Le Spectacle du secret (review)

This is a published thesis examining the link between secrets and illusion in the nineteenth-century novel. Inspired by Louis Marin's article, 'Logiques du secret' (Traverses, 30–31 (1984)), Arielle Meyer takes as a theme of secret sexual identities to explore how writers treat the function of the secret. Much exercised by defining her interpretation of 'le secret', the first third of the book is torturous and repetitive (some sentences are repeated in their entirety — see for instance pp. 20 and 46). She uses Marivaux's plays as a way in to her topic, to reinforce the link between the t heatrical treatment of the secret and the novel of the nineteenth century. Marivaux is paired with Gautier while Stendhal's Armance is used as contrast as an example of 'le rejet du théâtre'. There is also a long section on Barbey d'Aurevilly, whose approach is contrasted with Zola's 'esthétique du dévoilement' in Thérèse Raquin and some of the Rougon-Macquart series. The close readings of individual texts are good — the analysis of the mise en abyme in Mademoiselle Maupin working well, but I was less convinced by the backtracking to the seventeenth century that this provoked. I do not feel that her exploration of 'la théâtralité du XVII^e siècle' (primarily Shakespeare, Scudéry and Rotrou) served much purpose. I'd have rather seen more on Mme Duras and Stendhal, who were passed over relatively quickly. The bibliography is dated — next to no acknowledgement of contemporary work is made and there is very little reference to work done outside France and Geneva. There is no secondary material on Barbey d'Aurevilly from later than 1991 and no updating of the volume appears to have happened between the thesis being defended in 1999 and the publication of the volume in 2003. Nevertheless, the theatricality of the nineteenth-century novel is a promising subject and should prompt further exploration.