CONSERVATIVE

The Future of France?
Pr. Edmund Waldstein
Although Michel Houellebecq’s Soumission has
drawn the ire of politically correct elites for allegedly
being anti-Muslim and anti-feminist, such criticisms
miss the point. In fact, a careful reading of the novel
reveals that it is a subtle though important critique of the
breakdown of the traditional family and the dominant
nihilistic sexual amorality in today’s West.
Michel Houellebecq’s latest novel has generated
so much commentary since its publication on the day of
the Charlie Hebdo murders that most readers will already
know the basic outline of the plot: Seven years from
now, a Muslim party comes to power in France and a
quiet process of Islamisation begins.
Politicians and journalists who know only the
outline of the book have assumed that Houellebecq’s
story is Islamophobic. But careful readers have all
agreed, along with with Houellebecq, that this is not the
case at all. If anyone should be offended by his book,
Houellebecq argues, it should be feminists.
The place of women in society is indeed one
of the main themes of Soumission. The narrator and
protagonist of the story, François, begins by describing
his growing disillusionment with the secular feminism of
the contemporary West and ends by accepting a version
of Islamic patriarchy. However, before accepting Islam
he is briefly drawn toward Catholicism, whose attitude
toward women is only indirectly hinted at. His ultimate
rejection of Catholicism seems to stem from the
character that secular hedonism has given him.
François is a professor of literature and since his
student days he has had about one girlfriend a year. The
book opens as he undergoes a growing realisation that
these relationships have not remedied his basic loneliness
and discontent, and also, and perhaps more importantly,
that the current promiscuous ideal of sexual relations
has rendered the women he knows lonely and miserable.
When he meets some of his girlfriends from past years,
he sees that their implicit plan of “trying out” exclusive
relationships with a series of boyfriends, before settling
down with one final boyfriend and starting a family, has
not worked.
One of them, Aurélie, was so emotionally and
physically drained by her series of boyfriends that when
she finally attempted to start a family she failed. This
has left her a bitter misandrist, whose only topic of
conversation is the failings of her male colleagues and her
(unfulfilling) job. Another one, Sandra, similarly failed
to start a family but has chosen to become a “cougar”
who distracts herself from her inner emptiness by
flirting with younger men. But the most miserable of all
his female acquaintances seems to be the only one of his
generation for whom the current model of relationships
has gone pretty much as planned: Annelise, the wife of
an old friend from his student days.
Annelise wakes up and adorns herself with
Soumission
Michel Houellebecq
Paris: Flammarion, 2015
expensive clothes and make-up for her high-stress job,
in which an elegant and stylish appearance is a sign of
status. But when she returns home at the end of the
day, physically and mentally exhausted, she dresses in
comfortable and ugly clothes, too tired to enjoy the
company of her husband and children or to try to
beautify their lives. Under these circumstances, her
marriage seems to have become a mockery. In one of
the most poignant passages of the novel, François is at
Annelise’s house for a barbecue, which is descending
into chaos. Filled with pity he stays at her side, trying to
express solidarity with her: “a vain solidarity”.
The (somewhat fanciful) version of Islam to which
François eventually submits is portrayed as the opposite
of the failed sexual egalitarianism he has rejected.
Muslim women are portrayed as dressing in shapeless
robes and veils when they go outside but dressing up
for their husbands. Polygamy allows for stable homes
for women without sexual discipline on the part of men.
Sealed off in the privacy of the home, Muslim women
are absolved from the stresses of commercial and public
life. They remain in an idyllic world of childhood:
The European Conservative 33