Damned Women

by Waelti-Walters, Jennifer R.

• ISBN13: 9780773521100
• ISBN10: 0773521100
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-10-01
• Publisher: McGill Queens Univ

Summary

While homosexual men are legion in the history of French literature and criticism, until now no critic writing in French or English has given the same sort of attention to lesbians. Waelti-Walters covers two hundred years of fiction, beginning with the publication of Diderot's The Nun in 1796 and ending with present-day lesbian writers Jocelyne Francois, Mireille Best, Helene de Monferrand, and the authors connected to Genevieve Pastre's lesbian publishing house. While she deals with renowned authors such as Violette Leduc and Monique Wittig, including their respective literary and personal relationships with Simone de Beauvoir and Helene Cixous, many of the writers discussed will be unknown to most readers. Their novels vary from the extraordinarily powerful to the utterly trite; by providing the first comprehensive guide to this body of work Waelti-Walters sheds light on French literary and cultural history. Waelti-Walters shows how the lesbian authors of this literature had little or no contact with each other, let alone with lesbians outside France. She describes their world and its effects on their work, showing how their situation differs from that of British and North American lesbians. Damned Women tells a story of alienation, persecution, and isolation within a culture. It is a cultural and literary commentary full of new information, forgotten or little known authors, poignant surprises, and unexpected interrelationships.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
A Note on Translations and Sources	xi
Introduction	3	(8)
PART ONE: THE MALE GAZE, 1796--1929
Damned Women: The Prototypes	11	(38)
Contrasting Attitudes: Male and Female Writers	49	(48)
PART TWO: THROUGH WOMEN'S EYES, 1929--1968
Constrained Desires	97	(30)
Contrasting Generations: Leduc and Beauvoir, Wittig and Cixous	127	(24)
PART THREE: SPECIFICALLY FRENCH LESBIANS, 1968--1996
Exploring Lesbian Identity	151	(36)
Contrasting perspectives: Francois, Best, and Monferrand	187	(24)
Conclusion	211	(6)
Notes	217	(8)
Appendix: French Quotations	225	(28)
Bibliography	253	(14)
A French Lesbian Novels	253	(4)
B Works Cited and General Works on Lesbianism in France	257	(7)
C Sources of French Medical Attitudes to Lesbianism, 1870--1960	264	(1)
D Bibliographies of Lesbian Fiction	265	(2)
Index	267