtien n'existe que le temps de son discours et s'evanouit quand il cesse de parler" (219).

18 Hemmings, Life, 35

19 Zola, Romanciers, 246.

20 See Peter Brooks, Reading, pages 84-85 for a more specific discussion of displacement and desire based on Julian Sorel's "projective plot" which he reads both as a figure for plot itself (narrative design and intention) and as the figure of displacement— desire leading to change of position.

21 Sabatier, L 'Esthetique, 151. Read m "La Recherche du Bizarre" pages 148-153, the reasons why the brothers were fascinated and spiritually aligned with Japan. Sabatier also comments here on the brothers' manner of observation: "tout objet passe a travers leur moi, s'y refracte fievreusement."

22 Roland Barthes, as quoted by Peter Brooks in Reading, page 64.

23 ibid.

24 ibid., 50

25 Shoshana Felman, "Turning the Screw of Interpretation," 192, in Literature and Psychoanalysis. Regarding language, and interpretation, see her article, 94-207, where she elaborates the many "traps" associated with psychoanalytic criticism's attempts at repeating the text's meaning as division. 184

26 ibid., 220. According to Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, "The critic knows that, in psychoanalytic vocabulary, all images of a cutting that gives access to the Law is a mark of castration." Coriolis stands on the opposite side of the Law, where jouissance is refused. The truth here lies somewhere between veiled and unveiled castration.

27 Mullins, Witch, page 150, believes that artists have always felt more comfortable with women whom they perceived they owned. He considers this a defense mechanism practiced for self preservation. He then refers us to Picasso's issues over identical problems that plagued other nineteenth-century artists: "His (Picasso's) fascination for the theme of painter and model was a fascination for this interplay between life and art. The artist creates an image of himself creating an image of a woman who is separated from him by a canvas which his emotions vault" (150-1).

28 Felman, Literature, 168. Felman believes that the master is the one who "sees it all." We have witnessed Coriolis, more than once, commmit himself to a place of blindness in the text which affirms that his mastery is not associated with victory but with consciousness.

29 Mullins, Witch, 222.

30 As suggested in The Second Sex, the master/slave plot results from a reciprocal need, "in this case economic, which does not liberate the slave." (xxiii). Manette subverts the development of this plot and Coriolis becomes, through the demystified system, a slave to his desires.

31 Schneiderman, Returning. 7.

32 Ellie Ragland Sullivan, Jacques Lacan and the Philosophy of Psychoanalysis, (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1986), 42.

33 Jacques Lacan, Ecrits. trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1977), 98. CHAPTER IV

L 1OEuvre

In terms of Emile Zola's ideological stance we know that he relied on biological determinism: the combined impact of genetics, heredity and the environment to explain human behavior. According to Brian Nelson, "the whole of Zola's fiction may in fact be read as an attempt to reconcile the themes of Darwinism and social responsibility."1 Zola's fascination with power and class struggles reflects his desire for a moral social order. Zola's positivist faith in progress through science was not enough to release society from its gender oppression; for Zola, it just exists— despite inherited traits or objective laws. One explanation is that as a category, gender transcends all other categories of determinism found in the materialist foundations of bourgeois life and the ideology of the

Second Empire. To explore, explain and understand his society and humans, Zola allied art and science.

Throughout his lifetime, Zola witnessed several major advances in technology. His primary concern was the amount of material vying for his attention; there was too much to write about. His task, when confronting

185 186 this dense mass of knowledge was softened by the resounding words of Gustave Flaubert who believed that what counted was not the material but how the material was disposed.2

My attention is drawn to Flaubert's statement because it privileges writing as a process while relegating content to a secondary status. Flaubert's celebrated parallel between the writer and the architect is useful for a discussion of Zola's basic aesthetic intentions. Flaubert's use of the mason constructing a cathedral recalls the series of paintings Claude Monet accomplished of the Cathedral at Rouen. His series consists of four different perspectives, each determined by the timely effects of nature and light. Monet's canvasses are hallmark examples of Impressionism where, subordinate to the design itself is the quality of light and the decisive effect on color. Zola aligned himself with the Impressionists both personally and profess ionally. Admits Zola, "Je n'ai pas seulement soutenu ✓ les Impressionistes. Je les ai traduits en litterature par les touches, par les notes, colorations, par la palette de beaucoup de mes sensations."3 Like the

Impressionists, Zola was enchanted by the spectacle of the external world. Hence, what Zola "sought to represent was not nature and humanity as seen and represented by other men in past ages, but nature and 187 humanity seen through their own eyes: colorful, vivid, often cheerful, sometimes mournful, occasionally grim."4

Hemmings and Niess add to our understanding of Zola's parallels between Naturalism and Impressionism:

Aujourd'hui nos jeunes artistes ont fait un nouveau pas vers le vrai, en voulant que les sujets baignassent dans la lumiere r€ele du soleil, et non dans le jour faux de 1'atelier; c'est comme le chimiste, comme le physicien qui retournent aux sources, en se pla^ant dans les conditions memes des ph&nomenes. Du moment qu'on veut faire de la vie, il faut bien prendre la vie avec son mecanisme complet. De la, en peinture, la necessite du plein air, de la lumiere etudiee dans ses causes et ses effets.5

Thanks to Flaubert's foregrounding of the "process" of writing, the charge of plagiarism against Zola is hardly applicable. The truth lies not in the content but in the disposition, in the "non nova, sed nove." Opting for process over content is tantamount to saving Zola's novel from a shameful death at the hands of MS. In fact, this allows us to consider Zola and Goncourt as allies in content, and strangers in process, in the ongoing dialogue between the two novels.

O, Zola's fourteenth novel is composed of twelve chapters. As in most of Zola's, novels, O's chapters are autonomous. MS, a novel of comparable length is divided into one hundred and fifty-five short chapters whose structure is much more episodic than Moving past questions of structure we are reminded that the intent of both novels was to accurately depict the 188

artistic endeavor and the morality of the Parisian art world. The true creations in these novels are not first

and foremost the paintings that the artists exhibit.

The most noteworthy creations are the fictions themselves created by, for and about men and women.

Both novels bring the reader face to face with a sub text which liberates an altogether new reading of the novels. By deconstructing male cultural paradigms in history, literature and psychoanalysis, a new feminine text surfaces in O as well as in MS.

Poetic symbolism and the central presence of man pitted against a machine or a woman are basic features of Zola's writing. In 0^ he pits together men and women in some of the most dramatic scenes he ever wrote. Harry

Levin quotes Zola as saying "I put men and women together, while allowing for the natural differences and submit both men and women to things."6 The high contrast Levin identifed between men and women is minimized (although it never fully disappears), by the introduction of a third class, things. Zola is concerned with the mechanisms of isolation and conversely, how mechanisms produce isolation. By way of his skillful isolation of things into a third class of characters, Zola has set in motion many unforgettable characters and scenes which contain, explain and even undo their symbolic expression. The more we read his 189 novels we begin to realize a stock formula: as things take on gigantic proportions, humans are progressively obliterated.

From the outset, Zola's title, "L'OEuvre," directly refers to the predominance of objects in this novel— and the object assumes narrative authority. In the case of 0, the reader is transported without delay to the realm of art where an object (a painting), not a person predominates.7 0 already seems to function consistently with Zola's plan of subjecting people to things and letting the unbridled energy of the latter take over.

Naturalism and Impressionism

Patrick Brady divides 0 into five sections according to chapters and themes:

Chapitres I-III Introduction

Chapitres IV-V Premiere lutte de Christine avec la peinture

Chapitre VI Victoire de Christine

Chapitres VII-VIII retour a la peinture

Chapitres IX-X triomphe de la peinture B

Brady's designations reinforce, first of all, the paradox Zola created centering on the magnification of objects and their effect on humans. We notice the consistent and obsessive return to the painting itself, 190 a technique which allows it to retain its privilege or primacy in the narrative. This is evidenced by comparing Chapter VI with the two segments formed by

Chapters VII-VIII and IX-X. After a short-lived victory over the painting, the exchange is made: the model,

Christine, is deliberately reified while the painting is given anthropomorphic qualities.

Brady's emblematic structure of the novel focuses first on Christine and the painting. Not only does he omit the character of Claude Lantier, but he refuses to give any signifying importance to the opening chapters, which he groups together under the generic heading

"Introduction." Brady, by these ommissions, neglects to focus on the setting of the novel and violates the naturalist tenet by not considering milieu as one of the characteristics of the discourse. My argument claims that the first three chapters above all, validate the

Tainien equation of "race, moment and milieu," a basic theorem in Zola's thought and fictions. The introduction affords us the perfect opportunity to stylistically approach a naturalist or impressionist text. Let us consider the opening paragraphs:

A Claude passait devant 1'Hotel de ville, et deux heures sonnaient a l'horloge, quand l'orage eclata. II s'etait oubli6 d roder dans les Hailes, par cette nuit brulante de juillet, en artiste flaneur, amoureux du Paris nocturne. Brusquement, les gouttes tomberent si larges^ si dures, qu'il prit sa course, galopa degingande, eperdu, le long du quai de la Greve. Mais, au pont Louis-Philippe, 191

une colere de son essoufflement l'arreta: il trouvait imbecile cette peur de l'eau; et, dans les tenebres 6paisses, sous le cinglement de 1'averse qui noyait les bees de gaz, il traversa lentement le pont, les mains ballantes.

Du reste, Claude n'avait plus que quelques pas a faire. Comme il tournait sur le quai Bourbon, dans 1'lie"Saint Louis, un vif eclair illumina la ligne droite et plate des vieux hotels ranges devant la Seine, au bord de l'etroite chaussee. La reverberation alluma les vitres des hautes ferietres sans persiennes, on vit le grand air triste des antiques facades, avec des details tres nets, un balcon de pierre^ une rampe de terrasse, la^ guirlande sculptee d'un fronton. C'etait la que le peintre avait son atelier, dans les combles de l'ancien hotel du Martoy, a 1'angle de la rue de la Femme-sans-Tete. Le quai entrevu etait aussitot retombe aux tenebres,_et un formidable coup de tonnerre avait ebranle le quartier endormi (5-6) .

Perpetual movement is unmistakably clear. As

Lantier crosses the city of Paris, various perspectives are offered to the reader. Stopping only momentarily at each site, the narration remains intact, logical and uninterrupted. Like the pouring rain, an influx of detail inundates the reader. Under the impact of

Claude's wanderings, the city pulsates, it seems, in accordance with his personal concerns. One of the narrative effects of activating Paris is to register the interaction between observer and spectacle. In them selves the objects have no intrinsic value. Instead, a total impression involving all the elements is achieved through the paradoxical linking of sight and blindness, nature and man. Lantier and the city are all that exists; they are harmoniously in tune with each other. 192

When evaluating the symbolism of this walk we ultimately

return to the principle of aesthetic unity. The

descriptions of Paris indicate unity and progression on

a temporal level. The scene is constructed like clock

work. For instance, the calculated choice of the

descriptive imperfect tense acutely draws our attention

to the duration of Lantier*s walk. The temporality of

the verbs evenly gives the impression of a continuum of

light or time. Zola's use of "successive vision" does

not have a cause and effect relationship. Our vision is

not transported to a site in order to provide a

narrative break so that commentary from either the

narrator or Lantier interrupts the continuum.9

This technique suggests that Zola approaches his

solitary man in Paris quite'differently from the

Goncourts approach to Anatole. Any coincidence between

the two can only be found in the object of their

respective visions, Paris. Zola’s juxtaposition of the stormy night, a man alone and the city alerts us to the fact that man is a sensual being, sensitive to his surroundings. For Joy Newton, Zola has created a new urban hero:

Notre heros n'est plus le pur esprit, l'homme abstrait du XVIII® siecle; il est le sujet physiologique de notre science actuelle, un etre qui est compose d'organes^et qui trempe dans un. milieu dont il est p6netre a chaque heures...tous les sens vont agir sur l'ame. Dans chacun de ses mouvements, l'ame sera precipitee ou ralentie par la vue, l'odorat, l'ouie, le toucher. La 193

conception d'une ame isolee, fonctionnant dans le vide, devient fausse.10

This penetration of the hero by the external world sets up a symbiotic relationship between object and observer.

If, as Newton believes, the environment is instrumental in shaping the consciousness of an individual, then the possibility of Zola's protagonist functioning in the void is negated. In contrast, Anatole Bazoche and even

Naz de Coriolis are characters who function from a void. Similar comments embody Zola's manner of presentation:

le phenomene est saisi dans une impression immediate comme un fait simple: les causes comme les suites n'interessent pas, c'est un mode d'aperception phenomeniste ou impressioniste. II s 'oppose a la perception logique qui considere le phenomene dans un rapport de cause £ l'effet.11

These two converging perspective lend themsleves to the task of plotting early stylisitc differences between MS and 0. The opening scene in MS pans across

Paris, very much like the opening scene in 0. The difference: in the former, through Anatoles's calculated impressions we see Montmartre, La Salpetriere and so forth, but, under his disguise, both on a physical and linguistic level. Although the sites remain the same in both novels, the effect achieved from "dissecting" them is never the same. With Zola there is no causal relationship between references. We are interested more in the collection of images assembled to produce the 194

whole. By eliminating any extraneous information Zola

does not interrupt the flow of the impression of images.

In other words, he does not disturb the continuum. In

contrast, the sites referred to by Anatole (Montmartre

and La Salpetriere), become significant only in

isolation. That is to say, only when Anatole's remarks

are superimposed on them do the places have meaning.

