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Cherchez la Femme: Male Malady and Narrative Politics in the French Romantic Novel

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Margaret Waller
Margaret Waller*
Affiliation:
Pomona College, Claremont, California
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Abstract

The malaise depicted in early nineteenth-century French novels is said to characterize the age but is in fact a malady of men. In these works male alienation takes the form of emasculation. Nevertheless, Chateaubriand's René illustrates how the male protagonist's feminization becomes a sign of moral superiority and poetic genius. Although the hero claims to tell a tale devoid of conventional intrigue, he makes his solipsistic discourse prurient and melodramatic by introducing a woman who suffers the consequences of desiring him despite his disablement. The mal du siècle strategy consists in creating interest in character through the feminine in the man while providing drama in plot through the man's fatal effect on the woman. While the early Romantic novel breaks down stereotypes of masculinity by feminizing the hero, its conventions of narrative causality and discursive empowerment draw on traditional ideologies of gender difference to reempower alienated postrevolutionary man.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 104 , Issue 2 , March 1989 , pp. 141 - 151
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1989

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