Montaigne et le genre instable by Isabelle Krier (review)

In her prologue to this detailed study of Montaigne’s Essays, Isabel Krier sees the need for critical research on gender in French and yet asks what importance one might attribute to gender in Montaigne who does not dedicate an essay to the subject? This volume constitutes an answer to her query and provides a thorough study of the essayist’s incorporation of gender’s complexities within his skeptical compositions. Her study is set apart by an extremely clear exposition of the philosophical basis for her arguments. Through close reading and philosophical distinctions over the course of a reflectively arranged analysis in which she defines Montaigne’s singularly skeptical perspectives and brings to the fore his views vis-à-vis gender differences and determinations in contexts such as education, politics, sexuality, economics, and marriage, Krier offers solid scholarship on the history of philosophy, early modern influences on Montaigne, and a clear exposition of his importance in modern skepticism.

Montaigne’s Essays are set out as an exploration of a particular human in constant transformation and this particularity informs the essayist’s exposition. The essayist examines his experience, both contemporary and classical texts, popular opinions, anecdotes, commonplaces and exempla and presents them in an equivocal context, repurposing them as objects for his readers to appraise. What is particularly novel in Essays is that Montaigne not only accepts a pyrrhonian suspension of judgement; his composition is structured and centers on the notion of suspension and subversion. Thus, Krier bases her conclusions not only on the essayist’s singular development of skepticism but on his rhetorical figures, his textual movement, and his choice of purposefully ambiguous language.

Krier sets out to prove how the examination of the traditional masculine-feminine opposition is one of the overarching elements in Montaigne’s text. She begins with a prologue and then highlights the particularity and importance of Montaigne’s skepticism before she moves to the subversion in essay I, 1. The chapter serves as a defining demonstration of the essayist’s compositional and conceptual treatment of gender; by refusing traditional dualism, he invalidates gender conventions and repositions the feminine side of the typical dichotomy.

One could question the explicitness of his condemnations and consider Montaigne’s methods subtler than Krier allows since he questions these elements and places them in suspension for his readers to judge. In Montaigne’s pyrrhonian universe, however, suspension of judgement, irresolution, and vanity are not negative values relegated to women and inferior (“unmanly”) men. They constitute, rather, an ars vitae for the tenuous situation in which humans find themselves. The essayist selects the suspended rather than the absolute, the flexible rather than the rigid as the preferred method of composition and manner of living within unpredictability. This allows for adjustments to the contradictions, the coincidences, and the unforeseen consequences of our existence. Krier acknowledges his enigmatic text and its shifting seduction as she creatively and carefully analyzes the gender discourse and Montaigne’s perceptions and parodies of the injustice and absurdity of patriarchal dominance.

The study presents Montaigne’s interchangeable roles within the dynamic of male and female through the exposition of the diversity of custom, the notion of sexual indecision and indeterminacy, and the monstrous and the prodigious. As she looks at gender identities and the fluid complexity of both nature and culture, Krier examines custom and abnormality, the instability of virginity, chastity, and monogamy and notes how stereotypes are upended by constant reversals. This is seen in her examination of such chapters as III, 3 and III, 5 which present the problems of sexual restraint and the hypocrisy of criticism of women’s sexual behavior. The analysis of marriage and gender extends to the essayist’s own experience as a husband, a yielding to custom which serves as an example of a suspension between independence and attachment.

Essay II, 8, which treats affection and the pater familias, provides material for a satire of patriarchy; even its dedication to Madame d’Etissac offers an ironic [End...