La Tradition des romans de femmes. XVIIIe–XIXe siècles by Catherine Mariette-Clot, and Damien Zanone, eds. (review)

The title of this volume is an intentional misnomer. As Catherine Mariette-Clot explains in her introduction, one must first constitute a corpus before one can ask whether the label “romans de femmes” serves any useful critical purpose and whether it designates anything approaching a “tradition.” In the ensuing essays as well as in her helpful synthesis, every word in this title is problematized and destabilized; the very notion of uniformity implicit therein is deconstructed. A tradition: who decides and why? What constitutes a “roman de femmes”? What traits, if any, do “romans de femmes” have in common? And what is meant by “de femmes”: simply a novel written by a woman, or one intended for women readers, or rather still one whose outlook, subject-matter, and values, according to publishers and critics, conform to contemporary notions of femininity?

This volume of twenty-four generally first-rate essays, the second in the series, “Littérature et genre,” directed by Martine Reid, was developed from a seminar (2007–2009) and a “journée d’études” (October 2009) organized by the co-editors at the Université Stendhal-Grenoble. They aim to bring this corpus—long disparaged or ignored precisely because it bore the label “romans de femmes” (attributed a posteriori by publishers, critics, and literary historians)—to the attention of readers and scholars, to legitimize it by showing that it stands up to and rewards the same serious critical scrutiny accorded to masterpieces by men. In so doing, the editors intend to weave it into the fabric of literature, history, and philosophy in general. Like much recent criticism of women’s writing, this collection adopts an effective, albeit paradoxical, approach: it views this literature both apart from (“romans de femmes”) and as part of the literary tradition (“romans”).

Although major novelists Staël and Sand are featured, most of the essays, which are arranged chronologically by subject, are devoted to a broad spectrum of lesser-known figures reaching back as far as Catherine Bernard, an originator of certain “constantes thématiques” in women’s novels (Monika Kulesza). These include Tencin, Épinay, Charrière, Souza (a.k.a. Flahaut), Riccoboni, Pauline de Meulan, Cottin, Krüdener, Genlis, Olympe de Gouges, Gacon-Dufour, Montolieu, Salm, as well as women such as Montalembert and Brayer de Saint-Léon who published novels in 1800 (see Catriona Seth, who joins Reid, Darnton, Hesse and Krief in using statistics to debunk critical commonplaces regarding an influx of women novelists at the turn of the century and their participation in a uniform female literary tradition). Also discussed are Claire de Duras, Delphine de Girardin, Flora Tristan, Hortense Allart, Desbordes-Valmore, the Comtesse de Ségur, as well as authors of educational narratives for young readers, such as Guénard, Choiseul-Meuse, Beaufort d’Hautpoul, and Dufrénoy. Heterogeneity and resistance to categorization are evidenced throughout.

In “Collections pour dames,” Jean Sgard underscores the role played by the commercial interests of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century publishers in defining the rubric “romans de femmes.” With a growing female readership in mind, they gathered sentimental and virtuous novels in their “bibliothèques.” Like those who, in the first decades of the nineteenth century and in the footsteps of Genlis, responded to the market for educational literature (Francis Marcoin, “Quand des romancières entreprennent d’écrire pour la jeunesse”), women took advantage of this opening to publish. Some managed to subvert the expected sentimentalism and moralism of “romans de femmes” or the related exigencies of “libraires d’éducation”; others conformed and ended up ghettoized in a “prison dorée” (Sgard).

Other essays examine the relationship between novels by women and precursor novels. Jean-François Perrin illustrates the influence of Rousseau on “scènes de réminiscence” in novels by Charrière, Souza, Staël, Krüdener, and Cottin and argues that...