DRAGGING THE YOKE OF IDENTITY: SEXUAL DIFFERENCE IN FIN-DE-SIÈCLE NINETEENTH- AND TWENTIETH-CENTURY FRENCH AND FRANCOPHONE LITERATURE Manhal D Dandashi A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures Chapel Hill 2009 Approved by Advisor: Dominique Fisher Reader: Martine Antle Reader: Richard Cante Reader: Federico Luisetti Reader: Hassan Melehy © Manhal D Dandashi 2009 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT MANHAL D DANDASHI: Dragging the Yoke of Identity: Sexual Difference in fin-de- siècle nineteenth- and twentieth-century French and Francophone Literature (Under the direction of Dominique Fisher) In what ways is identity a banner, a badge, or a burden? How a person conforms to or resists the implications of any form of identity is the central focus of this study. Through the concept of the yoke, we will discuss Au pays des sables by Isabelle Eberhardt, Monsieur Vénus by Rachilde, and Les yeux bleus cheveux noirs by Marguerite Duras, all narratives in which identity is not always what it appears to be. In this study, I will examine representations of gender and identity to consider the relationship between performance and sexual politics. As we will see, Rachilde’s and Duras’s texts create a world in which any facet of identity is a free-floating signifier, challenging traditional notions of femininity, masculinity, and sexual identity as well as the distinction between so-called normality and abnormality. Despite the seemingly liberating trends contained in these two authors’ works, we will see that sexual difference (la différence des sexes ) often remains intact, a glaring point of contention within the textual worlds. Eberhardt’s work allows us to consider many of the same questions in light of how she created her own unique and hybrid identity, that of an Arab horseman in colonial Algeria. Her gender play and texts point to the limits of cultural, ethnic, and gender identity. Her iii fiction is highly critical of colonial power and authority while remaining at times ambiguous to sexual difference. The combined effect of studying these three authors as an ensemble leads to the conclusion, where we will investigate some of the larger questions of sexual politics and identity in a contemporary fin-de-siècle context. Exploring how each author treats the question of identity in its myriad different possibilities and examining the role of sexual difference and the sex/gender system becomes a vehicle for analyzing the role of norms and normativity in the social order. Adapting to the yoke or choosing to resist it becomes a political act imbued with the potential for reimagining what is possible for the self and the world. iv DEDICATION This work is dedicated to all the teachers who have inspired and encouraged me over the years. A special word of thanks and gratitude to the following educators who have truly made a difference in helping me to find my path: - Mrs. Regina Cabrera, Miss Cioffi, Mr. George, Ms. Hammond, Mrs. Hanley, Mrs. O’Malley, Mrs. Feisinger (née Sweet), and Mr. Tersigni of Scotia-Glenville Central Schools; - Dr. Candide Carrasco, Octave Naulleau, and Dr. Monica Weis, SSJ of Nazareth College of Rochester; - Dr. Rubén L. Gómez of St. John Fisher College; - Dr. Jean-Pierre Montier of Université Rennes 2-Haute Bretagne; - and Dr. Sahar Amer, Dr. Martine Antle, Dr. Richard Cante, Dr. Eric Downing, Dr. Dominique Fisher, and Dr. Edward Montgomery of UNC-Chapel Hill. - Finally, to the woman who has been my teacher for three decades, my mother Deborah D’Arcangelis (Schalmont Central Schools). v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thank you to the following people for their support and assistance: - My committee members: Dr. Martine Antle, Dr. Richard Cante, Dr. Federico Luisetti, and Dr. Hassan Melehy; - My director, Dr. Dominique Fisher; - The good people at the Center for Faculty Excellence; - Cale LaSalata; - Emily Rose Cranford; - Jacqueline Dougherty; - Julee LaPorte; - Sofian and Christopher Dandashi; - Betsy Sandlin; - Jennifer Phillips; - Jennifer DeVille; - Allison Anders, Cynthia Current, Paul Lai, Dr. Kevin Parker, and Elizabeth Powers; - Mary Jones, Sheena Melton, Tom Smither, and Celeste Yowell; - All my students, past & future; - L. & M., the little ones. