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Reconstructing Woman Is a Very Rich Study, Immensely Suggestive, Well Researched, Well Written, and Sophisticated in Its Scholarly Approach

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Reconstructing Woman Is a Very Rich Study, Immensely Suggestive, Well Researched, Well Written, and Sophisticated in Its Scholarly Approach k e l l y ROMANCE STUDIES “Reconstructing Woman is a very rich study, immensely suggestive, well researched, well written, and sophisticated in its scholarly approach. Because it is so elegantly argued R and so intriguing, this study has the potential to open up new avenues of research.” E —Mary Donaldson-Evans, University of Delaware C O N Reconstructing Woman explores a scenario common to the works of four major French S novelists of the nineteenth century: Balzac, Flaubert, Zola, and Villiers. In the texts T R of each author, a “new Pygmalion” (as Balzac calls one of his characters) turns away U from a real woman he has loved or desired and prefers instead his artificial re-creation C of her. All four authors also portray the possibility that this simulacrum, which T I replaces the woman, could become real. The central chapters examine this plot and N RECONSTRUCTING its meanings in multiple texts of each author (with the exception of the chapter on G Villiers, in which only “L’Eve future” is considered). W O WOMAN The premise is that this shared scenario stems from the discovery in the nineteenth M century that humans are transformable. Because scientific innovations play a major A part in this discovery, Dorothy Kelly reviews some of the contributing trends that N attracted one or more of the authors: mesmerism, dissection, transformism and evo- lution, new understandings of human reproduction, spontaneous generation, pueri- N F i n From Fiction to Reality r culture, the experimental method. These ideas and practices provided the novelists e o t m e e with a scientific context in which controlling, changing, and creating human bodies n F t h i c - t in the C became imaginable. i o n e n t t o u r R At the same time, these authors explore the ways in which not only bodies but also y Nineteenth-Century French Novel e F a l r i identity can be made. In close readings, Kelly shows how these narratives reveal that e t n y c h i linguistic and coded social structures shape human identity. Furthermore, through n N t h the representation of the power of language to do that shaping, the authors envision o e v e that their own texts would perform that function. The symbol of the reconstruction l of woman thus embodies the fantasy and desire that their novels could create or trans- form both reality and their readers in quite literal ways. Through literary analyses, we dorothy kelly can deduce from the texts just why this artificial creation is a woman. dorothy kelly is Professor of French at Boston University. penn state romance studies series isbn 978-0-271-03267-2 the pennsylvania state university press 90000 university park, pennsylvania www.psupress.org 9 780271 032672 penn state press RECONSTRUCTING WOMAN romance studies EDITORS Robert Blue Á Kathryn M. Grossman Á Thomas A. Hale Á Djelal Kadir Norris J. Lacy Á John M. Lipski Á Sherry L. Roush Á Allan Stoekl ADVISORY BOARD Theodore J. Cachey Jr. Á Priscilla Ferguson Á Hazel Gold Á Cathy L. Jrade William Kennedy Á Gwen Kirkpatrick Á Rosemary Lloyd Á Gerald Prince Joseph T. Snow Á Ronald W. Tobin Á Noe¨l Valis TITLES IN PRINT Career Stories: Belle Epoque Novels of Professional Development JULIETTE M. ROGERS Reconstructing Woman: From Fiction to Reality in the Nineteenth-Century French Novel DOROTHY KELLY Territories of History: Humanism, Rhetoric, and the Historical Imagination in the Early Chronicles of Spanish America SARAH H. BECKJORD RECONSTRUCTING WOMAN From Fiction to Reality in the Nineteenth-Century Novel dorothy kelly the pennsylvania state university press university park, pennsylvania library of congress cataloging-in-publication data Kelly, Dorothy, 1952– Reconstructing woman : From fiction to reality in the nineteenth-century novel / Dorothy Kelly. p. cm. — (Penn State studies in Romance literatures) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-271-03266-5 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-271-03267-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. French fiction—19th century—History and criticism. 2. Women in literature. 