Thus, there is processed, in Anatole's descriptions, a

cause and effect relational view of Paris. This serves

to expose how Anatole perceives his world via his

contrived method of logic. Ultimately, the stops he

makes around Paris combine to create ideology, through

the significance Anatole attaches to them. His

projections in turn reveal his individual personality

and psychology. Anatole can only see things as they

reflect a personal bias. The strong contrast lies in

the fact that Lantier's walk through Paris offers a

totality whereas Anatole's offers a highly posed, projected and individual view of Paris. If Paris

"exists" for Lantier, then Anatole only exists through

Paris. We recognize in Anatole's attempts at validating himself the use of projection. The aim of projection,

according to Melanie Klein, is to avoid "all painful and unpleasant sensations or feelings in the mind" which are

"automatically relegated outside oneself ; one assumes that they belong elsewhere not in oneself."12 195

Her perspective helps us to realize that Anatole

projects danger to an alien body outside of himself

while Lantier, on the other hand, identifies danger and

at once accepts the body as his, as he turns into the

A rue de la Femme-sans-Tete. This move towards

identification is one of the most salient and signifi

cant aspects of Zola's art.

With only a dim flicker of light to guide him and doubly blinded by the downpour, Lantier stumbles into his doorway groping for some familiar reference:

sa surprise fut extreme, il eut un tressaillement en rencontrant dans 1'encoignure, colie contre le bois, un corps vivant. Puis, & la brusque lueur d'un second dclair, il aperjut une grande jeune fille, vetue de noir et deja' trempee qui grelottait de peur (6).

Through this dull, washed out meeting between Claude and the "body" Zola reveals his fundamental interest in the concept of time and the subject. This meeting constructs a subject whereas Anatole's devalues the human subject (artists and women). Actions, previously expressed by the descriptive use of the imperfect, are now expressed by the preterite ("fut," "eut" and

"aperjut") which expertly freezes Lantier's actions and adds to the effect of his creation of the subject. At this early point in the narrative time seems to be suspended. Literally and figuratively then, Lantier. is paralysed by the apparition of the stranger.

Conversely, the imperfect is reserved for Christine who 196

"grelottait," thus indicating an inherent state of being. The first time Claude spies the woman he will later use for his painting and eventually marry, she emerges as a blind spot. Their first meeting is also a scene of violence and despair. On this very stormy night, when Claude is returning home, he reaches for the bell and instead, touches a crying woman. We are safe to imagine that from this point on, Christine, or the female body will be his static referent. She becomes visible to him thanks to a quick flash lightning. This same dense but fleeting intervention of light prevails over the entire narrative.

In the naturalist world, human sentiments are considered to be largely the result of contact with the physical world. Thus, the raging storm in this scene illustrates the tempestuous feelings Claude has internalized. It is this mix of the physical and the abstract which makes it "difficult at times to distinguish in Zola mental attitude from physical description."13 The rays of light which materialize the object, the female, allow Claude a renewed vision. As he feels her presence he begins to take comfort in her body. The field of woman/light/color is dense here:

Christine is wearing black and is drenched. The effect of even a weak flicker of light picks up nature, in this case the raindrops, which glisten off her body to more 197 adequately expose her. As she begins to tell her story of the derailed train near Nevers, she remains in the dark, "Il ne la voyait plus, il l'entendait seulement begayer." (6). Christine's sketchy narration is here delivered as a "voice-over" effect. Natural occurences in the form of streaks of lightning this time, interrupt her story. Our attention is immediately transfixed onto what she sees: "Un eclair eblouissant lui coupa la parole; et ses yeux dilates parcoururent avec effarement ce coin de ville inconnue, 1'apparition violatre d'une cite fantastique" (6). The strong and turbulent use of nature which silences Christine, anticipates the same treatment she later ascribes to the coachman who overpowered her on the way to Passy. The nature of repetition is effective here as it contributes to representing her for the second time as drowned out while her body remains in a state of victimization. As she attempts to further communicate the immediate source of her misery the rains stops and another well known slice of Paris is presented: the Seine. This time Zola lines up so many views of the city that our vision is blurred by all the action on the Seine. Finally, the overkill of images subsides until everything disappears from our vision. The effect of "blurring" foregrounds only the discourse of Claude and Christine. The result is that the symbolic power of Paris rises and subsides, 198 clarifies or obscures meaning. The great scene of

Claude and Christine trapped in the doorway is only the introduction to a more global interpretation of this coupling.14

Claude finally offers Christine his studio for the night. As he takes her hand to lead her in the dark we learn that a frightened Christine "...lui donna la main, ne resistait plus, etourdie, aneantie" (9).

Minutes later, in his tiny studio, their mattresses separated only by a screen, Claude hardly sleeps. He is sensitive to Christine's slightest movements. He reacts to her rhythmic breathing. The next morning,

"II restaxt etourdi, il se grattait les jambes, ennuye de cette aventure dans laquelle il retombait, et qui allait lui gater sa matinee du travail (15). He tries to figure out a plan for Christine. His calculations afford us a glimpse of the artist's double nature: "Son coeur tendre l'indignait, le mieux etait de la secouer,

A pour qu'elle filat tout de suite. Cependant il passa un pantalon doucement, chaussa des pantouffles, marcha sur la pointe des pieds (15).

So far, this novel has been one of silent tensions, suspicions and high surveillance. The initial opposition established between Christine and Claude at

Christine's is softened after their one night together.

Through the repeated use of the adjective "etourdi(e)," the narrative establishes a parallel between them. When they are left alone, the silence and the isolation causes them sudden embarrassment. The contrast between

Claude and Christine is seen in the context of the larger polarity of city and country in Zola: "Generally in Zola the country is identified with health, innocence and naturalness, the city with perversion and precocity."15 Moreover, Christine's victimization by the coachman and her loss of innocence, coincides beautifully with her first steps into the city. Even though Claude professes to be annoyed with Christine, his actions belie his language. His indecision, even his sympathy, not his perversity or cunning is clearly marked. The ever present question of what to do with the female body persists. He decides on a familiar course of action: "Depuis qu'il etait debout, Claude avait envie d'ecarter le paravent et de voir" (16). His gaze immobilizes Christine, for the third time. The precocious young artist kneels in front of Christine, while she sleeps, sketching her bare breast. Hence, very early in this novel the artist/model situation is set up. Here we return to the theme of "le spectacle interdit"15 as an elixir where "le regard" becomes transgression: ✓ Tout son trouble, sa curiosite charnelle, son desir combattu aboutissaient £. cet emerveillement d'artiste, a cet enthousiasme pour les beaux tons et les muscles bien emmanches. Deja, il avait 200 200

oublie la jeune fille, 11 etait dans le ravissement de la neige des seins, eclairant l'ambre delicat des &paules (17).

This act of theft forces another comparison. Christine, like Claude is now distinguished only by her action.

The result of this is that a structure of expectation is set up. Modeling obliterates the woman and restores the man to a position of primary signified. She is model, he is artist. Any trace of "sa curiosite charnelle" is rechanneled into artistic conerns. Christine's breasts are textualized as mounds of virgin snow; her shoulders are reminiscent of the the amber lights of autumn. This textualization of the female form suggests that the human element is devalued, reified and exploited in the pursuit of art. Thus, when the narrator interrupts to comment on Claude's position as artist, and moves him from "la jeune fille" to the "ravissement de la neige des seins...," he is, in effect, describing the trans position of a human or sexual aim into a sublimated cultural activity. In this sense, Christine is used dramatically to illuminate Claude's artistic and sexual dynamic. It is not fortuitous that this very same problem is articulated as an illustration to the practice of reification. For Claude Roy, "Christine est d'abord pour Claude une exaltation, une mise a feu.

Puis elle est un pretexte, un "point de depart." Puis une proie. Puis une victime."3-7 To the narrator she is 201

"toujours muette, nue et vierge" (151). Roy's thoughtful meditation of the problem makes a viable claim that text and body never converge. For all that

Christine is, she is never woman, never the speaking subject. Her reification informs the reader through the fact that she is never text in her own right; she is

Lantier's (pre)text.

When she opens her eyes, her contemplation of

Lantier immediately brings up feelings of revulsion.

She screams in an attempt to scare him off from "la mangeant des yeux" (18) any further. Her shame has now doubled: first victimized by the driver, her innocence is now stolen through Claude's gaze. Connected with this horrifying scene of recognition are be her own feelings of self-disgust or nausea when confronted with her own body. Hers is a sexuality laden with guilt.

All of these sentiments accumulate to construct a portrait of the oppressed. Even on the most literal level, the first time we see her she is in the fetal position, huddled over, both exposed to and beaten by nature. The progressive victimization of reification of

Christine formidably recalls Zola's great scenes of mass exloitation. As in Germinal the specific scene of exploitation is generated from the "historically determined relations between contending classes."1® In other words, Christine's immediate and particular social 202 situation is what allows the reader to understand the scene or dynamics of her all too blatant exploitation at the hands of the male artist. It is noteworthy that

Christine is not a Parisian. Her provincial morality and upringing is, in this sense, all the more shocked as she drifts alone through the city, relying for the most part on males for cues. When she finally encounters the studio, a new class is created strictly on the basis of gender and profession. Her oppression is not then solely determined by which side of the canvas she occupies.

What emerges is a theory of interpersonal relations between characters. The focus of our attention remains on Christine, who in accordance with Schor's general statement about character oppression in Zola is

"trapped in a claustrophobic universe where [her] freedom is restricted not just by windows, walls and labyrinths, but most of all by the omnipresent gaze of a multitude of voyeuristic observers."19 This suggests that the subject is a product of certain ways of seeing.

Furthermore, any active subject is eliminated if it is not capable of determining the beliefs that ultimately represent it. The personal rivalry between Claude and

Christine becomes a primary theme in defining who is the subject in this novel. Her sense of estrangement, understood here as the loss of subjectivity, is 203 progressively more pronounced as she becomes more and more trapped. Once freed from the coachman she is then trapped in Lantier's doorway. Finally freeing herself from isolation she is overpowered by the dimensions of the canvas and Lantier's gaze. This oppression is further reflected in the resolute gazes of the ✓ spectators who enter the Salon des Refuses to cast their ridicule and disparaging glances on her portrait.

Christine Hallegrain is, from the start, a victim.

She is also Zola's favorite type character, an orphan.

She also embodies another organising principle of naturalism: "Le naturalisme, c'est la nudite."20

Although she is orphaned, she is simultaneously inscribed in two histories: her own which she relates to

Claude as she poses and the relationship they are in the process of determining. The interlocking of social themes which anticipates sexual, professional and ultimatley psychoanalytic themes is mirrored in the studio. She is overwhelmed and afraid of Claude and the damage he could do to her body. It is the haunting image of dismemberment that she associates with Claude's plea of "Non, non, restez done tranquille! pas le torse, je ne demande pas le torse I La tete, rien que la tete"

(20), which frightens her. At first he wanted just the breast, now it is just the head. Her fear of the studio parallels Claude's less often discussed fear of silence. Language, for Claude, like the studio for Christine, is the true source of oppression. Work, for Lantier is equated with passions. However, he recognizes her fear, which becomes for him an ethical imperative to dispel.

He makes an attempt to keep conversation going between them, rationalizing that language has the power to distract Christine from fixating on her body. She enters into conversation with him freely and unabashedly. Her storytelling affords Lantier the perfect opportunity to charade as the interested interlocutor. He begs her for more stories recalling her adolesence spent in Clermont. Theories of relations tell us that she, at this point, views herself as interesting based on, or because of, his experience of her. Initially she is seen as young, extremely cautious, yet generous. She gives all that she has to give: her body and her story. Claude, we realize, is more harsh, or at least more manipulative. For in his disguise of the good listener, we find a man who

"enchante d'avoir decouvert enfin un sujet de conversation, la questionna sur son aventure, sans ✓ ' curiosite, se souciant peu au fond de savoir la verite vraie, uniquement desireux de prolonger la seance" (23).

Claude is exploiting the possibilities of language, employing it here as a cover up for his own already written script. That same afternoon, Christine leaves for Passy,

denying herself a glance at Lantier's partially sketched drawing of her. Claude, on the other hand "avait pris

son dessin, sa tete de Christine, et il s'oublia

longtemps a la regarder" (35) The head recalls the woman and her story. The part for the whole prompts

Claude to reverie. He is cautious in accepting her

story of the derailed train and the carriage driver who abused her. At first he considers her story trite and ordinary; a sort of "gagne-pain" for a free night's

lodging. He is at first resolute in his decision not to accept it as the truth. Not until he reconstructs his walk, earlier that evening, does her story coincide with / / his memory "Maintenant, il se souvenait d'avoxr ete frole par un fiacre fuyant a toutes roues, comme il traversait le pont Louis-Philippe, dans le ruissellement de l'orage" (26). Immediatley, Lantier equates his vision with Christine's story. Christine, therefore, through the primacy of Lantier's memory enjoys a particular relationship to the symbolic.

Nevertheless, it is Lantier who retains the sovereignty of the subject. Christine is still the object, unmistakedly exposed through male discourse.

Just as art has primarily been produced by men, the same is true of meaning. Another view of the drama of language and the speaking female subject confirms this and the parallel fact that "as long as women speak they

will move in the realm of the symbolic to which language

belongs and not in that of biological symbiosis with the

mute forces of life and death to which the female is

supposedly allied."21 We also know that Lacanian theory

reserves the "I" position for men, a theory which is

also based on a gender. According to Lacan, women,

because they lack the phallus which has come to signify

the positive symbol of authority around which language

is organized, occupy a silent position in language.