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Abbreviations…………………………………………………………………………ix Chapter I. INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………...1 Dragging One’s Heels……………………………………………………………..4 Parsing the Project………………………………………………………………...6 Interpreting Drag…………………………………………………………………16 Approaching the Problem………………………………………………………..19 The Sex/Gender System and Sexuality…………………………………………..20 Fin-de-siècle: Which “siècle”?..............................................................................25 Changing Centuries, Colliding Categories………………………………………27 Mass Consumption and Evolution……………………………………………….29 Another Crisis of Masculinity……………………………………………………31 To What End?........................................................................................................33 II. FASHIONING FREEDOM: THE LIFE & WORKS OF ISABELLE EBERHARDT……………………………………………………………………35 Dressing the Part…………………………………………………………………36 Life and Times…………………………………………………………………...45 Eberhardt and Drag………………………………………………………………52 vii III. MONSIEUR VÉNUS : INVERSION AS SUBVERSION………………………61 Decadent Designs………………………………………………………………...64 Class and the Dandy……………………………………………………………...70 The Limitations of Language…………………………………………………….76 How to Reinvent Love…………………………………………………………...81 The Sex/Gender System, Sexuality, and Subjection……………………………..86 Desire & Death: Against Reproduction………………………………………….93 Legacy……………………………………………………………………………98 IV. PROTEAN DESIRE & PROJECTION…….......................................................108 Missed Connections…………………………………………………………….113 Sexual Difference and the Silk…………………………………………………117 Veiled Passions…………………………………………………………………131 The Place of Desire……………………………………………………………..135 Écriture in drag?...................................................................................................139 Sexuality, Queer Theory, and the Text…………………………………………142 Cloudiness, Blurred Borders, and the Middle Ground…………………………145 V. CONCLUSION: CONDITIONS OF IMPASSIBILITY……………………….151 WORKS CITED………………………………………………………………………..162 viii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Au pays Isabelle Eberhardt’s Au pays des sables Bodies Judith Butler’s Bodies That Matter CG Charles Baudelaire’s Constantin Guys Domination Pierre Bourdieu’s La domination masculine Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray Epistemology Eve Sedgwick’s Epistemology of the Closet Gender Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble MV Rachilde’s Monsieur Vénus (MLA edition) MV trans. English translation of Rachilde’s Monsieur Vénus (MLA) La maladie Marguerite Duras’s La maladie de la mort Moderato Marguerite Duras’s Moderato cantabile Le ravissement Marguerite Duras’s Le ravissement de Lol V. Stein Undoing Judith Butler’s Undoing Gender Vested Marjorie Garber’s Vested Interests ix CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION Over the course of roughly the last 150 years, the ways men and women conceive of their respective gender roles and of the relationships among and between themselves as men and women have drastically changed and evolved. What it means to be a man or a woman continues to unfold. Previously received notions of masculinity and femininity are being explored in the best possible sense: certain so-called defining characteristics of what “made” a man or a woman are no longer necessarily applicable in the present day. Feminism and the women’s movement, two related but certainly not coterminous phenomena, have helped women to enter the workplace on a more equal footing with their male counterparts, enabling access to professions and salaries that were unthinkable in the mid-1800s. Ideas generated by feminism and the women’s movement have prompted a greatly expanded sense of what it means to be a woman and have contributed to the conclusion that there is no one definition or set of defining criteria. Indeed, each woman must stake her own claim to her identity as a woman, or, conversely, she may choose not to. Within a patriarchal society, women may not be the coequals of men, but even the most cynical of observers would agree that there have been massive improvements in this regard since the turn of the nineteenth century. Since gender roles are determined heavily by notions of sexual difference—Teresa De Lauretis’s notion of the “mutual containment of gender and sexual difference(s)” (De Lauretis 2)—when women interrogate their traditional roles, men’s roles, reciprocally, are always called into question. One way to illustrate this is with the ascension of women into professional realms that had once been reserved for men: if it had always been men’s domain, what does it mean for men (to be a man) once women are accepted into that space? In a similar fashion, particularly in the last fifteen years of the twentieth century, matters pertaining to sexual orientation have exploded in the media, in the judicial arena, and in the popular imagination. To be gay or lesbian in the United States or in France, to select the two countries most germane to this analysis, no longer carries the same stigma that it once did. Though not fully acceptable in all eyes, it is not nearly as taboo as it once had been. Those hardest hit initially by the AIDS pandemic were met with criminal indifference on the part of many