Monuments of the Maternal: Reflections on the Desbordes-Valmore Correspondence

Monuments of the Maternal: Reflections on the Desbordes-Valmore Correspondence Anne E. McCaIl COLLECTIVE REMEMBRANCE PROMOTES UNITY through the recognition of a common memory that the public is invited to claim as its own. For this reason, cultural historians have paid significant attention to the creation of a secular national identity in France through commemorative events.1 If it is true that France's heroes were and perhaps still are its writers,2 it is also clear that much remains to be said of the ways in which Third Republic France generated literary heroes and the grounds upon which these figures were shaped to define a cultural pre-eminence. The erection of statues constituted an important element in this process, for it allowed the nation to bring its many "gods" to life and consume them in a form of lay communion. Subscription campaigns, updates in the press on negotiations with artists, and the securing of high-ranking participants for inaugural ceremonies idealized honorées and fostered their appropriation by the public. Judging from the disagreement voiced over certain commemorations, the stakes of figurative public representation were particularly high since they entwined the society's past, present, and future with an idealized body and life-history.3 Indeed, the proliferation of busts risked wiping out the unity that they were meant to create if not reflect. François Coppée equates the multiplication of effigies with the nation's demagogic Republic, and, using a term dear to the period, Olivier de Gourcuff speaks of "statuomanie."4 Their concern was far from gratuitous: the death of the last Romantics, the expansion of secondary education, the widening of the "programme" in 1895, and the resulting production of new literary history manuals led professors and journalists to meditate on the rights of artists to posthumous recognition and on the values associated with distinct forms of iconization, including statues, slots in literary manuals, questions on national exams and posthumous publications. Claiming that "l'usage d'élever des statues fera toujours une partie de l'éducation publique" and that Baudelaire incarnated "la débauche et l'immoralité," Ferdinand Brunetière objects to the subscription campaign in the latter's honor,5 and Doumic laments the proposed statue of Verlaine, while Devemois and Coppée appear dismayed at the lack of professional qualifications of some Vol. XXXIX, No. 2 41 L'Esprit Créateur other honorées: "Pourquoi Banville triomphe-t-il au Luxembourg, et point Baudelaire? Pourquoi Leconte de Lisle et Verlaine y auront-ils leurs monuments avant Théophile Gautier?" (Coppée). Unlike most columnists, however , who discuss the relationship between male models and male viewers, Coppée saves his most specific remarks for two women whose differing statuary fates leave him perplexed: L'auteur ¿'Indiana et de Valentine, qui était une femme de génie, n'a pas obtenu les honneurs de la place publique, et l'on vient précisément de les discerner à Mme Desbordes-Valmore, à qui nous devons, certes, quelques poèmes d'une sensibilité délicieuse, mais chez qui nous rencontrons , dans bien des pages, pas mal de romance et de pleurnicherie. ("Saint-Beuve") This comparison reflects the equally forced association of Marceline Desbordes -Valmore with submissive female suffering and maternal discourse and of George Sand with an assault on the family and a reputation for inflicting pain on men. The exaggerated dichotomy is also a side effect of the publicity for the 1896 inauguration in Douai of a statue honoring Desbordes-Valmore; more significantly, it confirms the symbolically charged presence of these women authors on a volatile epistolary scene. In the case of Desbordes-Valmore , a two-volume Correspondance intime appeared early in the year,6 perfectly timed to intersect profitably with the inauguration of her statue.7 As for Sand, a new series of biographies and articles was preparing the public for the publication of her exchanges with Musset.8 In this context, a study of the press coverage accorded to Desbordes-Valmore's statue and the Correspondance intime will reveal some of the mechanics of gendered commemoration at the turn of the century, clarify the role of epistolary monuments in that process and, in responding, albeit mostly...