Once more, this example helps confirm the fact that the

signifying practices of our culture are male bound.

That our culture has determined the power to create as a

male attribute justifies feminists' many sided

observations of western tradition which they feel are

based on repression of woman's expression. For our

immediate purpose of interpretation, Lantier is a quite

suitable heir to this tradition as we witness him

limiting himself to male sponsored versions of the universe as truth. Current revisions of feminist

criticism have defined Ideology as "that system of beliefs and assumptions, unexamined, invisible which

represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to

their real conditions of existence.22 To be sure,

ideology, identified here as a system of practices,

informs even the words we use. The clash of beliefs 207

between Claude and Christine reinforces the oppression

of women in language while enforcing male power

structures. Thus far these are the structures that are

the most obvious in O.

A parallel scene of misrecognition surfaces in MS,

which, when examined, uncovers a competing ideology. In

Chapter LX, Coriolis finds a gold trinket in Manette's

bedroom. He questions her about it, its history and how

she came to possess it. She insists that she knows

nothing startling or significant about the piece of

jewelry. In fact, she treats the conversation with an

air of disdain: "Je ne sais plus...repondit Manette.

J'etais toute petite...Mama me menait dans les ateliers

✓ N pour poser les Enfant Jesus...J'etais blonde, a ce qu'il

parait, dans ce temps-la...Ah! oui...j'ai accroche la

chaine d'un monsieur, sa chaine de montre...alors"

(209). Coriolis, all the while suspecting the origins

of the gold replies, "C'etait moi, ce monsieur-la". To

which Manette replies in a pondering tone "Toi? vrai

toi?" Naturalist dogma would insist that Manette's

heredity and attachment to her mother influence her

adult life. Instead of moving in the realm of the

symbolic, Manette, by her decision not to model for a

line of painters, exerts her power in a non-conventional way and removes herself from the symbolic. Moreover, her decision is generated by a displaced desire to gain 208 access to the mother's body. Ultimately she ends up modeling for herself only, even Coriolis is denied access to her body. Manette finds her true representation, her difference outside of men's systems of representations.

Unlike Manette, Christine enters the Symbolic to the extent that she internalizes male desire. Because she imagines herself different from her mother (a painter), she at once removes herself from the mute forces of life and accepts the Symbolic, dictated by

Lantier's law. The latter, surprised to discover that

Christine's mother was a painter asks if any of her talent was passed on to Christine. Her shy reply of

"Oh! Non, je ne sais rien du tout" distances her from her mother and allows her to imagine herself as men would: uncreative, and a-productive. Whereas Manette's desire to be like the mother empowers her to make decisions, Christine's repression of the mother provides the seeds of her own oppression.

The Model in French Fiction

Chapter I of O focuses on the succession of painters. Chapters II and III highlight discourses on art, most of which revolve around the central question of the role of the model in the creative process. Since 209

Christine has not yet materialized and exists only in

Claude's memory (even his friends do not know who his new model is), she is replaced through the separate introduction of two professional models, Mathilde

Jabouille and Irma Becot, used frequently by Lantier and his group. The two, although very well known to the artists, are strangers; they are not allies. The inability of the male novelist to fictionalize a female bond brings into play the dialectical nature of the mistress in reference to male fears:

Free, woman was dangerous; she was a sinner and man-eater. But, under man's surveillance she can become useful again. Her sac of poison has been removed; now he can relax in her company and begin to enjoy her as a giver of pleasure. She can begin to exercise her wiles and charms without threat.23

In many ways we see Mathilde and Irma intimated in this passage. The irrefutable paradox illustrated above describes the model/mistress. An equally appropriate title for this section is taken from the text of O. "Le jour faux de 1'atelier" translates to the "misuse of the studio." The "misuse" of the studio informs Mullins' statement and has particular importance for the studio scenes in O.

In one scene, Lantier and Pierre Sandoz, the successful journalist (whom critics have pointed to as the fictionalized Zola) pay a visit to their friend •

Mahoudeau, a sculptor. Mathilde, who in addition to modeling works as a herbalist in the same building, 210 also stops over. Jory, another journalist, invites

Mathilde to stay, under pretext: "Laisse-la entrer, ce sera drole" (88). He wants to have fun with her; "il se moquait de tout ce qui n'etait pas sa jouissance" (87).

This clash of artist and model in the studio provides a point of departure for plotting cultural production of meaning as it pertains to the sexual system of difference. Although Jory tries his best to mask his true feelings through language, another more noticeable structure emerges. Distance or gender difference is clearly marked through the discourse. The men are discussing theories and styles in art. Mathilde, aware of the fact that this is not the field where masculine and feminine minds connect, excuses herself, realizing difference. As she leaves, Mahoudeau commands: "Vous me donnerez une seance dimanche" (89).

This brief exchange between artist and model makes clear how art persuasively manages to instill a hierarchy of sexuality. Female sexuality must first of all be in a form comfortable enough for a man. The vocabulary and imagery of a 'herbalist' evokes a sensual, healing woman, one who has a general preoccupation with creative energies, fecundity and eternal regeneration. The increased mythical dimension of Mathilde is threatening to the artists. Thus, man's ultimate goal is paralleled through Mahoudeau's use of her: only under the mythical 211 guise of artistic creation can she in this case become useful. Free, Mathilde was presented as dangerous. She was rumored to have aborted a baby, an act clearly synonymous with her engendering and destructive powers.

In this act she clearly transcends male powers of creation and destruction. Physically she is unattractive, described even as repulsive. However, she is useful because she is an object of exchange. As he begins to compare the flesh and blood Mathilde with the sculpture, Claude immediatley identifies a fissure between life and art, prompting his criticism: "Comment

..., c'est madame qui te pose ces muscles-la? Bigre, tu l'engraisses" (90). His question is related to a fundamental problem plaguing the artist. Gazing at the sculpture, Claude notices nothing which recalls

Mathilde. The juxtaposition between the constructed version of her and Mathilde the herbalist is intended to reestablish her as an object of pleasure, a non-threat ening and good object. The visit to Mahoudeau's studio confirms that visions of women are obscured somewhere between real and imaginary states.

They leave the studio and go directly to the cafe

Baudequin "sans qu'on sut pourquoi..." (96). Arbitrary in their movements, Lantier's artists move in packs. On this Sunday evening, a young woman, playfully hiding behind a newspaper, seemingly involved in a coy game of seduction attracts their collective attention. Her frequent glances over to the table of artists prompts

Fagerolle's narration of her. In the dogma of true naturalism we discover that Irma, a prostitute, was the product of an abusive father and a mother who died when she was still a young child. After the death of her father, Irma Becot was left to survive on her own in

Paris. Irma, enamored of Fagerolles comes over to their table, sits on his lap, kisses him and drinks from his glass. Circulating, in true bohemian fashion, "elle se donnait aussi aux autres, leur riait d'une fa^on engageante, car elle avait la passion des artistes, en regrettant qu'ils ne fussent pas assez riches pour se payer des femmes a eux tout seuls" (99). Irma's passion for "artists" highlights the suggestion that they are all the same. Her playful scene of seduction moves her from Fagerolles to Sandoz to Claude and Mahoudeau. She removes Jory's cigarette from his mouth, puffs it and returns it to his mouth, all wet. The group does not consider her extravagance inspirational or invigorating.

Still, we are told that "Du reste, Irma les avait conquis" (99). Sexual difference is circuited into a conservative refuge. Themes of female sexuality are repressed. Irma Becot captures their attention not because she is a prostitute; she snares because of her potentiality as it is filtered through their 213 individual consciousness. For Sandoz, the name 'Becot' signifies the ouverture to a great novel. For Claude, she is the perfect sketch and Mahoudeau repeats her as the perfect little statue. The recurring pattern of resistance and the more pronounced desire or infatuation with dismissing female sexuality through the artist's talent returns us to the vocabulary of sublimation.

Irma becomes, in this male universe, a transcendant subject (she transcends gender determinations) at the expense of losing her gender. The literary text sets her at a crossroads between personal desire (sexual) and collective need (she serves as a bonding device for the artists). Through her associations with the artists she creates literary and artistic discourse. Thus, while her meaning is disseminated, male is valorized through the emergence of symbolic thought. According to Claude

Levi-Strauss, symbolic thought dictated that women, like words should be exchanged. In our case, exchanging women assures the continuity of the artistic structure, thus reinforcing the law-giving-father. Contact between artists and models, and mostly through the introduction of Irma, revives the paradox Claude Levi Strauss has articulated regarding women. Unlike words, which have wholly become signs, Levi-Strauss concludes that woman has remained "at once a sign and a value."24 In a man's world she is both an object of desire and an object of 214

exchange; she sits at the intersection of two

incompatible systems— she is person and sign. In this

case she is a "relational sign" among men. We see that

as a person she will gravitate toward the path of

rejection; as a sign she is recognized as a generator of

other signs.25 The regenerative powers of the band

challenge female power.

The collective possibilities between Christine

Hallegrain, Mathilde Jabouille and Irma Becot are

repressed both textually and historically. Even though

they all share the same trade, the narrative can never

present them as a group. There is no solidarity; the

model's union is not formed. When Jory brings Irma to

Claude's studio, Claude panics. At Irma's request of

"soyez aimable, montrez-moi tout, je veux tout voir",

Claude, "eut peur qu'elle n'ecartat le paravent" to

expose Christine (140). Another discursive function of

introducing the models in a disjointed manner reflects

how men have chosen to view women. This manner of

seeing merely re-enacts a split between male and female

or conscious and unconscious meaning to the extent that what is represented does not coincide with what was

intended or with what is natural. The bar of

signification is firmly placed, repressing female voice.

In contrast, the bar of signification is removed in

MS. Manette does not need the artist, has no passion 215 for the artist and, in fact, only models to fulfill her own narcissistic desire. The canvas is obsolete.

Nature vs. Culture: Barbizon and Bennecourt

A major concern of feminist criticism is female relationships as they are represented or evidenced in friendship, communities, and families. Responding to this concern, my text creates a new reality which allows females to form the union and speak themselves, not as constructs of masculine representations. As a central productive site of class determinations, our focus shifts to the country (Barbizon and Bennecourt) where ‘ the language of the classes is pulled together to show the emergence of sexual (synecdoche for subjectivity) social and psychological themes as they related primarily to females. My desire for synthesis of the models, in both novels, is an extension of Virginia

Wolf's belief that women are rarely portrayed in relation to each other in fictions written by men.2e

This desire also stems from the realization that criticism has argued for and against the nineteenth century novel using as currency a crossection of

Balzac's, Flaubert's, and Stendhal's characters.

Through the chain of associations the nineteenth century novel became "masculine," thus focusing on the constraints of female life. True womanhood has slipped

into fragmentation. By "reading" the models, I hope to

show that they too, are literary texts linked by culture

and inheritance. This criticism results in more than

just a plea to include what has been excluded. Framing

the models implies the symbolic creation of the genre,

the model in French fiction, demonstrating that female

is a literary text first by virtue of her position in

culture. As an example, I offer Manette's narcissim as

the structural opposite to the general mythical vision

of narcisissm as masculine. Indeed, it is startling to

realize the extent to which this nineteenth century

character feminized narcisissm. During the trio's

(Manette, Anatole and Coriolis) extended stay in

Barbizon, an artist's retreat near Fontainebleau, the

great-literary narcissism of Manette undergoes a

transformation: it becomes synomous with dis-integration

and victimization rather than true self-love.

The stay in Barbizon, an artist's community,

introduces the reader to the fictionalized version of many of the eighteenth-century painters respected by the

Goncourts. A brief pause here also allows the discourse

to proliferate theories of art. Withdrawing from Paris,

taps still another source of the drama. We anticipate problems for the subject, Manette, as we learn of the

changes brought about by a new population in Barbizon: 217

Depuis quelques annees, les hotelleries campagnardes de l'art ont change d'aspect, de physionomie, de caractere. Elies ne sont plus hantees seulement^par le peintre; elles sont visities et habitees par le bourgeois, le demi- homme du monde, les affames de villegiature a bon marche, les curieux desireux d'approcher cette bete curieuse: 1'artiste...de le voir prendre sa nourriture, de surprendre sur place ses moeurs,...... toutes sortes d'intrus, le monde composite d'une table d ’hote. (243-244)

The social ills, textualized as central to Barbizon at this time, are completely linked to a contaminated population. As the ruling class sets in, their narrow mindedness spots awkward or misplaced types. A petty, bourgeois consciousness begins to reshape the plot and the artist himself becomes a "primitive curiosity."

This period in Barbizon also directs the onslaught of prejudice aimed at Manette. She becomes, for the others, an object of exorcism. Bourgeois pretentions force Manette to adopt a false pose, that of a married woman: / < , / > L'epouse du professeur...s'etait laissee prendre a son excellente tenue, au nom dont on l'appelait, a des "Madame Coriolis" qu'elle avait entendus dans l'escalier. Elle croyait que le couple etait un menage, que Manette etaitNla femme du peintre. Aussi avait-elle repondu a ses amabilites" (246).

In its attempt to order existence, the bourgeois world relies on traditionally accepted and historically determined relations to explain a female presence.

Thus, in placing Manette in a familiar pose, difference is wiped out. But the problem of a fragmented identity for the subject persists. Her ego is irrevocably split into subject and object. In pondering this identity,

Margaret Higonnet explains: "The problem of women’s identity as separate from, yet potentially part of society emerges with particular clarity in the nineteenth century; indeed, the woman question" crystallizes the issues of bourgeois individuals. The earlier, carnivalesque, unruly "woman of the top" becomes the madwoman in the attic..."26 On the basis of this assertion, Manette attempts suicide through denial of who she is, symbolically killing a part of herself.

