Célestin/Célestine: Ambiguities of Identity chez Mme de Genlis

Célestin/Célestine: Ambiguities of Identity chez Mme de Genlis Bonnie Arden Robb The title of Félicité de Genlis's short story "Célestine ou l'Innocence" is not surprising, since her preoccupation with moral issues is well known.1 Pervasive moralizing has always been expected, though imperfectly tolerated, by her readers. Whereas contemporaries saw hypocrisy in the discrepancy between the author's preachy page and her worldly lifestyle,2 a more recent view has been that her righteous didacticism precluded artistic creativity, that her goal was, in fact, to moralize, rather than to create.3 Such judgments, I suggest, are called into question by a care1 The story is one of several nouvelles that Genlis inserted into issues of La Feuille des gens du monde, ou le Journal imaginaire (Paris: Eymery, 1813), along with book reviews, theatre reviews, social commentaries, poems, énigmes, and charades. References are to this edition. 2 When she and her husband were named to the household of the duke and duchess of Chartres at the Palais-Royal, Félicité became, within two weeks of her arrival there, the mistress of the duke (future due d'Orléans and, during the Revolution, Philippe Egalité). Neither her dedication as an educator when the duke subsequently designated her gouverneur of his children nor her success as a writer ever erased the public memory of this liaison or, more generally, her identification with the worldly Palais-Royal. 3 "L'œuvre pour elle est apologie et non création." Gabriel de Broglie, Madame de Genlis (Paris: Perrin, 1985), p. 473. In his portrayal of Genlis, Broglie suggests that "son irrésistible vocation d'écrivain n'avait pas d'autres motivations que de mobiliser ses forces et ses talents pour convaincre ses lecteurs de pratiquer la morale." The present essay, while recognizing Genlis's moral objective, represents an effort to acknowledge more fully the accompanying artistic impulse. EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION, Volume 12, Number 4, July 2000 550 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION ful reading of "Célestine," a story constructed on ambiguities of identity and presenting innocence in a portrayal by turns sincere and disingenuous . An examination of its strait-laced but not always straightforward moralizing sheds light on Genlis's creative disposition. It will first be useful to summarize the story, which is set in the eighth century. A virtuous couple, Eugène and Lea, lead a happy life, except that they are childless. Their prayers are answered after five years when a daughter is born, but Lea dies in childbirth. Eugène, grief-stricken, leaves the baby with relatives, travels for a year, and, arriving in Egypt, decides to enter a monastery where a year later he takes vows. His sadness, however, remains such that the superior questions him and learns that he has a child; the word "enfant," which—as the narrator carefully points out— can refer to either sex, is interpreted as male by the superior, who invites Eugène to bring the child to be raised in the monastery. Eugène, aware of the misapprehension, dresses his two-year-old daughter as a boy and changes her name from Célestine to Célestin. The truth goes undetected for a number of years, during which Célestin is beloved of all. Eugène intends to reveal the secret when the child reaches age sixteen, but when she is fourteen he dies suddenly, leaving her and the entire community unaware of her true gender. With the superior in loco parentis, Célestin at sixteen becomes a novice and is considered old enough to perform some of the functions of a monk, notably extending hospitality to visitors. In this capacity, she (he) particularly impresses one venerable old man and his nineteen-year-old son, Eusèbe, during their short stay. One day while running errands in town, Célestin meets Marie, an innkeeper's daughter. Marie's flirtations are not apparent to the innocent novice, but are noticed by others and taken by them to be reciprocated by Célestin, especially when an older monk sees them chatting through a hole in the wall that Marie has made between her room and the room in which Célestin...