Mademoiselle Giraud, My Wife by Adolphe Belot (review)

Book Reviews137 Est-il besoin d'ajouter qu'en s'attaquant aux lieux de résistance du pouvoir patriarcal, les auteures de ce volume espèrent rapprocher le champ culturel des réalités sociales actuelles? D'ailleurs, l'article de clôture de ce livre, signé par Maggie Allison, constitue une analyse comparée des perceptions médiatiques des femmes politiques françaises et britanniques participantes aux élections législatives de 1997. Les mutations d'ordre politique survenues en GrandeBretagne semblent donner de l'espoir aux femmes de pouvoir de partout, qui comptent se dérober aux anciennes contraintes sexuelles pour s'imposer en tant que partenaires autonomes des hommes de pouvoir. Mariana C IonescuHuron University College Translations Adolphe Belot. Mademoiselle Giraud, My Wife. Trans, and Introd., Christopher Rivers. New York: Modern Language Association. 2002. ISBN : 0-87352-799-2. Pp. xxxvm + 206. $9.95. The MLA series Texts and Translations was founded to provide students and teachers with important texts not readily available, or not available at an affordable price in the original language, with a companion volume of its English translation. Adolphe Belot's Mademoiselle Giraud, My Wife is the first novel by a man published in the French section ofthe series. It met with popular fame when it first appeared as a complete novel in 1 870. Written by the husband of Mile Giraud, the story is quite simple. The narrator, Adrien de C, is an engineer with little experience in love, who falls for a woman named Paule Giraud. After much reticence, she agrees to marry him to comply with her father's wish. However, from their wedding night on, she refuses to consummate the marriage. Infatuated by her and counting on time, he accepts this in the beginning. When the situation does not improve, he decides to leave Paris for a long journey. During his stay in Nice, he fortuitously meets a man who appears to be the husband of his wife's best friend, Mme de Blangy. From him, he learns that their wives are lovers who have known each other since their convent education. The two men join forces to distance their respective wives from each other. They go back to Paris and from there take their women in opposite directions. Paule, whose health has been declining during her husband's absence, recovers little by little in the North African city of Oran where she and Adrien lead a relatively nice life of chaste friendship. Unexpectedly, one day she disappears: Mme de Blangy had found her and asked her to run away to France with her. Paule's health declines rapidly but, before dying, she asks her husband for forgiveness for not having been a real wife to him. Adrien drowns Mme de Blangy and in a final note is thanked by her husband. The drowning scene as well as the end note appear to be a homage to Zola's Thérèse Raquin (1867). Zola had actually written a preface to the novel, signed under the name Th. Raquin. This preface is usually published 1 38Women in French Studies with the novel from 1879 on, and has been reproduced in this edition as well. It stresses the morality of the story, which could be expected coming from the author oíThe ExperimentalNovel who considered novelists as "moralistes expérimentateurs." Christopher Rivers' translation is superb: the text is easy to read, agreeable , captivating, and, at times, amusing. As he notes, he has tried to keep the theatrical tone ofthe original French and the page-turning nature ofthe novel. Therefore he has made it his priority to render its freshness and liveliness to the detriment of some stylistic anachronism or contemporary flair. As a result , his translation is different from previous ones as it is more modern. Besides the one published in Chicago by Laird and Lee in 1891, which he cites, another anonymous but less literal English translation does exist (Mdlle. Giraud, My Wife, by Adolphe Belot, London, Privately Printed for the Trade, n.d. - probably 1900-1909). A concise introduction by Christopher Rivers precedes the novel. It gives background information on the author's life, work and literary relationship with...