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Book Reviews27 1 vants, ils font exister les choses" (26)].Through these many sources, Larivière combats the false notion that only a few militant feminists from Quebec find linguistic feminization compelling. Specifically, the book responds to eight arguments. Most of them come from men, and mostly French men—particularly "'ces messieurs' de l'Académie" (112)—whom Larivière charges with a "messianic" attitude toward the language. However, she acknowledges the opposition of certain women, either because they feel powerless or because they enjoy reflected glory from their husbands' power, which the wives consider threatened by feminization. Larivière proceeds upon the following premise: "La langue a tout ce qu'il faut, grammaticalement parlant, pour féminiser les noms. . . " (30). Two ofher topics will serve as examples: 1) The use ofthe masculine as both specific and generic leaves a gaping hole in the language, obscures women's role, and can lead to absurdities of the following type: "L'homme est un mammifère; il allaite ses petits" (46; quoted from Thérèse Moreau, Le Langage n 'estpas neutre, 1991). T) The use ofthe masculine as a neuter can lead to syntactic impossibility, such as, "Le professeur Dupont est enceinte et il souffre constamment des nausées" (57). Larivière concludes that the arguments against feminization come from individuals lacking in linguistic knowledge, or derive from obvious "mauvaise foi," or perhaps a simple "bonne vieille misogynie camouflée" (117). She cites the outcry of"ex-garde des Sceaux français" Jacques Toubon on hearing "les droits de la personne," instead of "les droits de l'homme": "ce n'est pas du français" (46). Larivière would side with celebrated French linguist, Claude Hagège: ". . . les Français ne sont que les dépositaires, non les propriétaires exclusifs, du français" (Ross Steele, Susan St. Onge, Ronald St. Onge, La Civilisationfrançaise en évolution II, 1997: 342). Larivière's solution: one must "se faire l'oreille" (99). For Larivière, language, as a "produit social," (22) must evolve to reflect changing social realities. Women, in their new responsibilities, must become visible, audible—named. In a previous work, published electronically in 2000, Larivière has treated the how of the issue (Comment en finir avec la féminisation linguistique ou les mots pour la dire: www.00h00.com). Here, she has answered, so that no doubt remains, the question why. Now, if we could only find a way to get some of the "messianic" Cro-Magnons to read her book! Annabelle M. ReaOccidental College James Smith Allen. Poignant Relations. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2000. 270 Pages. ISBN: 0-8018-6204-3. $42.50 new ($17.50 used on amazon.com) Poignant Relations details the lives and writings ofthree unknown nineteenth -century French women: Marie-Sophie Leroyer de Chantepie, Geneviève Breton-Vaudroyer, and Céline Renooz-Muro. These women's discourses are 272Women in French Studies mixed (autobiography, diary, letters, novels, literary criticism and theoretical work in the sciences), and, Allen tells his readers, their lives are as paradoxically constituted by their writing and their refusal of"feminism" as their texts are at once subversively destabilizing and intended to create conscious selves. Allen suggests that their combination ofgenres offers concrete strategies for dealing with conflicting loyalties and interests that anticipate the more recent "discovery" ofwomen's style as mixed and relational. Allen's title ispolysémique: it implies both a sense oítouch and an indication of sensitivity. At the same time, it evokes stories related, and relayed, as well as the connections among the women and those close to them. He situates the women historically, socially, and culturally and sees them as educated individuals whose writing includes them in a level of French society that would otherwise have denied them any influence in public affairs. Allen links his subjects to contemporary feminist discourse through his discussion ofthe women writing themselves into agency, and through the notion of"the self-in-creation [that is] more important than the genre it assumes" (39). He further suggests that their form ofmixed-genre autobiography is best approached through the work of such theorists as Sheri Benstock and Shoshona Felman and the...

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