Writing The Feminine In Zola And Naturalist Fiction

Est-ce que la representation de la femme chez Zola, et dans la fiction naturaliste en general, enterine l'idee d'une permanence du feminin? Echappe-t-elle au contraire a toute figure, y compris au mythe de la diabolisation ou de l'exaltation, pour faire valoir une ambiguite, une indetermination qui correspondrait a l'effacement des sexes propre a la deuxieme moitie du XIXe siecle? C'est a une telle question que cet ouvrage s'attache a repondre dans le but de cerner une ecriture du feminin propre a la fiction naturaliste. L'ecriture du feminin est ici envisagee a la fois comme poetique de la representation, interpretation textuelle et discours conscient ou inconscient que la societe fait entendre sur la femme. Un tel discours n'echappe pas a l'hegemonie positiviste de son epoque qui legitime toute categorisation de la feminite. Parallelement, a l'etat de crise declenche par le progres scientifique et la peur face aux transformations qu'il engendre, fait des lors echo une hermeneutique du feminin comme metamorphose, ouverture et enigme. Does the representation of woman in Zola, and in naturalist fiction in general, confirm the notion of a permanence of the feminine; or, on the contrary, does it escape all tropes, including myths that demonize or exalt, in order to exploit its ambiguity or indeterminacy, and thereby correspond to the erasure of sex that characterizes cultural production during the second half of the nineteenth century? This is the question this work attempts to answer, in order to define and delimit the writing of the feminine in naturalist fiction. In this book, the inscription of the feminine is envisaged simultaneously as a poetics of representation, textual interpretation, and conscious or unconscious discourse that society gives to understand about woman. Such a discourse fails to escape the positivist hegemony of the period that legitimizes the categorization of the feminine. Nevertheless, beyond this systemization of the concept of woman, the idea of scientific progress brings about the development of a generalized myth of transformation that gives rise to the anguish of incertitude, degeneracy, and emptiness. A hermeneutics of woman as metamorphosis, open-mindedness, and mystery echos this situation of crisis.Gural-Migdal, Anna is the author of 'Writing The Feminine In Zola And Naturalist Fiction', published 2004 under ISBN 9780820471525 and ISBN 0820471526.