Gendered Lyric: Subjectivity and Difference in Nineteenth-Century French Poetry

Introduction

Introduction Does Poetry Have a Gender? The Gendered Lyric aims to fill a rather astonishing gap in existing criticism. While feminist scholars have devoted considerable attention both to the nexus of femininity and the French novel, and to the role of gender in Anglo-American lyric traditions , there exist no equivalent studies of gender and modem French poetry.1 Thanks to the work of such prominent critics as Joan Dejean, Nancy K. Miller, and Naomi Schor, we can trace female authorship and the play of gender back to the origins of the novel in France.2 Interest in the relationship between femininity and the French novel shows no signs of abating, and is particularly strong in nineteenth-century studies.3 Feminist neglect of poetry appears to be a particular problem in the context of the French tradition, since English and American literary studies are rich in works on gender and the lyric, beginning with Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar's groundbreaking collection Shakespeare's Sisters: Feminist Essays on Women Poets (1979). Indeed, as Yopie Prins and Maeera Shreiber point out in their introduction to Dwelling in Possibility : Women Poets and Critics on Poetry (1997), their recent anthology "continues the work of several generations of feminist critics. It is a substantial body of work" (9).4 There is no comparable body of scholarship on gender and the mode,rn French lyric. The dialogue in this realm, while probing, remains limited to article-length studies.s How can we explain the delay in introducing modem French poetry to gender studies? It would seem that our acceptance of the equation opposing the "feminine novel" to "masculine poetry" has been too hasty. The dearth of work on women poets 1 Introduction and on the function ofgender in the lyric indicates a tacit agreement that poetry in France belongs to a masculine domain. While the model of sex-segregated genres is particularly helpful in describing the homosocial organization of poetic communities and the historical conditions of women's access to poetic production , it is less useful in the analysis of the symbolic structures of poetry. This study demonstrates that while masculinity dominates lyric production, femininity is always present as a foil, an appropriation, or a threat. It has been convincingly argued that the sexual segregation ofgenres is historically and culturally produced. Michael Danahy describes the gendered hierarchy of genres: "the novel was trivialized and feminized in relation [...] to all forms ofpoetry and the lyric in particular" (Feminization 62). Critics have attributed the novel's association with femininity to the relative newness of the genre and consequent malleability of style,6 the greater ease that prose-writing affords to the presumably lesseducated woman writer, its domestic and sentimental themes, and subsequent appeal to a female reading public. Dejean likewise asserts that "French women writers were [not] likely [...] to explore forms other than the novel. It is as if the French female tradition had come into existence in order to create the modem novel" (Tender Geographies 8). While the association of femininity and the novel often served to denigrate women's writing, it also rendered fictional prose more available than other genres to women. The woman novelist was simply more acceptable to the French reading public and literary milieu than the woman poet. All women authors have confronted very real social barriers, including limited access to education, closed literary communities , and lack of physical and intellectual autonomy. Feminist writers since Christine de Pizan have pointed to poor education as a barrier that discourages women from becoming writing subjects. Closer to our period, in 1811, StephanieFelicite de Genlis recognized this as an enduring and considerable obstacle: "Ie manque d'etudes et l'education [ont] dans tous les temps ecarte les femmes de la carriere litteraire" (iii). It was not until 1850 that the Falloux law required primary schools for girls, which consisted of "moral and religious instruction " under the aegis of the Catholic church. And not be2 Introduction fore the second decade ofthe Third Republic, in the early 1880s, did free and secular primary education become available and even mandatory in France.7 At all points during the century, the curriculum in girls' schools was less rigorous than that in boys' schools and did not provide the opportunity to prepare for the baccalaureat.8 The "democratization" ofeducation therefore gave middle-class women the basic linguistic tools previously available only to the wealthy, a result evidenced by...