Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2004 The Novelogue: The Genre of Choice for French Women Writers of the Nineteenth Century Germaine De Staël, Flora Tristan, and Isabelle Eberhardt Jennifer A. Law Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES THE NOVELOGUE: THE GENRE OF CHOICE FOR FRENCH WOMEN WRITERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY GERMAINE DE STAËL, FLORA TRISTAN, AND ISABELLE EBERHARDT By JENNIFER A. LAW A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2004 The members of the Committee approve the dissertation of Jennifer A. Law defended on December 10, 2003. Aimée Boutin ____________________________________ Professor Directing Dissertation David Kirby ____________________________________ Outside Committee Member ____________________________________ William Cloonan Committee Member ____________________________________ Raymond Fleming Committee Member ____________________________________ Jean Graham-Jones Committee Member The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee members. ii This dissertation is dedicated with loving appreciation to my parents. Without their constant support and unwavering belief in my abilities, this project would never have been attempted. I would also like to thank Sean Sullivan, my future husband, whose love, support, and editorial advice I immensely appreciate. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Aimée Boutin for her time, constructive advice, and willingness to share her insight and wisdom. An attentive reader who consistently offered a fresh perspective on the work, her efforts on my behalf have helped me to become a better scholar and writer. I would also like to thank all the members of my committee for the time and energy they have devoted to reading my work. In spite of busy schedules, all have been readily available for advice, reading, or simply a word of encouragement. Special thanks are also due to Dr. Barry Faulk for his time and advice during this process. His tireless support and effort were much appreciated. I am deeply indebted to Mrs. Ada Belle Winthrop-King for her generous contribution to the French division of the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics. The foundation created in her name has twice permitted me to travel to France to further my studies, once specifically for research on this dissertation. Finally I would like to thank all of the faculty and staff in the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics for continued support and a warm atmosphere in which to work. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ................................................................................................. vi INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................. 1 1. GERMAINE DE STAËL’S CORINNE OU L’ITALIE ......................................... 19 2. FLORA TRISTAN’S PÉRÉGRINATIONS D’UNE PARIA .................................. 51 3. ISABELLE EBERHARDT’S TRIMARDEUR ....................................................... 78 CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................110 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...................................................................................................114 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .......................................................................................119 v ABSTRACT This study examines the development of a new hybridized genre by women writers in nineteenth-century France that I have named the novelogue. The term novelogue was chosen because it illustrates the creative combination of the novel and the travelogue. The novelogue exists in-between previously established and male-dominated genres of the nineteenth century, allowing its female users to discuss issues of nation and gender in an arena that is freer and more open to possibilities and the questioning disallowed in the established, canonical genres of the day. The novel aspect of the genre allows its writers to frame their work within the traditional story-telling mode; moreover, the novel is also somewhat a genre of (non-) choice for women writers. The travelogue element of the genre is also groundbreaking in that it showcases women travelers who, unlike most of their contemporaries, journeyed to distant places alone, without husband or chaperone. The uniqueness and liberating nature of this genre is found, therefore, in its hybridity. The three women I chose to study for this work span the nineteenth century and wrote texts that illustrated a powerful combination of their political and personal viewpoints. Germaine de Staël’s Corinne ou l’Italie (1807), Flora Tristan’s Pérégrinations d’une paria (1838), and Isabelle Eberhardt’s Trimardeur (1922) are all examples of the novelogue. Each of these three writers portrays her own personal vision of utopian society through her novelogue. The goal, then, of this study is to analyze, through terms postcolonial theory, the way in which each of these writers used the novelogue to effect social change. vi Introduction: Birth of a genre Travel writing, in its essence, involves some sort of contact with borders. The mere act of traveling from one place to another requires the crossing of, if nothing else, physical boundaries. The travel narrative, therefore, becomes the perfect forum for a discussion of any boundary crossing, be it physical, theoretical, personal or emotional. It is for this very reason that writers like Germaine de Staël, Flora Tristan, and Isabelle Eberhardt make travel integral to the formal and thematic structure of their works, especially Corinne ou l’Italie, Pérégrinations d’une paria, and Trimardeur. The difference, however, is that these three women writers, after having crossed many different types of borders, chose to reside in the boundary, rather than cross it. This study, therefore, will examine how these three nineteenth-century authors used a travel theme to frame their stories of boundary dwellings and to dissect the relationship between colonial power and oppression. Key concepts of postcolonial studies such as ambiguity, ambivalence, contact zone, ethnography and autoethnography will give structure to the theoretical framework of this study. The end result will show that for each of these writers it is the journey – and not the destination – that proves to be of the greatest importance and interest because it is during the traveling that these women discover the freedom of in-between1 spaces. Crossing national and gendered identity boundaries was, for all three women authors, an issue that had personal roots. Born in Paris on April 22, 1766 to a wealthy Swiss banker/politician and an influential salonnière, Anne Louise Germaine Necker became Baronne de Staël-Holstein after her 1786 marriage to the Swedish Baron de Staël. Her father’s successful political career and her mother’s renowned literary salon both led to the development of a precocious, intellectually curious, and adventurous personality in Staël. As she became a salonnière in her own right, Staël began to publish her own letters and essays, readily entering into political criticism. Her Lettres sur J.-J. Rousseau, published in 1788, 1 The term “in-between” was first used by Homi Bhabha. In his essay “Cultural Diversity and Cultural Differences” he writes “that it is the ‘inter’ – the cutting edge of translation and negotiation, the in-between, the space of the entre that Derrida has opened up in writing itself – that carries the burden of the meaning of culture. It makes it possible to begin envisaging national, anti-nationalist, histories of the ‘people’. It is in this space that we will find those words with which we can speak of Ourselves and Others. And by exploring this hybridity, this ‘Third Space’, we may elude the politics of polarity and emerge as the others of our selves” (209). 1 would be the first of many actions that would render her a pariah in the eyes of society. As a woman, who was she to critique the great “Father of Romanticism”? Simone Balayé states that it was a “réponse audacieuse à [Rousseau]” but that it was the first step in launching her career as a writer (ELV 16). Her criticism of political events, especially of Napoleon’s policies, eventually culminated in her exile from Paris in 1803. In her personal life, Staël and her husband amicably separated, and she went on to lead a rather adventurous and much commented-upon love life. Her next successful work was De la littérature, published in 1800, and was followed by her first novel, Delphine, in 1802. The work studied here, Corinne ou l’Italie, appeared in 1807 following a trip to Italy. In April of 1810 she published De l’Allemagne and in May of 1811 she began Dix années d’exil, both of which emphasize the importance of themes of border crossing, travel, and exile. She died July 14, 1817. Posthumously, her work Considérations sur la Révolution française was published in 1818, another example of Staël’s non-conformism due to the work’s overt condemnation of Napoleon. A prolific writer who explored a plethora of genres, a notorious troublemaker, and mistress of many, Staël was nothing if not a controversial non-conformist, which is why she fits so perfectly