Her disguise makes her anxious and she is in turn inhibited from acting freely. She becomes highly sensitive to her own behavior to the point of scrutiny.

Central to the affect of her separation, yet identity within the other is the inability to represent herself as a complete and integrated personality. Typically

Manette:

se surveillait elle-meme dans ses gestes, ses paroles, ses expressions, s'enveloppait de robes simples, de petits ficus modestes, faisait des raccommodages de menage, travaillait, avec tous les airs de sa personne, au mensonge qui devait entretenir 1'illusion (247).

An extreme form of narcissistic identification seems to be taking place in Manette. Keeping two texts simultaneously in view, here, subject and object, results in an "intrapsychic rivalry," where the subject moves back and forth between the positions of subject and object. Meanwhile, the ego continues its 219 clandestine pursuit of a phantasmic mythical unity. The multiple roles (active, passive, subject, object) that write the script of narcissism are played out at the level of the body."27

Manette's separation materializes at the level of body and text. Fragmentation is implicit in the the use of the subject and the reflexive pronouns: she looks at herself from the position of the other. She makes sure to conform to the image already constructed by the masses. Language, in this case precedes or even constitues Manette's subjectivity. She is threatened by the lack of language or silence that her body reinscribes. As text, Manette is a palimpsest, a point of conflict and convergence which threatens the structuring difference of bourgeois society. Subverted is the fiction of individuation: as evidenced by her stay in Barbizon, she has value only when connected to a community. Barbizon provides, in MS, the space for the exploration of social relations and the theory of the subject as it is rooted in that discourse. To this end, the social text reveals the psychological script.

The stay in Barbizon illustrates the decentering of the subject via an alien script. Manette is sensitive to her presence, her false position in a socially delineated space. Essentially she endeavors to project, as well as maintain unity, through the incorporation of 220 public and private difference. When the world of

Barbizon discovers that she really is a model, she faces much disdain. The reactionary effect of the community is seen in the continuous questioning of her identity.

This is first observed through the Riberolles, a bourgeois couple. Madame Riberolles resents Manette out of jealousy: her husband is attracted to Manette.

Madame Riberolles circulates gossip in an attempt to undermine Manette's position: "Du premier coup elle vit ce que c'etait Manette" (262). Her prejudice is further validated by an American in the group who "se mit a dire \ / , t / / que dans son pays, le metier de modele etait considere comme honteux" (262). Twice questioned, her identity slips. The far reaching implications of this split come to view with Lacan's belief that the character is not the speaker of language but is in fact spoken by it.

Manette because she is completely objectified outside of her field of reference. She is articulated as a model and a married woman when, in reality, she is no longer a model and was never married.

To all appearances Manette's friendhsip with Madame

Crescent documents a female sphere of intimacy and dependancy inside the boundaries of generations and race. Within the literary text, this plot overtly points to a deeper psychological relationship. Madame

Crescent is essentially the symbol of the earth mother. 221

She cares for her many animals with loving tenderness.

She accepts the trio freely into her home. Manette develops a dependance on both Monsieur and Madame

Cresecent. Yet, a focus on the realtionship between the two women does indeed suggest a symbiosis:

Manette etait enchantee de la connaissance... elle 6prouvait un certain soulagement a n'avoir plus besoin de "se tenir" comme avec la femme du professeur, £ se sentir affranchie de la reserve, de la surveillance sur elle-meme, de toute cette maniere d'etre ceremonieuse qu'elle avait eu tant de peine a soutenir...Car Madame Crescent etait sans prejuges... De son cote, la brave femme trouvait un vif agreement dans la societe de Manette, dans une esp£ce d'autorite d'experience et d'age sur cette jeune et jolie femme qui aurait pu etre sa fille (272).

Madame Crescent, who was loved by everyone, signifies approval for Manette on a communal level. The textualized mother, Madame Crescent, provides her child,

Manette, with security and grants to the child a healthy and positive image. She plays the part of the good mother. But, this idyllic plot is short lived. Madame

Crescent, not unlike the community she lives in, ultimately rejects Manette: "La grande amitie de madame

Crescent pour la maitresse de Coriolis recevait un coup soudain et mortel d'une re*velation du hasard: Madame

Crescent apprenait que Manette etait juive" (285). This accidental scene of recognition spawns a series of negative associations: the would-be-daughter is again relegated to an exterior position of mistress, model and

Jew. The result is that "en quelques jours, il se 222

faisait un grand refroidissment instincitf entre les

deux femmes" (286). Here, inside emerges with outside:

Madame Crescent was too steeped in her own origins in

Lorraine to allow herself the frienship of a Jewish

woman. This act of rejection also questions the

authority of the narrator who assured that Madame

Crescent was "sans prejuges." The relationship madame

Crescent/Manette may be explaimed through object-

relations theories which stress the importance of the

pre-Oedipal stage of development in the construction of

the self in social relationships. We notice a familiar

Kleinian structure established through the focus on the mother-child relationship. Operating on the homology mother and child, Melanie Klein believed that any

rupture in that homology provoked fantaisies in the

child: sadistic and destructive fantaisies against the mother's body. Klein views desire as a return to the

site of the mother, the mother-dominated pre-Oedipal period of life. Lacan's basic concept, which assumes a different paradigm confronts Klein. Challenging her

idea, he writes, "Klein rejects the fact that the outside is given for the subject as the place where the desire of the other is situated, and where he or she will encounter the third term, the father."

Madame Crescent's voiced censorship of Manette is connected with the Real (with lived experiences). We 223 \ . ' are told that "tout en cherchant a se raisonner, a revenir de son injustice, a se faire entrer dans la

-A. / ^ tete, en se repetant, qu'il y a de bonnes gens partout, madame Crescent ne pouvait vaincre ses lemons d'enfance"

(286). Her strong rejection sets up an impasse in the female development of the novel. In a psycho-cultural context, Madame Crescent's decision to separate from

Manette reveals desire. Her strong emotions against

Manette are engenered through vivid memories of her childhood spent in Lorraine. Our approach to under standing her actions, understood as the literary dimension of the text, adequately begins to reveal the psychoanalytic dimension, too. In her creation of the

"non-person" madame Crescent is at a crossroads.

Despite her attempts at ignoring what is imprinted in her collective consciousness, her instincts and her community, she remains aggressive towards Manette.

According to some popular psychoanalytic theories we can interpret Madame Crescent's behavior as "splitting": because what she intends to communicate is not consistent with the outcome of her desires.29 Even though Madame Crescent speaks a desire to change her feelings, she cannot.

Manette's reactions to Madame Crescent's rejection of her are best reflected through the role of nature and the actions of the environment. Thus, the Lacanian 224 position is given weight by the strange twist in the text which introduces Coriolis. We do accept Klein's perspective with its accurate description of fantaisies of destruction aimed at the mother's body. In Manette's case however, fantasies of destruction are displaced onto nature. This displacement confers with Lacan's emphasis on the role of the father. Concurrent with the freeze or silence between them, the summer fades into a cold barren autumn. The text at this point undercuts

Manette's involvement with or reactions to her mother's

"death." Instead, we witness nature transforming itself into a continuum of rejection and dejection. The transformed good mother is now only capable of dispelling or getting rid of unwanted objects. An alternative view to all the negative emphasis put on the mother cannot be shelved due to the repeated and strong presence of Coriolis. As the countryside decays, as

Autumn sets in, and as Manette and Madame Crescent separate, the tension or anxiety is expressed through

Coriolis' reactions to the countryside. I maintain that the central issue is not the question "Does the mother fail to recognize her child?" Moreover, the issue at hand, that the text eclipses Manette's reactions to the mother (they are not textualized) speaks to a new position of femininity. In turn, this position brings up the competing question "Is it the child who fails to 225 recognize the mother, and, if so, is the child dependant on the agency of the father's intervention?" The negativity of the female condition is eclipsed through total identification with the father. Coriolis consolidates Manette's reactions and identification in his body. This is accomplished in Chapter XCVI, one of the longest chapters in the novel, where his reactions to the change of seasons is expressed. Here the text strays into an alien discourse and takes on the qualities reminiscent of a romantic text mostly due to the importance placed on nature and its sympathy with man. In psychoanalytic terms we read in this attempt at emancipation and individuation Lacan's argument based on the phallus as the principle of individuation. In

Feminine Sexuality Rose writes, "By breaking the imaginary dyad, the phallus represents a moment of division (Lacan calls this the subject's 'lack in being') which re-enacts the fundamental splitting of subjectivity itself."30

If Manette's stay in the country retracted her existence by inscribing her in an already codified representation, Christine's stay in Bennecourt, opened up a fictional space which allowed for her personal expression of pleasure (pleasures not censored by phallic proportions) and thereby affirmed her subjectivity. In the intimacy of the country house, 226

Claude and Christine retreat from the others. Claude renounces his associations, imbibes on the sensual demands of nature and Christine. Here, Christine evolves: she sheds her fixed, obsessional character by * wiping out the rival text: "Elle se donnait entiere, il la prenait, depuis sa nuque jusqu'a ses pieds, il la

x S serrait d'une etreinte a la faire sienne, a l'entrer au fond de sa propre chair. Et elle, ayant tue la peinture, heureuse d'etre sans rivale, prolongeant les noces" (199).

The country, the new subject of painting, allows

Christine to "play" at multiplying herself. She becomes the good wife, the embodiment of a lush spring; the perfect companion. Contrary to Manette, who alienated

Coriolis' friends while in Barbizon, Christine readily encourages Claude to respond to Sandoz's letter; to invite his old friends to the country home. Claude, on the other hand, considers his life with "la bande" a closed chapter: "Continuellement, elle en parlait, ne voulant pas le facher avec ses amis, exigeant qu'il les

A* rappelat. Mais,...il n'en faisait rien. C'etait fini, a quoi bon revenir sur le passe (202).

The couple's extended stay in Bennecourt forces a digression in the plot as Claude separates from "la bande." As a socio-textual variant, the band is "midway between the crowd and the individual."31 Claude's 227 decision to forfeit the band for Christine erases the metaphoric link which unites him to the crowd on the level of narrative and description. What remains unstable is his position in the realm of individual possibilities. At the risk of monotony in recalling recurrence, the tentative positioning of the band as

"somewhere in between" centers directly on previous ambiguities encountered in Zola. Zola has, by admitting no locus, fixed the band at a vantage point. This move to the country releases the surrogate or at least replaces it with another more viable index of desire.

Bennecourt, like Barbizon, forms an interesting intersection of readings relating social class structures and theories of gender relations. The presence of the bourgeoisie contaminates our perceptions of the idyllic life enjoyed here by Claude and Christine. Although not the dominant discourse, we recognize, through a furtive move, the bourgeois attempt to order, censor and limit the rights of Claude and

Christine. Virtually cut off from the world, the couple, on one of their walks in the country, just outside of Bennecourt, pass a bourgeois family: "le pere gros et apoplectique, la mere d'une maigreur de

\ S' couteau, la fille reduite a rien, deplumee comme un oiseau malade, tous les trois laids et pauvres du sang vicie de leur race" (203). Claude and Chrstine, lost in 228

their own world, "s'etaient pris a la taille, en

amoureux qui s'oublient derriere les haies: elle ployee, abandonnait ses levres; lui, rieur, avancait les

siennes..." (203). Shocked by the couple's display of

affection, the young child asks why there are not more police in the country! The moral virtue of the ruling class is shocked by what is natural. In fact, they try to rewrite the natural into a police state. Claude and

Christine vow never to return to la Roche-Guyon again, because of the bourgeois influence which "gatent le paysage, ces monstres" (204). The actions and prejudices of the bourgeoisie force no barriers or restraints on the couple. The unfavorable symbiosis of repression and censorship is used to characterize the bourgeois family. Eventhough there is only one encounter with the bourgeoisie, we are simultaneously inscribed in the discourse through the denigrating representations of the family. On the next page, we find out that Christine is pregnant. We read in her pregnant body a series of threats and fears: the threat of becoming bourgeois, with the advent of the family and, fear, seen here as a division between male and female. Her generative powers exile her husband from her body : "Ce fut l'epoque cependant ou Claude se remit un peu a peindre" (206). The subject, for Claude instead of productive is now experienced as deformed. 229

Their copulative gesture puts into his view woman's sexuality and her reproductive organs as value. Claude, in the speculative matrix he has created, is constantly reminded of his castration by that which he sees but cannot perceive as like himself. Woman, in this case, instead of representing life, represents death to the artist. Christine anticipates her own death on their return, after four years in Bennecourt, to Paris:

✓ ^ "Comme elle serait volontiers restee! quel ardent desir elle avait de vivre toujours la, elle qui venait d'exiger ce depart, ce retour dans la ville de passion,

S ou elle sentait une rivale” (227)1 This same desire which comes to speak, emprisons the subject in a masculine discourse with the re-entry of the band and the return to the city.

However mimetic or realistic the inclusion of the flight to the country is, in nineteenth century fiction, we consider it above all as a producer of different paradigms of subjectivity. For Manette, the country symbolized difficulty, antagonism and separation; in short, the decentering of the subject. For Christine, the country had both positive and negative effects.

