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Nineteenth Century French Studies 30.3 & 4 (2002) 387-389



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Book Review

Women Seeking Expression:
France 1789-1914


Lloyd, Rosemary, and Brian Nelson, eds. Women Seeking Expression: France 1789-1914. Monash Romance Studies 6, 2000. Pp. 285. ISBN 0-7326-1419-8

This eclectic collection examines barriers women faced during the nineteenth century when seeking education, developing artistic talents, and contributing to genres and disciplines dominated by men. More significantly, the essays emphasize the innovations, original forms and perspectives that women developed in reaction to the restrictions presented by traditional gender roles, social expectations and the law. The time period covered and the wide range of women studied, famous as well as more obscure writers, theorists, artists, and activists, give a sense of the social, historical and political contexts, while the articles provide a glimpse of the varied perspectives in feminist criticism today.

The seventeen essays, organized loosely by chronology, begin with an examination of erotic texts written by Félicité de Choiseul-Meuse in the early nineteenth century. Peter Cryle argues that Choiseul-Meuse destabilizes the pornographic genre, creating a space in which feminine desire, and companionship are valorized. In the following article, Wendelin Guentner articulates the subtle tensions between "sentiment and intellect" and resulting rhetorical strategies Mathilde Stevens used in her art criticism in order to express her opinions without alienating a largely male public.

The next three articles address literature written for children. Laurence Porter's piece contrasts the socialization of the young in Ségur's les Malheurs de Sophie with Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are, emphasizing the highly pedagogical nature of children's literature in nineteenth-century France. Valérie Lastinger approaches Ségur from the perspective of her early manual on children's health, with an interesting examination of topics on which Ségur does not comment such as, death, breast-feeding and religion. Lastinger demonstrates that although Ségur's position is emblematic of her social class, the author quietly subverts public, medical, moral and religious discourses with which she does not agree. Concentrating on "adventure" literature written by women and destined for young girls, Bénédicte Monicat decodes the didactic strategies used in narratives with "Robinsonnade" themes to elaborate ideals of femininity and masculinity, to discuss racial and national identity, and to [End Page 387] establish boundaries between untamed "nature" and "civilization." Her study un-covers the contradictions, paradoxes and ambiguity that offer young readers escape routes despite the limitations of the genre and social barriers.

Elisabeth-Christine Muelsch discusses the origins and structure of a nineteenth-century institution for women whose functions were intended to parallel those of the Académie française and the Société des gens de letters. According to Muelsch, the writers' and artists' organization, Institut des femmes was founded in the early 1840s, and while not long lived, had significant influence on bourgeois women's participation in the ideological and political battles spawned by the1848 Revolution. Edith Taieb's article on Hubertine Auclert's newspaper, La Citoyenne, also investigates women's political and intellectual voices in the public arena. Taieb examines Auclert's subversive treatment of masculine discourse as a planned assault on public opinion aimed at obtaining civil and political rights for women.

The next two articles are devoted to George Sand. Janet Beizer investigates questions of biography, autobiography, feminine literary traditions, and literary influence in Sand's Histoire de ma vie, in two works by Sand's biographer, Huguette Bouchardeau, and in Flaubert's Un cœur simple, as well as his correspondence with Sand. Deftly moving back and forth between texts, Beizer's reading of maternal and authorial reverberations, influences and silences demonstrates the complex nature of literary influences. Her article creates new perspectives from which to read Sand and Flaubert. Peter Dayan concentrates on Sand's novel Consuelo, examining the debate between art as self-expression or art as an impersonal expression of beauty. His analysis of Consuelo and her relationship to musical expression and desire suggests that Sand ultimately refuses to choose one side or the other, claiming...

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