Women in French: “Women in War”
Panel organizer: Andrew Sobanet
Georgetown University
Department of French
416 ICC Building,
3700 “O” Street NW
Washington DC 20057
ajs43@georgetown.edu
From Utopia to Dystopia: René Barjavel’s Ravage
This paper is an analysis of the role of women in the Pétainiste science fiction novel Ravage by René Barjavel. Written in 1942, this novel depicts a futuristic mid-twenty-first-century technological society in which humans have mastered the forces of nature. Their total control of nature enables humans to live totally divorced from the natural. The food they eat and the air they breathe are manufactured artificially. Women in this unnatural society have a great deal of freedom, pursue higher education, and cultivate careers. Massive catastrophe strikes this society in the year 2052, and forces some of its citizens to flee to Provence, a region that had been left behind by the modern technological advances of the past one hundred years. The few lucky survivors create a true Pétainiste patriarchy in Provence, in which men are all powerful, and women are only allowed to do one thing: rear children. To proffer but one example of the transformation that occurs between societies, the main female character in the novel, Blanche Rouget, takes a typical trajectory, going from successful Parisian career woman to having seventeen children for the provençale society’s patriarch in the post-apocalypse. In my paper, I will analyze the Pétainiste values Ravage promotes, while placing particular emphasis on the ideal role of women in society as it was rigidly defined by France’s fascist collaborationist government during World War II.
Andrew Sobanet
Georgetown University
ajs43@georgetown.edu
Ly Thu Ho's Trilogy of Novels: A Vietnamese Woman's View of the 1945-1976 Experience
Ly Thu Ho, who now lives in France, but who grew up in her native Vietnam, is the first woman of Indochinese origin to publish novels in the French language. Inspired by the experience of her own childhood during the French colonial rule of Vietnam as well as by numerous visits back to her native country between 1962 and 1986, Ly Thu Ho has produced a trilogy of novels—Printemps Inachevé (1962), Au Milieu du Carrefour (1969) and Le Mirage de la Paix (1986)—about her countrywomen's experiences during these tumultuous, decisive, and often war-torn times.
Ly Thu Ho's novels focus on female characters and in the language that influenced this country for nearly a century. Recounted with forthright imagery and bold, but controlled emotion, as well as an uncannily adroit awareness of Vietnamese quintessence, Ly Thu Ho's trilogy is an invaluable documentation of the Asian experience during this period of history.
To trace the author's sensitivity to her countrywomen's struggle in wartime, this essay will analyze Ly's peculiar gift of character study as she describes a touching mosaic of female personalities, each of whom must face her own trails as war invades her personal life and family traditions.
Helynne H. Hansen
Western State College of Colorado
hhansen@western.edu
The Novels of Andrée Chedid
The outbreak of civil war in Lebanon in 1975 marked a turning point in Andrée Chedid’s oeuvre. Her poetry collection Cérémonial de la violence (Flammarion, 1976) expresses a cry of revolt, horror and pain in response to the bloodshed and destruction ravaging the land of her ancestors. Chedid returns to this denunciation of intolerance and fanaticism in subsequent poetry collections -- Fraternité de la parole (1976), Cavernes et soleils (1979), Epreuves du vivant (1983), Par delà les mots (1995), Territoires du souffle (1999) -- which echo, en sourdine, the plea for an end to the killing communicated in Cérémonial de la violence. Likewise, in each of her novels published since 1975, Chedid depicts a state of conflict, whether it be in Lebanon ( La Maison sans racines (1985), L’Enfant multiple (1989), in Egypt of the fourth century AD (Les Marches de sable, 1981), or in an unnamed country which could be any land torn by a civil war that sacrifices innocent victims to the perpetuation of the cycle of attacks and reprisals (Le Message (2000). The fact that La Maison sans racines, L’Enfant multiple, and Le Message are all based on characters, action, and settings first elaborated in short stories (“Un jour, l’ennemie,” Les Corps et le temps (1978), “L’Enfant des manèges,” and “Mort au ralenti,” Mondes, Miroirs, Magies (1988) underscores Chedid’s ongoing interest in exploring the enigma of humanity’s sempiternal return to violence.