Eventhough this chapter was considered by Brady to be her victory over the painting, we only half accept his truth. Brady neglects to see this victory as a temporary one, compounded by other female tropes of 230 domesticity and pregnancy which doom her. In the end, the respites in Bennecourt and Barbizon prove that identity is constructed as much through social hierarchy and cultural variance as it is through division and fragmentation which is the psychoanaltyic process. 231

Notes to Chapter IV

1 Brian Nelson, Zola and the Bourgeoisie (London: The Macmillan Press Limited, 1983), 24. Nelson points to the first pronounced ambiguity in Zola's ideology. According to Nelson, he structures an opposing paradigm when he relies both on scientific faith and Darwinian views of humanity.

2 Flaubert, as quoted by F.W.J. Hemmings, Life, 124

3 F.W.J. Hemmings, "Zola, Manet and the Impressionists," PMLA, 73, No.4 (1958):407-17.

4 Hemmings, Life, 12

5 This quotation from Salons, ed. Hemmings and Niess (Geneva: Droz, 1959) "Le Naturalisme au Salon."

6 Henry Levin, The Gates of Horn (New York: Oxford University Press, 1963), 321. See also page 307 where Levin gives a very good historical description of Naturalism, a term, he contends that has been used in French philosophy first by Montaigne and then by Taine to refer to systems of thought accounting for human condition without recourse to supernatural and consequent emphasis on the material factors.

7 The name, Manette Salomon, refers us to a completely different signified, the female one. There is no clue from the start as to what the novel will be about. Given the Hebrew tradition in which names reveal the essence of one's being, we begin to associate Manette with the associative images of Salomon's hair and the strength attached to it.

8 Brady, "L'OEuvre," 367. My attention gravitates towards Chapter VI, the one Brady identifies as "Victoire de Christine." Approaching this section, it becomes clear that her victory, interpreted in accord ance with modern feminist theories, is truly a defeat. 232

9 Lewis Kamm, The Object in Zola1 s Rouqon-Macquart (Madrid: Jose Porrua, 1978), The term "successive vision" was first termed by Kamm to refer to the sequential description of things which come inot sight one after another. See his Chapter III, "The Object and Time."

10 Joy Newton, "Zola et l ’expressionisme: le point de vue hallucinatoire," Cahiers Naturalistes 17-18, No. 41 (1971-1973):1.

11 Charles Bally, "Impressionisme et Grammaire," in Melanges Bernard Bouvier (Geneva: Sonor, 1920), 262- 63.

12 Melanie Klein, Love, Hate and Reparation (London: Hogarth Press, 1973), 11.

13 John Frey, The Aesthetics (Madrid: Jose Porrua, 1978), 273.

14 Irving Howe, "Zola: The Poetry of Naturalism," in Critical Essays on Zola, ed. David Baguley (Boston: G.K. Hall and Company, 1986), 116.

15 Nelson, Bourgeoisie, cites this polarization operating specifically in Une Page d 'amour, where the opposition is between natural innocence and the stale world of bourgeois adultery, page 113. The opposition established at the initial moment of contact between Claude and Christine is between active/passive and city/country.

16 ibid., 122. Nelson creates a dialectic around "le spectacle interdit." He terms it a "triangular situation involving sexual betrayal, frequently involving children as observers of scenes of eroticism." The theme of the spectacle interdit as an extension of the Oedipal scene is blocked in L'OEuvre. However, my introduction of "le spectacle interdit" is intended to refer to the triangular situation set up between Claude, Christine and the canvas which Christine considers an 233

"enemy" and which betrays her in her love for Claude. This use of the term gives greater scope to the importance of the "object" as character.

17 Claude Roy, "Le Genie de 1'amour sublime," Les Critiques de notre temps et Zola (Paris: Editions Garnier, 1972), 83.

18 Irving Howe, "Zola: The Poetry of Naturalism," in Critical Essays on Zola believes that the mine is the "dramatic embodiment of exploitation." He urges us to "recognize that not in mines or factories lie the sources of their misery but in the historically determined relations between contending classes." Howe's information on the mine can be turned to the canvas in carving out exploitation. The canvas exploits Christine and even Claude as it becomes more and more insatiable. In L'OEuvre there is a spot where Claude and Christine are on the same side of the canvas.

19 Naomi Schor, intro. Yale French Studies No.42 (1969), 6. My point of departure is Christine.

20 Levin, Gates, 315.

21 Rachel Blau DuPlessis, "Washing Blood," Feminist Studies 4 (1978):2, 1-12.

22 Greene and Kahn, Making, 2

23 Mullins, Witch

24 Nelly Furman in "The Politics of Language: Beyond the Gender Principle," in Making A Difference, quotes Levi Strauss and then creates affinities between social structures and verbal deeds as agents in helping us to perceive ideological values.

25 Qouted in Making A Difference, 61.

26 Qouted in Greene and Kahn, Making, 52. See also Irigaray, Speculum, 140 regarding the fetishized female object. 234

26 See Margaret Higonnet's excellent article, "Speaking Silences: Women's Suicide," in The Female Body in Western Culture, ed. Susan Robin Suleiman (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986),72.

27 See Mary Wolf's comprehensive overview of narcissism as a project aimed at unity through the incorporation of difference, in Eros Under Glass (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1987), 21.

28 Jacques Lacan, Feminine Sexuality, ed. Juliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose, trans. Jacqueline Rose (New York: Pantheon Books), 137.

29 Schneiderman, Returning, 3.

30 Lacan, Feminine, 40.

31 The most commom use of the term as a fictional social organization is "midway between the crowd and the individual there exists a group of secondary characters who combine features of the collective with a certain degree of individuation." See additionally Naomi Schor, Zola's Crowds for the other uses of "la bande" that she has created, pages 140-41. PART III

Out From Under the Artists' Brush:

Psychoanalysis and the Studio

235 CHAPTER V

The Body Scene

This concluding chapter which focuses on the

studio, as an analogous structure to psychoanalysis,

uses clinical methods of interpretation and language

theories to explain artistic creation and the formation

of the subject. My aim is to synthesize the major concepts explained by Jacques Lacan in the construction

of the human subject. By pulling psychoanalysis into

the studie— a text is created which unravels the model's

experience of her own body as a parallel to the

subject's first experience of language. This

reconsideration of the model's experience at the hands of the artist establishes a productive juncture between

the psycho-dynamics of language and representation.

Framing the artist's studio in the context of Lacan's developmental theories creates dynamic parallels of reading.

In Lacanian fashion, the drama of the "mirror stage" is concomitant with fantasies of "fragmentation" which culminate in "the assumption of an alienating identity, one which "marks the subject's entire mental development."1 Stabilizing the text of the studio with

236 237

Lacan's points to the immediacy between the model's experience of herself and the infant's. Just as the little girl's self esteem is reported disturbed after she discovers her dismemberment, and, just as women shy away from looking at the mutilated female victimized in films, the model can only perceive herself as an incomplete, "body-in-pieces." Reappropriating the bod/y for females is complicated. My aim is to trace the experience of the model's body from the initial gaze cast by the artist to the last stroke of the brush. The leap from the clinical to the figural is accomplished via the mirror stage, for both involve the reshaping of the subject. In this context we realize that the mirror stage is, "a metaphor for a mimetic process that occurs in intersocial relations with or without a mirror."2

Canvas as Mirror: The "Mirror Stage"

Christine Hallegrain fled Lantier's studio without even glancing at his partially sketched canvas of her.

Her unexpected return to the studio, six weeks and three chapters later, not only signifies her desire for

Claude, but her need for self-validation. It is her desire, to reclaim the original lost object, the sketched breast, that drives the narrative forward. When Claude takes her over to the painting, she is being asked to 238 value herself according to another's evaluation of her.

According to feminist film theorists, equating women with "excessive self-regard" is standard procedure in both film, literature and life: "women are accustomed to seeing themselves being seen, to valuing themselves according to others' evaluations of their appearance, and then to being devalued for this 'narcissism."'3

The internal dynamics of narcissism also constructs a textual apparatus operative in nineteenth century novels.

Christine's "meconnaissance"4 is a crucial step in the construction of the alienated ego through the process of identification. Her failure to recognize herself occurs at two levels: she is horrified at the sight of her body, dismembered— he has only sketched her head and breast, and on a paradigmatic level of male dominance where a nightmarish vision is offered through a male perspective. Just like the infant who is inadequately mirrored (not mirrored with the mother),

Christine's reflected image becomes an instance in an unconscious discourse which refuses to know itself. And like the infant at this stage, Christine identifes herself in terms of lack, that is, she gradually assimilates her new relation to the symbolic. To paraphrase Lacan, Christine identifies through the intermediary of Claude, and assumes her identity not as 239

essence but as addition— it is enjoined on the subject.5

Ironically, Claude did not recognize Christine as

she presented herself in the doorway that same after

noon, bearing a bouquet of roses. After he recognizes

her and thanks her for the flowers, he clumsily replies,

"Ah! par exemple, vous etes un bon garcon, vous!...C'est

la premiere fois que je fais ce compliment a une femme,

parole d'honneur" (118). The connection between

Christine and a "bon garcon," two signifiers, is

sufficient to create a metaphor. However, metaphoric

creation does not magically take place from the simple

presentation of two images.6 It is obvious from

Claude's attempt at welcoming her that he neither

extoles nor demerits her attributes. He positions her

rather as an oscillation wherein she remains, unable to become either Christine or a "bon garcon" in the

signifying chain. Christine remains this "good little boy" until Claude fictionalizes her into another, more mythical projection:

Moi, je n'osais plus songer a vous...N'est-ce pas? vous "etes comme ces fees des contes qui sortent du plancher et qui rentrent dans les murs, toujours au moment ou l'on ne s'y attend pas. Je me disais: C'est fini, ce n'est peut-'etre pas vrai qu'elle a traverse cet atelier...Et vous voila, et ca me fait un plaisir, oh! un fier plaisir. (119)

From a Lacanian stance, dislodging the subject from a

familiar place accomplishes a coup proving that the ego is neither whole, nor unified. First experienced as a 240

good pal and then as the embodiment of a fantasy ("une

fee de conte") articulates certain problems, indeed.

Here, Claude takes the role of the analyst or the ego

psychologist as he superimposes his own vision, desires

and symptoms on the analysand, Christine. In his

attempt at mirroring Christine to herself we see the

paradoxical nature of the analysand: Christine is both

subject and object.

The general neo-Freudian notion of imposing

structures on the analysand was once considered a cure

for strengthening weakened egos. Instead, according to

Lacan, what happens in analysis, is the opposite: "a deepening of the patient's alienation for the truth of his or her being."7 In this instance, Christine, the

"moi," is further alienated in language and in the Other

(je). Just as the idea of a unified ego is a myth for

Lacan, Claude's attempted integration of model and canvas is strikingly synonomous. This progressive alienation not only exposes the myth of the unified ego but recreates it on the canvas.

After staring at the painting, recording her impressions and objective notations, Christine re members her image:

Christine, tout de suite, se reconnut. C'etait elle, cette fille, vautree dans l'herbe, un bras sous la nuque, souriant sans regard, les paupieres closes. Cette fille nue avait son visage, et une revolte la soulevait, comme si elle^avait eu son corps, comme si brutalement, l'on eut deshabille la 241 s y toute sa nudite de vierge. Elle etait surtout blessee par 1'emportement de la peinture, si rude qu'elle s'en trouvait violentee la chair meurtrie. Cette peinture, elle ne la comprenait pas, elle la jugeait execrable, elle se sentait contre elle une haine, la haine instinctive d'une ennemie.

Elle se mit debout, elle repeta d'une voix breve: "Je m'en vais." (120)

For Christine, recognition is not only momentary but violent. It is short-lived for it is based on a scene of remorcelation. In the style of a traditional

"blason" the body is named but also disseminated through aggression. Brutal images combine with the vocabulary of artistic endeavors to create a scene of violence.8

This phenomenon of the self's recognition and subsequent codification of subjectivity is not experienced as a joyful meditation on "object constancy— jouissance— in relation to a primordial Other."9 Rather, Christine perceives the "model" Christine as an "enemy." In the vocabulary of Lacanian philosophy, the model's world is itself then based on a violation of intimacy, a

"profanatory one."10

Christine's sudden exit affects a death-wish in

Claude. Her absent pose prevents him from finishing the canvas. As he attempts to reintegrate desire (to complete the painting) and need (for a female body)

Claude uses a series of different models. All these forms, he hopes, will crystallize into the central figure. Although it is an impossible endeavor, it does 242 signify a primordial desire. Notwithstanding failure we do read in Lantier's attempt at accomodating many bodies into one, a formal organization of the ego, one that

Lacan nonetheless refutes. Finally, Claude admits to

Christine that his piecing together was an irrational act which resulted in a total misreading or miscomprehension of the complete form: "Aussi, tonnerre de Dieu! Est-ce qu'on plante la tete d'une femme sur le corps d'une autre! Je devrais me couper la main" (148).

Claude is not content with dis-solution; however, because he is threatened by a loss (the hand), his search is directed no longer toward the fragmented but toward the complete vision. In a remarkable paragraph dealing with the fragmented painting, Claude insists that Christine is the only mediator in the creative process. The other models have been, as it were, dropped by the artist. Lantier, through the process is now liberated and can now refer only to the source of his energy and talent: Christine.

This structure of Claude's misrecognition of the female form indicates that Claude is in a formative stage in his artistic development. Here, the relation between man and his body is significant. In his observations of children between the ages of two and five at play, Lacan identified a high frequency of violent images: torn bellies and other corporal 243

dismemberment. In his own verbal castigation of

himself Claude approximates a psychic castration. For

the artist, the mutilated hand is the most arresting

image of an alien body possible!

