Regressive Fictions: Graffigny, Rousseau, Bernardin (review)

Robin Howells investigates the connections between three eighteenth-century bestsellers in chronological order. Rousseau’s La Nouvelle Héloïse has invariably commanded attention because of its seminal importance. The other texts have lately received much scholarly enquiry. Paul et Virginie has always sold well and been considered a landmark, at least in terms of its style. On the other hand, Les Lettres d’une Péruvienne owes its rediscovery primarily to feminist and postcolonial criticism. All three novels are dominated by a heroine: Julie, Virginie and Zilia. Howells situates the novels in their historical context. He stresses the function of utopias and notes the shifts in the mid-century from the memoir to epistolary novel and the impact of the moral tale and drame bourgeois. His argument is based on the notion of regression, derived from Freud. His use of the term is twofold. First, he employs it to imply ‘a psychological retreat from adulthood, or social reality and genital sexuality’ and then extends it to mean ‘the desire to recover some imagined original state of plenitude and innocence’ (p. 1). He underscores Zilia’s obsession with her predicament rather than her nation’s conquest by the Spanish. Despite her critique of French society, Howells portrays her as seeking a ‘timeless moral self-consistency’ (p. 34) rather than achieving a new form of individual authenticity, i.e. she is anything but progressive in her development. While he rightly queries claims which have labelled her a full-blown writer, not every reader will be convinced that her move to the country house was regressive. True, she has acquired the property through Déterville and the aid of Peruvian treasures, but her independence is portrayed as a new beginning rather than a form of return to the Temple of the Sun. Rousseau’s novel marked a ‘retreat from adulthood and reality’ (p. 51). Not only does this affect Julie in her desire to inhabit a circumscribed space but even Saint-Preux’s attitude can be deemed ‘doubly regressive’ (p. 77) as he yearns to reside in an intimate community with a child-like status. Julie as daughter in the early sections has been transferred into a maternal role in a nuclear family, separated from the perils of sexual love. The ‘Vendanges’ is a manifestation of collective activity symbolising harmony. Harmony is also present in Paul et Virginie where the hero and heroine live out their childhood in Mauritius. Howells asserts that, in depicting children, Bernardin has introduced ‘a most obviously regressive feature’ (p. 95). However, such a regressive feature cannot last as innocence/ignorance is undermined by Virginie’s burgeoning sexuality, her ‘mal inconnu’ destroys the young people’s brother–sister relationship, the ‘petite société’ cannot survive. Howells asserts that all three works depict a ‘protected space’ (p. 120), they all ‘posit the existence of a universal natural language’ (p. 128), the heroines despise worldly society. Yet Julie and Virginie die whereas Zilia lives – the latter’s space is viable. Not everyone will endorse all the readings in this monograph but everyone will find fresh insights on the eighteenth-century success stories.