Chedid’s oeuvre, especially her novels, poetry and short stories published since 1975, thus offers a rich variety of texts which provide insights into one woman’s approach to writing war. The proposed paper, organized loosely around elements of J. L. Austin’s speech act theory consists of an analysis on three levels. The first part, an overview of Chedid’s depiction of war, focuses on the declarative mode – the statements and assertions Chedid is making about war by portraying it in her novels, short stories, and plays and by evoking it in her poetry. The type of conflict which takes on special prominence in her works after 1975 is fratricidal violence – civil war – that is rooted in differences of religion or belief systems. Rather than blaming one side or the other, Chedid posits that the factions are fundamentally interchangeable, becoming in their turn targets or killers caught in the cycle of vengeance, each proclaiming the same justification and all condemned to the same fate of loss and death. Chedid writes about war not primarily by describing scenes of combat but by showing its victims – characters whose lives are altered, destroyed or ended by the hatred which motivates others to commit acts of violence in the name of clans or religion.
Moving from the locutionary (production) dimension to the illocutionary, the second part of the paper will concentrate on the question of intent – why write about war? In Cérémonial de la violence the intention to denounce the bloodshed is particularly powerful. The mood here is imperative: “Cessez d’alimenter la mort!”(“Le Pain de la mort”). Elsewhere it is interrogative: “Qui se repaît / De ces festins de sang? / Qui salive / A la vue des ventres bleuis? / ….. / Qui?” (“Qui?” Par delà les mots). Questions such as these draw the reader into direct communication and challenge us to look deeper into ourselves and others as we share in the author’s reflections on what underlies mankind’s endemic returns to violence. This same questioning mode also characterizes the stance adopted by the narrators of Chedid’s recent novels. The words of Thémis in Les Marches de sable reflect this desire to enter into communication both with the other characters in the novel and with the extradiegetic narratee: “Comprendre un tout petit peu plus, un tout petit peu mieux. Et s’il n’y avait rien à comprendre? Dans ce cas, je serai venu, tout simplement, pour parler de mes inquiétudes, pour soulever des questions . . . Peut-être les partager?” (p.100).
In contrast to the open questions which invite a response, representing a desire for shared inquiry and dialogue, the imperative mode of Cérémonial de la violence indicates a desire to influence future events. Accordingly, the third section of the essay will explore the perlocutionary aspect – the effect produced by the illocutionary act. How can words – writing about war – bring about an end to the violence? Is it possible for the voices of characters telling stories of war (e.g. Athanasia in Les Marches de sable) or who have war inscribed in the wounds on their bodies (e.g. Omar-Jo in L’Enfant multiple and Marie in Le Message) to cross narrative boundaries in order to be heard directly by the extradiegetic narratee? Is the sort of unmediated, shared meditation on the causes and effects of war which takes place between poet and reader possible despite differences in narrative level? This last part of the paper analyzes examples of glissement between the discourse of the narrator and the characters in which the answer to the question “Who is speaking?” remains ambiguous. It is often in these passages of glissement that Chedid’s call for an end to the violence and her message of hope – the possibility of overcoming intolerance – are communicated. In such passages, the declarative and interrogative modes are combined; the characters’ and third-person omniscient narrators’ discourses blend to produce (perhaps) a perlocutionary effect. The words do not actually stop the killing, but as the extradiegetic narratee is drawn to let his/her voice join with those of the character and narrator, a concrete result is achieved – he/she, along with Andrée Chedid, is led to “. . . maintenir un regard attentif, ouvert, s’exprimer contre les violences. C’est peu. Mais il faut le faire.” ( Rencontrer l’inespéré, 1993).
Debbie Mann
Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville