Les Blouses and L’Insurgé as Narratives of Revolt

Les Blouses and Llnsurgé as Narratives of Revolt Charles J. Stivale T HE FICTION OF JULES VALLÈS, particularly the novels which constitute the Jacques Vingtras Trilogy—L ’Enfant, Le Bachelier, and L ’insurgé''—are known for their depiction of the successive steps of the hero’s revolt, from the submissive passivity of the abused child, through the difficult years of the student’s awakening, to the socio-political prise de conscience leading to active insurgency.2 But Valles’s little-known, incomplete novel, Les Blouses,3 is a comparable affirmation of the communard’s March 28, 1871, proclamation in Le Cri du Peuple: “ Fils des désespérés, tu seras un homme libre,”4and there­ fore bears analysis as an isolated, yet important, example of the “ narra­ tive of revolt” with which Vallès ended his career. Les Blouses was writ­ ten at a moment of transition in his life, prior to and during his return from eight years of exile in London after the Paris Commune of 1871, and was published in 24 installments in Georges Clemenceau’s La Justice just before and after the amnesty was granted to the former communards on July 12, 1880. However, its publication was terminated abruptly only two weeks after Vallès’s return to France, for this story of the 1847 jacquerie in Buzançais had well served its purpose as what Jean Dautry calls a “ munition de grosse artillerie” in the Republican journal’s strug­ gle to gain amnesty for the communards (Blouses, p. 135). Since La Justice henceforth needed to concentrate on other focal points of pro­ test, Clemenceau asked Vallès to abridge his story, and Vallès quickly complied, having realized how risky was the composition of an historical tale far from documents attesting to the actual events.5Since Les Blouses has been published only in editions of Vallès’s complete works and remains one of the least studied works in a corpus inadequately recog­ nized,6 in the following analysis I first wish to outline the numerous socio-political oppositions which generate this truncated tale’s narrative movement. This essential preliminary step will then permit me to suggest the thematic and rhetorical stratification inherent in Les Blouses, with brief reference to the first two novels of the Jacques Vingtras Trilogy, L ’Enfant and Le Bachelier, but with particular emphasis on the contrast 92 Su m m e r 1987 S t iv a l e between Les Blouses as an early “ narrative of revolt” and Vallès’s final monument “ aux morts de 1871,” L ’insurgé. The title of this narrative, Les Blouses, suggests that its principal sub­ ject is the figurative “ body” contained metonymically in the vestmental container, la foule des blouses. Yet, as early as the opening scene, one encounters a second, yet perhaps primary focus for Vallès, the opposi­ tion between the blouses and habits or redingotes which “ contain” the organized cadre of Republicans, i.e., the ideologues willing to widen the circle of peasant unrest in order to initiate a broader social upheaval. For example, as chapter I begins, the impoverished peasant blouse, Frombertot, solicits financial aid from a young bourgeois, M. André, but is admonished by his forceful and self-reliant spouse, Marianne, for debasing their family and class through such a humiliating act of solicita­ tion. The narrative then moves abruptly from this opening scene of class opposition to one of bourgeois, Republican complicity as André is revealed as the son of an exiled Republican (a thinly disguised Vallès) who left his son to be educated by a partisan comrade, the doctor Bonnel. When André reports his encounter with Frombertot, Bonnel reveals to André his own role as leader of a secret Republican society, which Frombertot has refused to support, and Bonnel now urges André to join the cause. The Republican solidarity is maintained as André agrees, but a commotion in the street (as chapter II begins) interrupts their discussion, thereby moving the narrative focus away from the fervor of the burgeoning conspiracy of redingotes and back to the upheaval of the blouses at the start of the jacquerie. Here, the class opposition is again affirmed...