At this point, when Christine seems to come alive

most, she is the most repressed, "elle n'avait pas

prononce une parole" (151). Let us note that the

effacement of the spoken word and conversely, Christine,

textualized as the silent subject, structures an economy

of signs which represents the female unconscious. It is

the narrator who answers for Christine in response to

Claude's demand that she model for him:

Pourquoi done lais^er une rivale donner son corps, quand elle avait deja donne sa face? Elle voulait etre la tout entiere, chez elle, dans sa tendresse, en comprenant enfin quel malaise jaloux ce monstre batard lui causait depuis longtemps. (151)

Claude's earlier replacement of Christine by a long line

of models suggests, from a Lacanian stance, his desire

to destroy the other who has become exceedingly

independent. Christine returns to the studio two months

later. From this point on she "avait pris possession

de 1'atelier, elle y semblait chez elle" (129). In

spite of the aggressive even brutal ambiance of the

studio, Christine returns: "cet atelier rempli de

tableaux violents, etait demeure pour elle un malaise...grandie dans la tendresse et 1'admiration d'un

autre art, ces fines aquarelles de sa mere" (142). 244

When Claude asks Christine to show him her 'album her collection of paintings and drawings from childhood,

she is essentially seeking approval: "Vous trouvez pa mauvais, n'est-ce pas"; however, it is never spoken in his response: "Mais non, c'est innocent" (143). Her request constitutes the Other: Lantier. According to

Lacan,

That which is thus alienated in needs constitutes an Urverdrangung (primal repression), an inability, it is supposed, to be articulated in demand, but it re-appears in something it gives rise to that presents itself in man as desire (das Begehren)12

From the moment that she speaks, her needs are subjected to demand. His answer repositions her as alienated.

She plays out the status of demand very well.

Lacanian structures of desire actually bear on something other than satisfaction; they bear on presence or absence. In this case it is the relation to the absent mother, realized in the syntactical displacements that creates this presence. We find this intersection of presence and absence in the linguistic function of the speaker. As a corollary to Lantier's paintings,

Christine recalls her mother's. And, as a response to

Lantier's insouciance regarding her portfolio, Christine again evokes the mother, "Dame! j'ai eu si peu de lemons de maman!... " (143). Such a commentary depends explicitly on the Lacanian notion of desire as the splitting of need and demand. This demand for presence 245

of the mother is governed by structures that ultimately

figure the relations between the sexes. Hence, Claude's

calculated comeback: "Avouez que ma peinture vous rend

malade..." (143) refers to competing art styles, which

have in fact distorted the relationship. She prefers

the more romantic still-lifes, he the plein air school.

His reply increases alienation of desire, and Claude no

longer enjoys the privilege of satisfying Christine's

needs. Her future, in other words, does not depend on

the "law of the father." The introduction of

Christine's recollections of her mother rivals or in

trudes upon the space reserved for the phallus, that is,

the studio. In doing so, she has in effect,

reconstituted the (m)Other. Hence, we remark the

following displacement: need is rearticulated as demand, which in turn, in the absence of satisfaction, becomes’ desire. Positioning Lantier as the alien signifier brings us back to the cornerstone of Lacanian psychoanalysis. Now, the desire of the mother is the phallus. In this instance, Christine's desire is to be the mother, the one who, at this point dominates the symbolic. Only in language is it possible to achieve unity, in this instance between the mother and the daughter. The doubling of the female plot will spawn yet another drama, this time at the expense of the artist. 246

Painting Transference

In "Intervention on Transference" Jacques Lacan defines countertransference as "the sum total of the prejudices, passions and difficulties of the analyst, or even of his insufficient information, at any given moment of the dialectical process."13 In the standard

Freudian idea, transference "allows a patient to relive past experiences through the analyst, the "better" parent."14 Both Freud and Lacan believed that there is no psychoanalysis without transference.

In literature, I suggest that characters involve themselves in similar processes of countertransference/ transference. Claude, as the literary analyst, undergoes countertransference. Specifically, my reading draws on the same dialectical process in three parallel situations: psychoanalysis, pregnancy and a modeling session.

Lantier's negative transference manifests itself along the axis of the experience of motherhood. His countertransference begins when he discovers that

Christine is pregnant. Her pregnancy, he concludes is the reason that he will no longer paint "en plein air."

His excuse is actually an indictment of the maternal subject and object: "Sa grossesse lui causait de frequents malaises, elle restait accroupie devant le feu, elle etait obligee de se facher, pour que Claude 247 sortit sans elle,... and "ce petit etre qui allait venir compliquer 1'existence, elle saisie d'une angoisse qu'elle ne s'expliquait pas, comme si elle eut craint que cet accident-la ne fut la fin de leur grand amour"

(204-5). In Christine's pregnancy, we find confirmation of transference and countertransference. The first dialectical reversal occurs as Christine, "obligee de se facher" plays into Claude's hands in order to incite him to work. She breaks through the material furnished by his lack of motivation to read his unconscious desire to work. In the second reversal, Lantier relinquishes his position as analyst and goes so far as to blame his defeat on Christine as carrier of his very own creation: her pregnant belly is a constant reminder of his inability to effect a satisfactory image on the canvas.

Pregnancy is pushed so far here that it becomes a double edged sword encoding both impotency and virility, death and productivity, even years after birth.

Armed one afternoon with their son, Jacques, and her "ancien album" Christine ventures over to where

Claude is painting. Lantier, surprised, remains insensitive to Christine's demands that they browse through her paintings together, "elle expliqua que pa reveillait des choses en elle, d'etre la, derriere lui"

(208). The hidden object of her desire is to put herself back into his life, through painting: "elle 248

eprouvait le besoin de se mettre de moitie dans sa

besogne, depuis que cette besogne le lui enlevait

davantage chaque jour" (208). When he makes no

favorable comments, only discouraging smiles as

commentary on her paintings, we recognize the need to

consider the unspoken dimension of the text. In a third

dialectical reversal, Lantier refuses to admit to

Christine's generative powers, which are resonated by

the presence of the child and the album. Her pregnancy

and motherhood cause Lantier to retreat in a paranoid way and to categorically alienate himself or align

himself with the dead. Although introducing life, the baby kills the model which in turn kills the artist.

Lantier is specularized in the endless circularity of

the dialectical process. As the child grows, a

structure of rivalry in the domestic sphere is set up.

By becoming a mother to her son, Christine also becomes

a mother to her husband, "son grand enfant d 1artiste"

(283). The most unfortunate upshot of all this is that

Christine never learns how to mother her child. She neglects her new born infant and becomes instead the unconditional model-mother to Lantier. The key to the mysterious workings of this family lies in Lantier's masochistic death wish which is sustained by the knowledge that the child has stripped him of his ability to create. Christine invents excuse after excuse in order not to model for Claude in front of the child.

The only alternative is to lock Jacques in a room where

he cannot witness the approximate primal scene of the

father taking the mother. The boy's early death,

ironically enough, gives greater scope to the child's

life. The young child's death propelled his father to

frame him. Claude makes a very serious and consuming

study of the child's swollen head. Death revives the painter of "L'Enfant Mort" with one last glimmer of

success. His fascination with his dead son signifies yet another transference. All of the obstacles put in

Lantier's way, pregnancy, birth and the son impede his

remembering of the repressed material, namely that he is dead artistically, which prefigures his own suicide.

Seen in this light transference becomes, moreover, a

sort of resistance.

Even after the child’s death, Claude fears his artistic impotency. The reunion with the model, after

the child's death, gives us the opportunity to measure her power. Lantier continues to blame his lack of emotional stamina and creative talent on others, namely

Christine. When they are seated in the familiar studio and she takes up her pose, Lantier is once again overcome with feelings of impotency. He screams out:

"Non decidement je ne peux rien faire avec pa...Ah vois- tu, quand on veut poser, il ne faut pas avoir d'enfant" (349). The symptom, Lantier's fear or refusal to speak, here defended with the substitution "pa" (in

French, the "id") for the female body refers us to the real problem. Essentially, the desire for communion exists not in the realm of art, not in natural creation, and not in language for Lantier and Christine. He fears her body's productivity as much as he fears her natural talent as artist. His prohibition of her is specific to the natural and the cultural. Her own ambivalent feelings towards her art are the same feelings she experiences when confronted with Lantier's version of her. When Christine attempts to enter into a relationship with Lantier through her body and then through her art she entered into a worn out dialogue of confrontation with masculine authority. We see a connection here between her own censorship of her body and now her art. This is derived from her sex. What she lacks is not talent, but a symbol of the phallocentric order.

The use of countertransference, as an approach to

Claude's particular relationship to art, offers a way for the subject, Lantier, to actualise his infantile conflict. The infant in utero poses a threat to Claude who considers Christine his mother, the "good" parent, too. The father/son rivalry has at its source the mother's body. 251

Paranoia and the Feminine Text

Among the psychological mechanisms instrumental in

Christine's development is paranoia. Understood from a

Lacanian stance this means that "After the mirror stage, aggressiveness is more specifically related to separation/recognition dynamics and is at the base of the paranoiac structure of the human subject."15

Schor believes that Zola's fiction is paranoid because it presents a hermeneutic crisis where madness can be detected in the text. Her approach to the paranoid text is not accomplished on a thematic level; rather, she suggests that paranoia is found in the madness of the text, evidenced in the "linguistic approach."16 The resemblance between textual and feminine paranoia is strongly suggested in the Salon des Refuses.

Essentially, it is the entire syntagmatic and paradigmatic structure of the novel's participation in the exhibition, condensed in Chapter IV, which produces the paranoid structures of the text and of the human subject. Christine's second experience of herself puts her in the position of the sacrificial lamb. Her humiliation at seeing herself, being seen by others, propels her back to Lantier, still the desiring object:

"O mon ami, ne vous faites pas de peine!...Je voulais vous voir et vous dire que ce sont des jaloux, que je le 252 trouve tres bien, ce tableau, que je suis tres fiere et tres heureuse de vous avoir aide, d'en etre un peu, moi aussi..." (187). A structure of paranoia is engendered by the crowd's ridicule. Christine, convinced that she is the object of the crowd's ridicule hides her own shame and comforts Lantier. Their scorn, she rationalizes, is displaced jealousy and ignorance. She capitalizes on her own pride to ease the pain. In this exchange we see her sacrificing her own ego for his.

This, according to Ragland Sullivan, is one structure of paranoia.

While in the Salon, Zola uses every means possible to create the paranoid text: the trappings of the crowd, the reunion with the band, and the ever present Irma.

Both the verbal and non-verbal agents of specularity bring out the structure. Finding the painting presents our first true structure of chaos. The mystery, echoed in the recurrent question "Ou ont-ils done fourre le tableau de Claude?" (160), "Sais-tu ou ils ont fourre la toile de Claude, toi" (164), establishes the painting as unstable, as if it were circulating on its own accord. When the object's identity is finally fixed,

"Ou est-ce, a la fin?" (167) the band, Irma included, impeded by the rush of the crowds, swerve through the maze of the Salon. Claude's ascent becomes for him a negative attraction: his anxiety is only provoked by 253 the meandering crowd who put up impasse; the mundane conversations of the viewers, none of whom comment on his painting and finally by Irma who, like the painting drifts from man to man. To the others she is the true spectacle in the Salon, not the paintings. Claude is repeatedly detained from his search by Fagerolles incessant narration of Irma. Here, Irma represents the motor which gains momentum in its pursuit of dismantling the collective forces of the artists. The scene is accomplished in total suspense, instrumented by the roaming crowd of spectators and the magnitude of laughter and sneering. As Claude approaches his painting, shelved back in the last room, the laughter of the crowd anticipates his reactions:

(Claude) entendait toujours monter les rires,^une clameur grandissante, le roulement d'une maree qui allait battre son plein. Et comme il penetrait enfin dans la salle, il vit une masse enorme, grouillante, confuse, en tas, qui s'ecrasait devant le tableau. Tous les rire s'enflaient, s'epanouissaient, aboutissaient la...C'etait de son tableau qu'on riait (167).

For Claude, lost in this sea of ridicule, there is a disjunction: "Tous les rires s'enflaient,

/ \ s 'epanouissaient, aboutissaient la." At each turn of the dialogue there is a distancing of the subject and his object. He is content with knowing that there is no resemblance between artist and painting (la peinture); he is comforted by the disjunction. He interprets the crowd's unpleasant sensations and reactions not against 254 himself, but instead, projects the feelings to a body outside of himself. In other words, from Claude's perspective, Christine, the model is the true object of the crowd's scorn.

The associative meditation of Christine on

Lantier's painting reveals some curious symmetry, which

Schor expresses as "negative symmetry," between the protagonist and the non-human double.17 Christine, it appears, from the narration, must have been present at the Salon, at the same moment as Lantier. Her recollection of the scene as recounted to Lantier, echoes what he has just heard:

Elle continuait, ... comment elle etait tombee dans la tempete des rires, sous les huees de tout ce peuple. C'^tait elle qu'on sifflait ainsi, c'^tait sur sa nudite que crachaient les gens,... Elle s'etait sauv£e, comme si elle avait senti ces rires s'abattre sur sa peau nue, la cingler au sang de coups de fouet (186-87).

Repetition is introduced through the surface structures.

Christine's reactions to the painting generate a second tableau of paranoia and punishment. Her humiliation is played out on the level of her body. Here, negative symmetry takes the form of a thematic repetition between the two passages. Whereas laughter for Lantier is "le roulement d'une maree," Christine is entrenched in "La tempete des rires," images which substitute a harsh and even destructive force of nature as mediator. Claude fears the laughter as he would a high tide ready to 255

"battre son plein." For Christine, preserving the

"plein" instates the initial fantasy of escape. The use

of "comme" signals the intersection of memory with pain.