3. Sex role in literature. I. Title. PQ653.K43 2007 843’.70935222–dc22 2007019589 Copyright © 2007 The Pennsylvania State University All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA 16802-1003 The Pennsylvania State University Press is a member of the Association of American University Presses. It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University Press to use acid-free paper. Publications on uncoated stock satisfy the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Material, ANSI Z39.48–1992. This book can be viewed at http://publications.libraries.psu.edu/eresources/978-0-271-03266-5 CONTENTS d Acknowledgments vii Introduction: The Science of Control 1 1 Transformation, Creation, and Inscription: Balzac 19 2 Women, Language, and Reality: Flaubert 49 3 Rewriting Reproduction: Zola 89 4 Villiers and Human Inscription 125 Conclusion: The Power of Language 153 Bibliography 165 Index 171 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS d I would like to thank my Boston University colleagues Odile Cazenave and Aline Livni for their assistance with certain thorny translations from the French. My gratitude also goes to Mary Donaldson-Evans and Doris Kadish, who gave me useful suggestions for improvement and revision, and to Lesley Yoder for her help in proofreading. As always, the annual Nineteenth-Century French Studies Colloquium provided the opportunity to present nascent ideas and receive valuable suggestions from colleagues. I send many thanks to all those who have given their time to organize these colloquia, and to the many colleagues who have contributed to this work through their comments. I also thank my family, Paul, Eric, and Beth, who have been living with this book as long as Beth has been alive. I appreciate the following permissions to reprint previously published material. Chapter 1 contains some material from my essay ‘‘Rewriting Reproduc- tion: Balzac’s Fantasy of Creation,’’ in Peripheries of Nineteenth-Century French Studies: Views from the Edge, edited by Timothy Raser (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2002; London: Associated University Presses, 2002), reprinted with permission from Associated University Presses. An early version of a section of Chapter 2 appeared as ‘‘Singes, me`res, et langage dans les textes de Flaubert,’’ in Langues du XIXe sie`cle, edited by Graham Falconer, Andrew Oliver, and Dorothy Speirs, A` la recherche du XIXe sie`cle 3 (Toronto, Canada: Centre d’E´ tudes Romantiques Joseph Sable´, St. Michael’s College, 1998), reprinted with permission from the series editor. A portion of Chapter 3 appeared in my ‘‘Experimenting on Women: Zola’s Theory and Practice of the Experimental Novel,’’ in Spectacles of Realism: Gender, Body, Genre, edited by Margaret Cohen and Christopher Prendergast, Cultural Politics 10 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), reprinted with permission from the University of Minnesota Press. INTRODUCTION:dTHE SCIENCE OF CONTROL Mais la civilisation, dans sa tendance a` diviser le travail, a toujours abouti a`cre´er une femme artificielle, c’est-a`-dire a`de´velopper certaines aptitudes en vue d’assurer la supe´riorite´ de l’office spe´cial, au de´triment de la valeur d’ensemble. [But civilization, in its tendency to divide labor, has always led to creation of an artificial woman, that is to say, to development of certain abilities that guarantee the superiority of a particular function, to the detriment of the quality of the whole.] —‘‘FEMMES,’’ DICTIONNAIRE ENCYCLOPE´ DIQUE DES SCIENCES ME´ DICALES,1877 Honore´ de Balzac’s Raphae¨l de Valentin describes himself as a new Pygmalion who transforms a lovely flesh-and-blood woman into his imaginary creation. Gustave Flaubert’s Fre´de´ric Moreau ultimately prefers his ideal reveries about Madame Arnoux to a real relationship with her. E´ mile Zola’s Claude Lantier neglects his wife and desires instead to give life to the women he has painted on his canvas and for whom his wife has sometimes posed. Villiers de l’Isle-Adam’s Thomas Edison replaces Alicia Clary with a perfect android woman. In all these cases, in various ways, the real woman is replaced by man’s artificial re-creation of her. This book looks in depth at the fantasy of a male being able to create a woman in the works of these four French novelists. My premise is that this shared representation stems in part from what Mark Seltzer describes as the discovery in the nineteenth century ‘‘that bodies and persons are things 1 that can be made.’’ One of the major factors contributing to this discovery is the science of the time, and throughout the readings, we will look at selected scientific trends that attracted one or more of the authors: mesmerism, dissection, transformism and evolution, new understandings of human reproduction, spontaneous generation, pue´riculture, and the experimental method. These ideas and practices provided the novelists with a scientific context in which controlling, changing, and creating human bodies became imaginable. In the second part of this introduction, 1. Mark Seltzer, Bodies and Machines (New York: Routledge, 1992), 3. 2 d RECONSTRUCTING WOMAN I pull out from this science a number of themes and structures that will inform the specific readings of the literary texts that follow in the main chapters. The four authors studied here pursue this fantasy in different ways, but each depicts the basic scenario of creating an artificial, man-made woman who would replace a real, natural woman. In Chapter 1 a study of that new Pygmalion, Raphae¨l, along with five other artists, authors, or scientists with mesmeric powers (Balthazar Clae¨s, Sarrasine, Frenhofer, Louis Lambert, and, in a more limited way, Vautrin), reveals how the literal and material power of thought and language creates, writes, human identity, and particularly woman’s identity.
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