View Evolved Into the Problematic Protagonist of Nineteenth- Century Narrative.2

ABSTRACT During the nineteenth century, deterministic theories were developing and gaining prominence. Scholars believed in the possibility of isolating hereditary and environmental factors that would explain human behavior. Not only did these theories dominate the sciences, but they also had a profound effect on nineteenth-century literary production, and particularly on the development of French realist and naturalist novels. The nineteenth century proclaimed the value of the individual and the possibility of personal transcendence. For writers of this period—Maupassant, the Goncourt brothers, and Flaubert in particular—the pursuit of individuality translated into a commitment to originality and artistic literary production. However, these same writers felt threatened by the new pressures of capitalism and struggled against the temptation to write for the consumer rather than purely for the sake of art. This tension between the desire for individuality and the obstacles to its actualization manifested itself in several ways in the lives and works of these novelists. In the character construction of protagonists, the novels of this period expose the illusion of individuality as their narratives unfold. There is evidence of the characters being significantly shaped by the society in which they live, while at the same time, they are shown to be oblivious to this influence. In the narrative structure, it is possible to detect hybrid or deviant forms of traditional genres within these novels as evidence of the ways in which the authors were shaped by the past and present from which they emerged. These reappropriated genres function as aesthetic resolutions ii of the social contradiction being worked through in the narrative, namely the valorization of individuality in a society that impeded its actualization. In Maupassant’s Une Vie and Bel-Ami, there is an appearance of epic within the novelistic form; in the Goncourt’s Charles Demailly and Madame Gervaisais, transformed versions of melodrama and tragedy function as counter-structures in each novel; and in Flaubert’s Madame Bovary and L’Éducation sentimentale, aspects of tragic and comic narrative are identifiable. The epic, melodramatic, and tragic heroes have all been dispossessed of the meaning that society had formerly assigned to its members and have evolved into the problematic protagonists of the nineteenth-century novel, whose pursuit of meaning has become the quest that defines them. iii Dedicated to my mother and father iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank my adviser, Eugene Holland, for his invaluable insight and direction. The completion of this dissertation would not have been possible without his untiring support and encouragement. I also appreciate his commitment to a standard of excellence that helped to increase the quality of this work. For all of his thoughtful comments, helpful suggestions, and patient corrections, I am deeply grateful. I am also grateful to Mihaela Marin for her helpful guidance particularly in the initial stages of this dissertation. Her encouragement and support are very appreciated. I thank Jean-François Fourny who provided additional guidance and Dennis Minahen who graciously agreed to participate in the final stages of the dissertation due to Professor Fourny’s absence. I owe many thanks to the entire faculty and staff of the Department of French and Italian at the Ohio State University for their wonderful assistance. The French Department provided all of the necessary financial and moral support to help me see this project to completion. I am especially grateful for the two Bulatkin Summer Fellowships that enabled me to make the progress I needed. My deepest gratitude goes to my family, friends, and the Lord Jesus Christ for sustaining me through this long, but rewarding process. It would not have been possible without them. v VITA December 15, 1972 ………………... Born – Maryland, United States 1994 ……………………………….. B.A. French, B.S. French Education Miami University 1998 ……………………………….. M.A. French, Bowling Green State University 1998 – present ……………………... Graduate Teaching Associate, The Ohio State University FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: French vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………....ii Dedication ……...………………………………………………………………………...iv Acknowledgments ………………………………………………………………………...v Vita ……………………………………………………………………………………….vi Introduction…… ………………………………………………………………………….1 Chapters: 1. Maupassant and the Capitalist Epic….………………………………………19 Une Vie: From Self-Possession to Dispossession………………….24 Bel-Ami: The “Act” of Transcendence……………………………..37 The Functioning of Epic in Une Vie and Bel-Ami…………………..61 2. The Goncourt Brothers and the Literary Melodrama………………………..75 Melodrama and Tragedy Redefined in Charles Demailly…………..82 Melodrama and Tragedy Redefined in Madame Gervaisais………..92 Fatality, Determinism, or Free Will?………………………………105 The Practice of Spectatorship and the Rhetoric of Martyrdom……135 3. Flaubert and the Modern Tragedy…….……………………………………150 The Illusion of Individuality….……………………………………156 The Inaccuracy of Perceptions….………………………………….175 Tragedy, Comedy, or Humor?……………………………………..185 Conclusion …...………………………………………………………………………...217 Bibliography…... ………………………………………………………………………232 vii INTRODUCTION The nineteenth century saw the advent of the detective novel, the naturalist novel, and psychoanalysis. What do these three narrative practices have in common? They all seem to be symptomatic of a desire to explain social deviance, a belief in the possibility of isolating primary causes of dysfunctional behavior through step-by-step reconstruction of events. What was it about this period that inspired this multiplication of narrative forms?1 Peter Brooks sees the proliferation of narrative in the nineteenth century as the manifestation of a feeling of anxiety caused by the loss of religious belief. He explains, The enormous narrative production of the nineteenth century may suggest an anxiety at the loss of providential plots: the plotting of the individual or social or institutional life story takes on new urgency when one no longer can look to a sacred masterplot that orga- nizes and explains the world. The emergence of narrative plot as a dominant mode of ordering and explanation may belong to the large process of secularization, dating from the Renaissance and gathering force during the Enlightenment, which marks a falling-away from those revealed plots—the Chosen People, Redemption, the Second Coming—that appeared to subsume transitory human time to the timeless (6). Society gradually exchanged metaphysical explanations for rationalist ones. In the nineteenth century, the reign of human reason resulted in, among other things, theories of positivism and empiricism, the proliferation of scientific thought, technological advances, and novelistic production, and more specifically, realist and naturalist novels. Rather than serving the purpose of inculcating a collective religious vision, literature became a 1 For a more detailed description of the connections between these three narrative practices, see Peter Brooks, Reading for the Plot (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1984) 268-270. 1 vehicle through which authors and readers attempted to demonstrate their ability to understand an individual’s place in the world apart from religious dogma. Later in his book, Reading for the Plot, Brooks considers the shift in focus from the group to the individual personality that occurs in novels to be a direct consequence of this loss of faith in a “sacred masterplot” and evidence of a desire to recover personal meaning: From sometime in the eighteenth century onward, the interpretation of human plots took on new urgency in response to a new centering of perspectives on the individual personality and a search for patterns in the individual existence and understanding of self that might recover some of the explanatory force lost with the decline of the collective myth (268). Although Brooks does not go this far, we can see that the dawn of capitalism with its emphasis on competition and personal success was at least partly responsible for bringing about this shift in focus from the group to the individual. The decline of “the collective myth” gave new importance to individualized narrative. The exemplary hero of traditional narrative who formerly embodied the ideal values of the sacred plot and lived out the collective worldview evolved into the problematic protagonist of nineteenth- century narrative.2 Georg Lukàcs describes the problematic protagonist as the novelistic character whose search for individuality and personal meaning becomes the defining quest of the novelistic form. In his book La Théorie du roman, Lukàcs distinguishes the problematic character of the novel from the non-problematic hero of the ancient epic whose goals are clearly defined for him by society and are quite attainable: Monde contingent et individu problématique sont des réalités qui se conditionnent l’une l’autre. Lorsque l’individu n’est pas problématique, ses fins lui sont données 2 Brooks, Reading for the Plot 138-39; Lucien Goldmann, Pour une sociologie du roman (Paris: Gallimard, 1964) 39. 2 dans une évidence immédiate et le monde dont ces mêmes fins ont bâti l’édifice peut lui opposer des difficultés et des obstacles sur la voie de leur réalisation, mais sans jamais le menacer d’un sérieux danger intérieur. (…) Dès lors que les idées sont posées comme inaccessibles et deviennent, empiriquement parlant, irréelles, dès lors qu’elles sont changées

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