La Poétique du seuil dans l'œuvre romanesque de Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly (review)

Barbey's use of space has been discussed previously, notably in the theses of Méké Meite and Gérard Bejjani. Céline Bricault's focus on the threshold that both separates and links different entities, often contraries, is highly pertinent to his work, where the juxtaposition and paradoxical combination of polarized opposites is frequent. Bricault draws attention to the many literal seuils in his fiction: doors, windows, balconies, stairs, bridges, and so on. Barbey uses the metaphor to express both the subject matter of his tales (the 'sanglantes comédies' performed behind 'le rideau de la vie privée et de l'intimité', p. 284; Bricault misquotes the passage from Le Dessous de cartes d'une partie de whist) and narrative structure (in a letter to Trébutien he refers to the steps of his narrative as curtains being drawn). Bricault's systematic analysis falls into three sections. The first establishes a typology of physical thresholds and of the figures who inhabit them. She stresses the ambiguity as places of access but also of exclusion of these seuils (the church door in L'Ensorcelée through which Pierre Cloud has his final horrific vision; the staircase on which Lasthénie de Ferjol is raped in Une histoire sans nom). When closed, they provoke transgression; when open, fear; when ajar, hesitation or curiosity; they play a key role in acts of voyeurism, overhearing, and violence. This classificatory approach is then applied to the characters: transgressive characters cross seuils, self-destructive ones retreat behind enclosures, peripheral characters inhabit marginal spaces; these last are divided into 'guardians' who seek to exclude (usually ineffectually), 'ushers' who guide (Tainnebouy in L'Ensorcelée), and the many seers who dwell in the seuil. Bricault shows how Barbey uses liminal spaces to present otherwise impenetrable characters as the site of struggle between opposites, without conventional analysis. In the second section Bricault links seuil to Barbey's narrative technique. Successive levels of embedded narration give the reader thresholds to cross before the abrupt, paroxystic climax. Theatres and curtains endow spectacles with a sense of artifice and duplicity, enabling characters to preserve an ambiguous interiority. The third section analyses the threshold as leading symbolically to a social or familial place where, since the Revolution, relationships are perverted: hospitality is refused, violated or usurped; enclosed spaces become ones of imprisonment and exclusion, or of refuge and impotence. Finally, the seuil is seen as part of an initiatory pattern leading towards a goal never reached (the truth is never known), the sacred and death. Bricault provides persuasive readings of key moments, and her rigorously organized, detailed, and classificatory study demonstrates, if proof were needed, the coherence of Barbey's fictional world and the recurrence of obsessive motifs. She puts to good use her extensive reading on the symbolism of space, mythology, and narratology. If it covers ultimately familiar ground, it highlights the patterning so important in Barbey, and alerts the reader to details that might otherwise be seen as mere 'effet de réel'. However, for all its cogency, the study is aimed at Aurevillians; readers exploring individual works will find no index to these.