She materializes the ambiguous "la" of Lantier's description into her own body. As a corollary to

Manette's narcissism we are given Christine's paranoia.

Lacan believes that "subjects reconstitute themselves for each other, by exchanging ego (moi) through language (je) as symbols."10 Reflected in her defense of Claude's painting is Christine's reinvestment of herself, "moi aussi" in the process. Chapter VI continues the theme of attempting to unify the "moi" and

"je," if only in language.

Narcissism and Maternity: Image Makers

Manette Salomon is experienced initially as a corporal unity, a whole self, in the eyes of Coriolis.

The wholeness spotted in Manette reveals itself in the

Real: her name and her profession. Lacan's particular skepticism of the whole self plays itself out here in the unconscious. Her history and profession attest to one entirely comfortable with her body and her projected image. Since she is a professional model, we accept without question that she is accustomed to her 256 objectified position. The professional model is pure spectacle. The first time we see her she is experienced as whole: upright and posed on a bus. By attending chiefly to this initial phase of recognition, we see that Manette, unlike Christine has already perceived herself as the agent of her actions. One current feminist revision of psychoanalysis would read Manette as escaping "the earliest stage in a series of historical stages that oppress women."19

Traditionally, the artist was responsible for the success of a painting. This valuation is challenged by

Manette Salomon. Dominant and submissive are two terms which rewrite themselves according to the artist/model plot in MS. There is a difference between male and female and artist and model in MS. During one of their earliest modeling sessions, Coriolis remarks that

/ Manette "avait l'air ennuyee quand elle voyait que ^a ne marchait pas" (188). She also describes to Coriolis, in detail, how other artists have painted her body. In striking contrast to Christine who would not even approach the subject of her body yet forfeited it to an alien image, Manette Salomom "est persuadee que c'est son corps qui fait les tableaux" (189). Even Coriolis describes her skin as "heureuse" (188) under the artist's gaze. Christine hands over power to the master while Manette annihilates the power of the master to 257 validate herself. Manette's actions suggest that she is not willing to sumbit to certain organic laws and restrictions imposed by the artist. Her initial resistance to society's rules encapsulates a controversy presently surrounding theories on the phallus and castration. We accept Manette as the phallic mother because of how she demonstrates a privileged access to the symbolic through her her dominant position or pose.

Manette becomes more of a little man, a man(ette), by identifying as the phallic signifier. She represents power and prestige within the phallic order evidenced by her language, heritage and profession. One of the major differences between Christine and Manette is in their experience of the Other. A similar salon scene in MS brings together, briefly, the unnamed models, the subjects of the paintings. Unlike Christine, Manette is no scapegoat for the collective. Manette works from a position of power: "...allant aux tableaux, aux statues

\ ou elles retrouvent leur corps, et disant tout haut:

"TiensI me voilaJ" a l'oreille d'une amie, pour que tout le monde 1'entende..." (159).

Coriolis, meanwhile is much more representative of an identificatory loss of power, prestige and language.

This is best seen in the synagogue where he is unable to identify with the Hebrew that Manette chants and in the note he writes her, asking her to model for him but does 258 not sign. It is clearly the language of the other which defines him. My view suggests that Coriolis is the analysand, Manette, the analyst.

As Manette accepts her access to the symbolic,

Coriolis retreats. As a caricature of the Lacanian desiring subject, Coriolis reacts violently to Manette's body: "Coriolis se sentait devenir jaloux de ce modele du passe et du present de ce corps public qui s'offrait

\ a l'art et sur lequel il voyait en ne voulant pas les voir, les yeux des autres" (193). If we agree with

Irigaray, that man's eyes are understood as substitute for the penis, then Coriolis is engaged in a specularity that further fetishizes his desire.21 Coriolis' attention is fixated on the body, her body as site of enunciation. To defend his system of beliefs he attempts to censor Manette— to keep her perpetually posed for his eyes only. He fears the circulation of her body because it is, in short, a reduction of discourse to the state of "pure signifier..." (of the others).22 Coriolis' desire to repress or censor may be equated as a corrolate of the original Imaginary symbiosis with the mother. "Desire drives people to seek recognition at the other's expense...to annihilate the other to validate their own belief system."23 By ruining her professionally he accomplishes two desires: mastery over her, and validation of himself through his 259

art. Freud, we recall postulated two kinds of drives:

sexual and ego. Here, too, we are faced with ego drives dominating Coriolis' desire to save himself. Kristeva

comments on the problem of the "object within the phobic

compromise" and lends understanding to Manette's

narcissism. She writes: "In the final analysis, the so-

called Narcissistic drive dominates only if the

inability of the paternal metaphor prevents the subject

from finding its place within a triadic structure giving an object to its desires."24 The triadic structure to which Kristeva alludes never forms in MS. The absence of this structure allows Manette to dominate through narcissism.

Coriolis sees imprinted on Manette's body a "Master

Discourse" from which he is excluded. In her decision to continue to be productive of images, Manette de-

legitimizes an entire system of male supremist values:

"Elle avait invente des pretextes, manque des rendez vous de Coriolis, pour aller chez d'autres artistes

.qu'elle voyait travailler vraiment et s'inspirer d'apres elle" (194). Her deceptions are "symptoms" both of her rejection of already existing languages and the reconstruction of new languages.25 As the object of her own desire Manette empowers herself to make images and herein included, languages. I suggest that this is the point where Manette best functions in her role as 260 analyst: "The Lacanian analyst sits in the privileged position of representing the other (i.e., all the other interlocutors of the patient's past) without being functionally involved.112& For the Lacanian analyst, maintaining this position does not sabotage the psychoanalysis; however, it is ripe with meaning for other discourses. In dialecticizing the artist's perception and discourse, Manette has dismantled the structure of the studio, lifted the "separating medium"

Picasso identified and takes herself as object in her indulgent narcissism.

As I interpret Manette's scene of narcissism, exposed in Chapter LXII, as an index of bonding between the body, the image and language, I am also putting into play the inherent danger this act surrenders to the male social order. This scene is generated by Manette's promise to Coriolis not to model for the others. By refusing to recognize herself as Other, she most appropriately subverts his power.

The revelations of self become significant in the culmination of this scene. The empty apartment, the warm fire in the fireplace and the locked door symbolize

Manette's repressed sexuality. My initial emphasis on the logistics of the scene, is deserving of some qualification. Manette allows herself this indulgence which she accomplishes through a regression: "en 261 regardant autour d'elle comme une petite fille qui est seule et qui fait une chose defendue" (213). The narrator, by associating Manette with a young girl, play-acting or flirting with prohibition, represses from the start any threatening signs of sexuality. In this passage we see ostensible progress in the direction of an empowering sexuality. Like the narcissistic child,

Manette aggrandizes herself. In her repetition of a childhood act, Manette recognizes no flaw in her body.

She attends chiefly to what is female, what she does possess.

This description of the erotic act of narcissism is sustained by the Goncourts' expert use of of metonomy and euphemism. It is clear from the detailed attention given to her stockings, her hands, her feet, and her peignoir that these displacements align themselves, for the authors, in the morcellation and consequently total eclipse of what is truly female. For example, her breasts are only referred to as an affect of the involuntary act of breathing: "la poitrine a peine ✓ soulevee par la respiration (214). Repressing female genitals via the euphemism uncovers another repression.

We are presented, nonetheless with an image that is more revealing than the author's unconscious repressions:

"Elle etait nue, n'etait plus qu'elle" (213). Her exuberance at seeing herself translates to a joyful 262 meditation on a perfect form which begins and ends with her (elle). However, the effect is eclipsed as soon as it is textualized by the Goncourts. In yet another fixation on her body, Manette moves the reader from their experience of her as negative to a positive valorization: "Une minute, Manette se contemplait et se possedait dans cette victoire de sa pose: elle s'aimait"

(214). The actions and desires of the subject reflect a totality; a unified subject, taking itself as object.

The scene ends like it began: "Puis brusquement, elle rompait cela avec le caprice d'un enfant qui dechire une image" (214). The solitude, meditation and eroticism of

Manette's narcissism is contrasted with the sudden dismantling of the pose which is rendered complete through brutal images of breaking and tearing. Her innocent play becomes a violation of the laws and logic of the symbolic order. Coriolis' unannounced and obtrusive try propels Manette back to the visible

Imaginary reflected in her discourse which refuses reciprocity and at the same time refutes the "bad" mirroring: "Bete! puisqu'il n'y a que la glace qui me voit" (215)!

Manette Salomon's pregnancy opens up entirely new possibilites for the desiring subject and limits others.

By becoming a mother, "Manette etait devenue une autre femme. Le modele avait ete tue soudamement, il etait 263 rnort en elle. La maternite, en touchant son corps, en

✓ V avait enleve l'orgueil. ...Des entrailles de la mere, la juive avait jailli" (319). Thus, her body serves as the site of a new discourse; no longer can we read the language of narcissism. One of Kristeva's interests, like other feminist critics is on the experience of motherhood. For Kristeva, motherhood signifies an isolated experience: "the only opportunity a woman has to experience the other in its radical separation from herself, that is, an object of love."27

The experience of the subject is re-established, in a highly religious and maternal discourse. First, in relation to the objective, here understood as the infant and, in the second instance, in relation to the subjective, her Judaism. Pregnancy in MS is productive: by forcing recognition of the other, it strives to dislodge the subject from its former and prominent narcissistic stance. Finally, pregnancy prevails upon

Manette as an opportunity, or duty to further recognize her history and cultural as part of herself and part of her child. A summary of Manette's influence on the child refers us back to a Lacanian paradigm on the subject of narcissism. Lacan located narcissistic difficulties "in a lack of psychic separation from the

(m)Other and the resultant incapacity to submit to the metaphorical reality principle: the Law of the Name-of- 264 the-Father, or the Oedipal structure."28 Manette propogates narcissistic difficulties for the child, in accordance with Lacanian precepts by an aggressiveness with Coriolis which, when elaborated leads us back to primary, or corporal narcissism: "Elle n'avait point

v A demande au pere de reconnaitre son fils" (319). In striking contrast to Lantier, Coriolis accepts his son as a prized possession. He refers to him as "une forme ✓ ✓ ebauchee" (340) signifying from the beginning of life the child's potential and his father's recognition. In still another sense, the infant, referred to as the

"first stage" in the execution of a painting, or any work of art, solidifies the image of an unfinished or unnamed product. Manette intends to keep it that way.

Paternity introduces a radical change in Coriolis' life, elevating his self awareness, "la paternite du

✓ A bourgeois et de 1'artiste s'eveille en meme temps chez

S le pere." Essentially we recognize Coriolis progressing far past his own experience.

Coriolis ends up playing the role of the Lacanian analysand, the one who wants to know, very well.

Manette, as analyst represents his desire as she leads him away from the other artists, save Garnotelle "un homme de talent, ayant un nom, une position, ... (324).

The patient, Coriolis can never speak to Manette his intersubjective discourse, colonized as he is by her 265 entire extended family. His discourse is submerged beneath "la juiverie" (388). Manette keeps Coriolis in his alienated position by first raising her son as a V s* Jew: "a mesure qu'il grandissait, lui semblait aller a ces etrangeres, se complaire dans leur jupes, comme s'il etait instinctivement attire par une sympathie mysterieuse de consanguinite" (389). Coriolis's final degradation is symbolized first in the loss of his function: "Coriolis perdait le gouvernement et le commandement de son interieur;" (391) and total eclipse of self mirrored in the narrator's assessment "Ce fut comme une longue depossession de lui-meme a la fin de laquelle il ne s'appartint presque plus” (392).

Coriolis' dissipating authority is next mirrored in the language of the son, here accepted as the language of the mother. He relates to the language of his son in a paranoid way: "Un affreux petit bonhomme, vois -tu!...Et ^ V si tu l'entendais me dire ce qu'elles l'ont dresse a me dire toute la journee: Papa, tu ne fais rien...si tu l'entendais" (411). Manette, with a vengeance, dominates. Finally, "La juive jouissait, comme d'une revanche, de la servitude de cet homme d'une autre foi, d'un autre bapteme, d'un autre Dieu; en sorte qu'on aurait pu voir,— ironie des choses qui finissent" (404).

Manette Salomon, through her language and culture has penetrated, silenced and finally colonized the Symbolic. Manette, like Medea seeking revenge on Jason, symboli- ically kills Coriolis' son by denying him access to the

Symbolic and likewise by her promotion of narcissistic structures. Manette eschews the traditional myth of creation and rewrites what Scriptures has written. We begin with Adam, the first man, who gave language and names to all the creatures in Eden. Manette, in her refusal to let Coriolis name their son makes up for the theft of language by man, enacted before her. Manette' will to power dramatizes male absence. 267

Notes to Chapter V

1 Lacan, Ecrits, 4. The entire passage is as follows: "This development is experienced as a temporal dialectic that decisively projects the formation of the individual into history. The mirror stage is a drama whose internal thrust is precipitated from insufficiency to anticipation-and which manufactures for the subject, caught up in the lure of spatial identification, the succession of phantasies that extends from a fragmented body-image to a form of its totality that I shall call orthopaedic-and lastly, to the assumption of the armour of an alienating identity, which will mark with its rigid structure the subject's entire mental development."

