Reading Duras's Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein like a Feminist

In this paper, I seek to challenge the essentializing tendencies in current feminist readings of Duras's Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein. In contrast to critics who either engage in an essentialist identification with the character of Lol or tend to exclude a priori the male narrator Jacques Hold, I demonstrate how a feminist reading depends less on the reader's ability to share Lol's "experience" than on the reader's alertness to the complexity of Jacques Hold's writing of Lol, that is, to his writing of her ravissement and the ravissement of his writing. One-sided readings of Jacques's male narrative (either by radically displacing the importance of his role or by treating him as a one-dimensional character/narrator) run the risk of simply reversing the male totalizing reading of Lol (uncritical acceptance of the narrator's voice) to a feminist totalizing reading of Jacques (an irresponsible dismissal of Jacques's narratorial authority). Indeed, a critical reading of Duras's Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein must avoid what could be described as the blackmail of some feminist critics: a reader must be either for or against Jacques Hold.