Women writing in contemporary France

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Germain and the Christian novel 183 inantly male tradition of novelists, most notably Mauriac and Bernanos (though one could cite, among others, Barbey d’Aurevilly, Huysmans in his later work, Léon Bloy and Julien Green). Inasmuch as Germain could be said to have female precursors these are to be found not in the genre of the novel, but in the field of devotional and mystical literature, often autobiographical in form, which flourished in France especially in the seventeenth century (represented by, for example, Madame Acarie, Marie Guyard, Marguerite-Marie Alacoque and Madame Guyon). Notable later figures include Thérèse de Lisieux (1873–97) and Simone Weil (1909–43), with both of whose work Germain engages in her Les Echos du silence (1996). 4 Many of the above figures departed, often quite radically, from Catholic orthodoxy, a fact which raises questions about the label ‘Catholic’ or ‘Christian writer’. My intention, however, is not to analyse the problematic definition of genre, but to consider a specific issue relating to Germain’s work, that of monologism and closure. The above title – ‘Il n’y a pas de troisième voie’ (There is no third way) – refers to the words of Prokop, principal character of Germain’s Immensités (1993), as he ponders his perceived need to settle the question of the existence of God: one either believes or one does not; there can be no middle ground. 5 Is Germain’s Christian novel, like the nature of faith as articulated by Prokop, a case of all or nothing? Does the author present her potentially recalcitrant readership with a closed, ‘epic’ text, or an open, polyphonic form? Germain’s novels are undeniably highly engaging texts, but they are also highly engaged texts. Is the author’s artistic integrity compromised by the Christian ideology which informs her work? Can the Christian faith be represented – in both senses of the word – in literary form, without threatening the aesthetic viability of the text? The following analysis focuses upon four key elements, the first of which is genre. In his The Struggle for the Soul of the French Novel, Malcolm Scott identifies a conflict between the realist novel and the Catholic novel, a conflict based on two opposed visions of ‘the real’. For the realist novelist, ‘reality’ is visible, material; for the Catholic (and we might extend this to the Christian) novelist, ‘reality’ includes an invisible, non-material dimension. 6 The writer wishing to impart a Christian message – a writer whose potential audience includes non-believers – is placed in an invidious position: she has to create a fictional universe wherein the invisible, non-material dimension is somehow rendered acceptable to that audience. One of the ways in which this may be achieved is by exploiting the reader’s genre expectations, specifically, by drawing upon the genre of the
184 Transgressions and transformation literary fantastic, whereby readerly conventions include a belief (or suspension of disbelief) in the non-material dimension: A characteristic strategy links Barbey, via Huysmans and Bloy, to Green and Bernanos: the loosening of the reader’s expectation of a fictional world perceptible to the senses, the suggestion of an unseen but no less real dimension, and finally the reintegration of this supernatural plane into the world of flesh-and-blood characters, whose moral and psychological drama are intelligible in terms of the beliefs taught by the Church. (Scott, The Struggle, pp. 268–9) Following on from this insight, it might be suggested that the Christian novelist wishing to maximise her chances of ‘success’ (from the point of view of the non-believer) may benefit from the adoption of a non-realist genre into which the Christian ‘message’ can be introduced. The second factor to be considered is that of point of view, initially in the sense of the ideologies or thought-systems inscribed within the text. Ideally, again drawing on Scott, the Christian novel should represent the relativity of the modern world: ‘The Catholic novelist, working in the genre which above all others mirrors the moral relativism of the age, is in a position of extreme difficulty: the clear victory of one point of view over another, which we seldom encounter in life, spells the death of his art . . . Whatever the Catholic novel is, it is not propaganda’ (Scott, The Struggle, p. 71). As we will see, point of view must also be understood in the sense of the author’s choice of narrative focalisation: the deployment of a first- or third-person narrator; the use of free indirect discourse. Third, and this point is implicit in Scott’s phrases ‘and finally the reintegration of this supernatural plane into the world of flesh-and-blood characters’, and ‘the clear victory of one point of view over another’ (above, my emphases), our analysis must include the structure and especially the endings of texts. Are we, as readers, invited to engage in further interpretation, or does the heavy hand of the author–creator slam the book shut thanks to an all too visible teleological principle? Finally, an examination of closure and monologism must turn to the role played by intertextual material: does such material introduce dialogism into the text, or does it rather reinforce the singular voice of the author? Le Livre des nuits, the opening volume of Germain’s diptych, traces the ebb and flow of faith within the Péniel family, centring on the principal character, Victor-Flandrin, and the suffering he endures. Germain weaves into her fictional universe historical events drawn from our own ‘reality’:
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WOMEN’S WRITING IN CONTEMPORARY F
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Copyright © Manchester University
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vi Contents 10 Saying the unsayable
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viii Contributors SHIRLEY JORDAN is
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We would like to t
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2 Introduction introduce to English
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4 Introduction became more and more
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6 Introduction French ‘difference
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8 Introduction essential issues to
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10 Introduction Indeed, much contem
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12 Introduction phototextual projec
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14 Introduction about the body or e
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16 Introduction European Union) has
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18 Introduction Béatrice de Jurque
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20 Introduction and the group, the
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22 Introduction Feminist Perspectiv
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24 Introduction Barthes, Image, Mus
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26 Introduction 33 This is a wider
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1 VICTORIA BEST Louise L. Lambrichs
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Lambrichs: trauma, dream and narrat
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Memory and identity in Redonnet’s
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3 KATHRYN ROBSON The female vampire
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Chawaf ’s melancholic autofiction
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4 GILL RYE Lost and found: mother-d
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Mother-daughter relations in Consta
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5 ELIZABETH FALLAIZE Puzzling out t
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Sibylle Lacan’s Un père 79 for o
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Sibylle Lacan’s Un père 81 attac
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Sibylle Lacan’s Un père 83 Howev
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Sibylle Lacan’s Un père 85 fathe
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Sibylle Lacan’s Un père 87 other
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Sibylle Lacan’s Un père 89 propr
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II Writing the dynamics of identity
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94 Writing the dynamics of identity
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100 Writing the dynamics of identit
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7 SARAH ALYN STACEY ‘On ne s’en
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8 GILL RYE Textual mirrors and unce
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9 SIOBHAN MCILVANNEY The articulati
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Page 153 and 154: 10 SHIRLEY JORDAN Saying the unsaya
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Page 233 and 234: GILL RYE AND MICHAEL WORTON Conclus
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Page 237 and 238: INDIVIDUAL AUTHOR BIBLIOGRAPHY Chri
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234 Individual author bibliography
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GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY Abraham, Nicol
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252 General bibliography Cottenet-H
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254 General bibliography Irigaray,
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256 General bibliography Roudinesco
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INDEX Literary works can be found u
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260 Index fiction(s) (cont.) detect
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262 Index Sebbar, Leïla (cont.) Pa
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Women writing in contemporary France

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