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Book Reviews87 Flaw, Degeneration," Coetzee points out that Millin was well read in this socalled science. Millin, says Coetzee, "decides to see conflict in South Africa in terms ofrace, class, and caste rather than in terms of class alone" (161-62). In a fascinating discussion of some of the scientific theories regarded as respectable in Millin's time and her application ofthose theories to her work, Coetzee makes us realize that "any view of Millin as a woman imbued with the racial prejudice of white South African society and using her novels as a means of propagating and justifying these prejudices must ... be tempered by a view ofher as a practising novelist adapting whatever models and theories lie to hand to make writing possible" (162). Coetzee's book reiterates impressively how cultural ideas and language bind and limit the way in which we interpret our world. It demonstrates that when our world changes, ingrained cultural views and patterns often cannot, and that attempts to adapt can be awkward and sometimes offensive. It enhances our understanding of the development of white South African culture as well as its writing. White Writing's most frustrating aspect is its studious avoidance of discussion of or connection to the growing body of outstanding white contemporary South African fiction and poetry today, but is nonetheless a book of considerable insight. Through an examination of colonial heritage (one wonders why only a comparison with America and not with Australia), it explains much about today's South Africa as the culture writhes in pain, not daring to let go of its petrified perceptions of cultural identity. BARBARA TEMPLE-THURSTON Sweet Briar College PAULE CONSTANT. Un monde à I' usage des Demoiselles. Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1987. 430 p. Paule Constant's essay, which won the 1987 "Grand Prix de l'Essai de l'Académie Française," traces the history of the education, perceived as myth and utopia, of young aristocratic French girls, the "Demoiselles," from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century. The world in question, "a revolutionary utopia of a unified society that is pacified and organized by the best women for their best daughters," is structured in order to reinforce what a "Demoiselle" is and must remain, and to protect her from the hostile outside world, unaware ofthe "specificity of her desires and values" (12). The "Demoiselle" is notjust any girl, but one born into an elite family. Because the feminine utopia is aristocratic, her world opens its doors only to the elite. Although she is a woman, the "Demoiselle" is destined to be, and remain, different from other women. Such a fate has been decided by society which constructs her world around Christian principles and values from antiquity (21-22). One of Constant's arguments suggests that one cannot speak about women in general because social classes have drawn different feminine types. This difference can already be observed in clothing, body, maternity, longevity. For 88Rocky Mountain Review example, the tradition of wearing a corset is an important symbol in the upbringing of a "Demoiselle" for, outside of the "corps-corset," the body of the "Demoiselle" does not exist since it is the corset that shapes her body in order to differentiate hers from female bodies of other social classes (129). Her second argument is that there exists a specifically feminine mythology whose teaching belongs to women. This mythology has been discarded by the world of writing because it is oral. In this context, the author seeks to rehabilitate numerous women educators whose voices have been ignored because of a lack of easily accessible written documents. Indeed, one of the most important contributions of the essay is the successful resurrection of a civilization "au féminin" based on oral structures, solidly attached to notions of "savoir-faire" as they existed in Europe until the nineteenth century, before the declaration of equality of social and sexual classes. As can be observed throughout the essay and in the detailed documentation at the end (365-426), Paule Constant went to hidden sources (convents, educational houses), where rare unpublished documents (memoirs and letters of educators like Madame de Maintenon, Madame Leprince de Beaumont, and others), are analyzed in their proper...

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