Pleasure and Pain in Nineteenth-Century French Literature and Culture (review)

This collection of essays arises from a selection of the papers presented at the Fourth Annual Conference of the Society of Dix-Neuviémistes held in Edinburgh in 2006. The wide remit of that conference is reflected in the titles of the sections: ‘The Novel’, ‘Crime and Punishment’, ‘Écritures féminines’, ‘Defining Sexual Experience’, and ‘Aesthetics, Beauty and the Visual Arts’, the last fulsomely embellished with black and white and colour illustrations. The Editors’ Introduction is clear, wide ranging, and thoughtful (although a little more than a nod in the direction of Freud might have been welcome). Henri Mitterand’s opening piece entitled ‘Jouir/souffrir: le sensible et la fiction’ is magisterial in its breadth. Mitterand confronts this ‘couple antinomique’ head-on, considering not only the representation of pleasure and pain in nineteenth-century prose fiction, but also their contemporary philosophical and psychological treatment and the aesthetic pleasure of the reader generated by the form of the literary work. In the contributions that follow, many deal more with the representation of pain than that of pleasure in the nineteenth century; Michael Tilby’s contribution is the principal exception, focusing on the manifestations of the philosophical and physiological nature of pleasure in Balzac’s works. A considerable number choose to focus more specifically on the duality of pain and pleasure, particularly in its sexual expression. The breadth of the subject allows for the study of a number of less canonical, particularly women, writers, both novelists and poets (Anna de Noailles, Malvina Blanchecotte), as well as of cultural ‘figures’ in the broadest sense: the terror and fascination evident in the general public’s attitude towards Larcenaire and, a fortiori, in nineteenth-century writings on the guillotine; the pleasure and pain of what were presented as various sexual disorders, both male and female, in contemporary medical and pseudo-medical discourses; and redefinitions of beauty and ugliness in art. Inevitably, there is some unevenness in the quality of the contributions, but the majority are clearly argued and enlightening and an excellent index has been provided. There is the occasional typographical error (even two on p. 266, in Claire Moran’s highly stimulating contribution on the self-representation of the artist as Christ), and, most disappointingly, a whole chapter with the wrong running head: Rachel Mesch’s very clear and thoughtful essay on ‘Power and Pleasure in Fin-de-Siècle Women’s Writing’ (pp. 159–71) has been given that of Gretchen Schultz’s in the following section (‘La Rage du plaisir and la rage de la douleur’, on lesbian pleasure and suffering, pp. 175–86). Errors notwithstanding, this is an important and very rich volume, testifying more than most to the wide and interconnecting range of disciplines concerned with the culture, literature, and society of the ‘long’ French nineteenth century.