2 Ragland-Sullivan, Jacques Lacan, 275.

3 Greene and Kahn, Making, 128.

"Meconnaissance" is one of the few French terms that Lacanians keep in their translations. The English equivalent is "failure to recognize" or "Misconstruc tion." Sheridan prefers to use "meconnaissance" as opposed to the English because, for Lacan, "meconnaissance" is inextricably bound to "connaissance" or knowledge, see Ecrits, xi.

5 Lacan, Feminine, 41.

6 According to Lacan, in Ecrits, page 157, metaphor does not happen magically through the semblance of substitution. The creative "spark," as he calls it, "flashes between two signifiers, one of which has taken the place of the other in the signifying chain." This exchange in language approaches his concept of paranoia in the subject where one ego is exchanged for the other's as symbols. See note 21.

7 Ragland-Sullivan, Jacques Lacan, 120. With this, Ragland-Sullivan has pioneered a significant revisionism in the philosophy of psychoanalysis. 263

8 De Beauvoir, Second, page 307. Christine's appropriation of herself as wounded is not unlike the little girl's sight of herself who might "consider her sex as a wound resulting from a mutilation." According to Ragland-Sullivan, the event of the infant perceiving its body as a "collection of discrete part- objects," inhibits adult recognition of a "complete form." see above citation, page 21.

9 Ragland-Sullivan, Jacques Lacan, 72.

10 Lacan, Ecrits, "Aggressivity in Psychoanalysis," 17.

11 The succession of the models is discussed on page 147.

12 Lacan, Ecrits, 286.

13 Lacan, Feminine, 71.

14 See Ragland-Sullivan on transference, page 126 in Jacques Lacan.

15 Ragland-Sullivan, Jacques Lacan, 37.

16 Schor, Crowds, 59.

17 ibid.

18 Ragland-Sullivan, Jacques Lacan, 43.

19 ibid., 275. Ragland-Sullivan quotes Irigaray's argument, with which she disagrees.

20 ibid., 272-73.

21 Irigaray, Speculum. 145. 269

22 Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror, trans. Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 49.

23 Ragland-Sullivan, Jacques Lacan, 125.

24 Kristeva, Powers, 31.

25 ibid., 45.

26 Ragland-Sullivan, Jacques Lacan, 125.

27 Kristeva, Powers, 10.

28 Ragland-Sullivan, Jacques Lacan, 34. CONCLUSION

The use of psychoanalysis in criticism gives added insights into the understanding of narrative and especially the discourse of naturalism. Like the human subject who emerges from the Oedipal process, discourse undergoes a similar split revealing both its conscious and unconscious dimensions and applications. In the symbolic role of father, naturalism has engendered two subjects, Manette Salomon and L 'OEuvre. Equally symbolic to this discussion is the serious role the model plays in the drama of what passes for natural(ism). For the drama of the Oedipus to come about, the child must recognize sexual difference; equally, for the literary drama to unfold, one must recognize textual difference. Psychoanalytic literary criticism, in other words, "can do more than hunt for phallic symbols: it can tell us something about how literary texts are actually formed, and reveal something of the meaning of that formation."1

Terry Eagleton identifies four kinds of psychoanalytic literary criticism. He relies on the object of inquiry as the structuring differential.

Accordingly, one may concentrate "on author and content,

270 271

or formal construction and the reader."2

As its object, this work has first taken into

account the authors themselves, thoroughly examining how

they have revealed themselves through their works and

their intent in and relationship to language and

writing. Hence, in analysing both Zola's and the

Goncourts' fictions as "symptoms" of individual

unconscious, our first priority was to divest them of

their static positions in the history of literature. We

dislodged them from canonical trappings as either

Romantics, Realists or Naturalists, and considered them

first as readers. In turn, this analysis has hoped to demonstrate that Zola, more than the Goncourts "read"

science and adhered to a scientific method in the

creation of his plots. The Goncourts, despite their

sporadic ventures into the discourse of naturalism,

cannot really be remembered as its progenitors. The difference lies in the product and how it reflects a

reality. The Goncourts'success with journal writing or

autobiography has shown that they in fact "read" only

themselves and filtered their fictions through their

individual consciousness. Much more suggestive of naturalism is the interest Zola showed in creating communities. The Goncourts contented themselves with writing highly posed and individual portraits which,

like reservoirs, reflected and intensified their 272 personal experiences. Responding to their claim that

Germinie Lacerteux was the model for the collective novel, we only half agree. A more appropriate response underlines their failure in this direction mostly due to their "irrepressible aristocratic condescension towards

Germinie."3

Regarding the novels' formal constructions this study has shown that MS is based on a structure of nostalgia. The Goncourts recreated the eighteenth century with their frequent references to artists representative of this century: Gericault, Ingres and

David. Their lucrative descent back through time celebrates the great styles of Rubens and Rembrandt; regressing further, they evoke the Italian painter

Raphael; and, finally the narrative places the reader in the poetry of the sixth century Greek, Anacreon.

Although this heavy authorial interpolation is interspersed in the narrative as reference points or styles worthy of contemporary imitation, it cannot mask the heavy sentimentality which frames the Goncourt consciousness. Perhaps the most convincing use of the past as a narrative informant is found in the name and practices of Anatole Bazoche: the picaro, the medieval jester. What the narrative does not approach, what becomes marginal to its plot, the contemporary scene, provides us with a more concrete meaning in deciphering 273

difference. Arguing for naturalism, on the other hand,

implies a discourse which runs parallel to contemporary

truths. In 0, Zola has placed the reader in the midst

of Impressionism, the then current trend in art.

Critics have cited 0, as Zola's autobiography, the novel

that helped him "work through" his extrication from the

Impressionists, and his wife, Alexandrine.

We know that Edmond and Jules de Goncourt composed

MS and all of their novels, for that matter, up until

Jules' death in 1870, as one unified writing subject.

This for me is an appropriate literary image of the

Imaginary, where an ever present reflection in the other

accomplishes a unity. Much like Saussure's sign, Jules

and Edmond were harmoniously sealed in their

compositions. Thus, they convinced each other that they

were in fact mavericks, apart from their associates, on

the cutting edge of a new literary revision. Their

writing produced a plenitude. The Goncourts alienated

themselves in their writing salon, did not interact with

their public, and, in fact, could only be separated by

death. In working on the raw material for their novels

they gave in only to personal fancy and imagination.

The "essence" of their novels was not accomplished

through sustained investigation or on the spot

documentation. The problem, for the writing subject did not come into view until the publication of 0, 274 twenty years later. The signifier naturalism was now applied to two signifieds.

As a period concept, romanticism, according to

Henri Peyre, flourished between 1820 and 1860. The romantics, he continues, were children born between 1793 and 1814. Edmond was born in 1822 and Jules in 1830.

MS was begun in 1867 and was finally published the next year. From this, our distinction becomes blurred: we extol the Goncourts as again falling between the cracks, presenting yet another aspect of their dual nature evidenced here by the time of their birth which seats them at the cusp of two movements: romanticism and realism. We consider Romantics to be the dilettanti, aristocrats replaced in society by a new class. This shift in class structure produced a new alienated man.

The romantic imagination was immersed in the sensation / \ of "deja vu," expertly recollecting a world gone by and the exotic. According to Georges Poulet, romanticism is "a consciousness of the fundamentally subjective nature of the mind, as a withdrawal from reality to the center of the self, which serves as starting point of a return to nature."4 The romantics wanted to express their own concrete experiences, outside of the boundaries of time and place. Thus, the return to the eighteenth century, in the vocabluary of Poulet, is their return to nature. The Goncourts, in MS, 275 distinguishably blended subjectivity, imagination, the exotic (with the introduction of the Orient) and their own personal myths to create a living paradise. The theme of voyage, or "dreams of voyage,"is one of the most characteristic features of romanticism."5 MS is constructed around other romantic themes and motifs like the desire for solitude paired with its opposite: the desire for others. The self-consciousness the Goncourts grant to Coriolis, evidenced by his three departures is an attempt to ennoble him. We see him more than once dialecticized in a series of tropes designed to create the romantic hero, the aristocrat, the desiring subject in pursuit of the unattainalble. Coriolis is almost a figure of pure mockery in his display of both innocence and experience. His desire for the unattainable is, in its extreme form, derived from a romantic theme.

Finally, as descendant of a long line of Bourbons, we clearly see the remainders of the ancien regime evoked from the start.

Through the individual study of the Goncourts' psychology and their relation to writing we discover that their novel debases everything that was not like them. Women, Jews and artists become the pathetic symbols of filth and materialism. According to these indications, the Goncourts literature is not democratic in spirit, but is posed and individual. Anyway we read 276 it, MS does not paint with local color, a slice of life; it paints the Goncourt men in their truest aristocratic pose: displaced and melancholic heros who cannot progress past their own static personality. Although they imagined themselves progressing in the direction of naturalism, we notice a gap between reality and imagination even in their idea of the writing subject.

In the end, their refusal to adequately identify with either the spirit of naturalism or romanticism, leaves them no recourse but to embark on a fantastic voyage into the dimensions of their own consciousness. This voyage reinstates author, intention and imagination as one. Perhaps the most significant event charting the brothers' desire to scramble back to a place where they will not be menaced or harmed by the outside world materializes in the last scene in MS, which in essence, recreates a virgin paradise. Here, we return to

Anatole, alienated in the Jardin des Plantes. Let us approach the last paragraph as an imminent return to nature:

Et parfois, dans ce jour du commencement de la journee, dans ces heures Ifegeres, dans cette lumiere qui boit la rosee, dans cette fraicheur innocente du matin,Sdans ces jeunes clartes qui semblent rapporter a la terre l'enfance du monde et ses premiers soleils, dans ce bleu du ciel naissant ou l'oiseau sort de l'etoile, dans la tendresse verte de mai, dans la solitude des allees sans public, au milieu de ces cabanes de bois qui font songer a la primitive maison de l'humanite, au milieu de cet univers d'animaux familiers et confiants comme sur une terre divine encore, 277

^ -A l'an^ien boheme revit des joies d'Eden et il s'eleve en lui, presque celestement, comme un peu de la felicite du premier homme en face de la Nature vierge. (425)

Their recurrent image of Anatole, the solitary man, here textualized as the first man in Eden, recreates primitive beginnings.6 Here, in the dawn of creation, in the freshness of a new day, the romantic image of

/ nature dominates. Once again, the reading situates us at a crossroads between imagination and perception, nature and man. The most successful outcome of this passage is the attempt by language to approach nature, actually, to become nature. According to Paul de Man,

"The reconciliation of art and nature, language and reality is the romantic ambition."7

The critical conflict over MS and 0 centered on and was generated by masculine themes, plots and reflections on art. My position contends that the mechanisms of plot transformations already looked at make up the manifest content of the novel. Like a repressed desire, the latent content of the novels is produced by an interpretive space read as feminine. The authors' fascination and confusion with females emerges as a common obsession, a unifying thread in the novels.

Unraveling this thread or, reading within this female problematic underscores difference first through gender and in turn relates to more general "scriptible" problems. 278

Manette, initially, seems gifted with all the qualities that Christine lacks. The opposition occurs primarily at the level of language: they do not speak the same language. In their construction of Manette, the Goncourts have created a female capable of destruction, an act which she faithfully accomplishes through language and the body. Her speech distances her from Coriolis, the Creole; her body is the site betrayal to Coriolis, the artist. The character Manette Salomon materializes body and language. This is the true source of her power. Christine, as the structural opposite to Manette, hands both her body and language over to the artist, in other words, she becomes a silent pawn in the game of patriachy. She experiences Lantier's art world as brutal; she is wounded at the sight of herself.

Growing up in the art world, Manette recognized her body as a producer and is happy at the sight of herself and even more delighted when she is spectacle. This personal dichotomy is best realized through the model's experience of herself. Christine returns to Lantier's studio to become complete, to reclaim the lost object

(her breast). Unfortunately, she cannot. The remainder of the narrative is involved with her pursuit of substitutes. In order for narrative to unfold,

"Something must be lost or absent...if everything stayed in place there would be no story to tell...desire is 278 stimulated by what we cannot possess..."® We admit

Christine as a desiring subject, a feminine representation of desire. As a subject, Manette questions and transgresses the symbolic. She strips the artist of his talent by affirming that it is her body which makes the painting. Since we consider her position as both inside and outside of male society, she emerges as a unified subject. Manette is not in search of any lost object, and therefore deprived of the status of desiring subject. Manette's world exists for her and she for her narcissistic world, just like the men who created her. 280

Notes to Conclusion

1 Eagleton, Literary, 179.

2 ibid., 180

3 Philip Walker, Zola, 128.

4 Wellek, Concepts, 212.

5 Henri Peyre, Qu'est-ce que le Romantisme (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1971), 143. Peyre's entire quote is: "Ces reves de voyage" exotiques vers le pays d'Ossain, vers 'la reveuse Allemagne,' comme l'appelle Lamartine, 1 1Andalousie, la Grece, ou la Palestine, perce^d'ailleurs le sentiment qui, plus que tout autre peut-etre, caracterise le romantisme: 1'impossibilite pour eux de se satisfaire de ce qui les entoure."

6 Peyre discusses the importance of primitive nostalgia, or the desire "edenique," on pages 231-233.

7 Wellek, Concepts, 220.

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INFORMATION to USERS the Most Advanced Technology Has Been Used to Photo­ Graph and Reproduce This Manuscript from the Microfilm Master

INFORMATION to USERS the Most Advanced Technology Has Been Used to Photo Graph and Reproduce This Manuscript from the Microfilm Master