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ABSTRACT
This article addresses debates over the definition of the word feminism in late nineteenth-century France and presents evidence that there was a form of feminism that has been overlooked by scholars: literary feminism, a genre of writing for and about women that focused on their sexual experiences and agency.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 This is not to say that the question of sexual agency was totally absent from nineteenth-century political feminism, as the work of Nelly Roussell and Madeline Pelletier demonstrate. However, for the most part, as Rachel Mesch has noted, the question of female sexual pleasure was not among the concerns of political feminism of the period. Mesch Citation2006, 157, 174.
2 Maizeroy has been so excluded from the nineteenth-century literary canon that he has not been the subject of a published biography or book-length critical study. I have elsewhere constructed his biography and written on his work and reception. See Rexer Citation2014, 507–584; Citation2021a, 209–236; Citation2021b.
3 See Mesch Citation2013, 6–7, on Belle Epoque literary feminism and, indeed, the rest of the book for her exploration of literature as an essential space for navigating the terms of feminism.
4 I would like to acknowledge from the outset that the literary feminism I discuss in this article was limited by cultural and historical realities of nineteenth-century France. While the literary works I discuss make the case for the importance of female sexual pleasure and agency, they do so from an entirely cis- and heteronormative standpoint. That I understand the limitations of nineteenth-century literary feminism should not be taken to mean that I condone a feminism that accepts these same limitations today.
5 For more scholarship on the word’s origins, see also Offen Citation1988a.
6 René Maizeroy himself wrote a laudatory review of Prévost’s féminisme, Maizeroy Citation1893b. For Prévost’s own self-definition of féminisme, see Gil Blas Citation1893a.
7 For yet another example of an article addressing the same double meaning of the word feminism, see also Lacour Citation1894.
8 Colombine was a pseudonyms used by Henry Fouquier, a former director of the press at the Ministry of the Interior and contributor to Gil Blas. Heylli Citation1887, 368.
9 In Ventriloquized Bodies, Beizer explores ventriloquy as a metaphor for the way that male authors suppressed and then re-appropriated women’s speech as a bodily discourse. Beizer Citation1994, 9, 201. While the empathetic ventriloquy of Maizeroy is, of course, still focused on the body, it also contextualizes bodily desire in sentiment and, for me, is more affirmative than repressive of women’s voices and desires.
10 Hermel Citation1886. Cited in Dawkins Citation2002, 80, 186.
11 Maizeroy was so often described as a maître féministe in publication advertisements that it almost became a formula of address for him in the pages of Gil Blas . See Gil Blas Citation1893b; Citation1894a; Citation1894b; Jean-Aubry Citation1893.
12 The Maizereines also appear in a poem by Emile Bergerat, ‘Le Cercle des romanciers’, Bergerat Citation1889, 166.
13 In addition to the passages discussed here, other notable examples of female sexual pleasure include Maizeroy Citation1887, 230–231; Citation1889, 97–100; Citation1912, 38, 53. Much of Maizeroy’s feminist fiction lends itself to similar analysis.
14 The scene also appears in Maizeroy Citation1912, 135–141; Citation1894, 12–19. A portion is adapted for Maizeroy Citation1901, 105–106.
15 In the other versions of the first-person narrative, he concludes instead by agreeing with the letter writer’s lament that women feign amorous wiles but fall for the first man who ‘sait à peu près bien son métier d’amant’, Maizeroy Citation1912, 141; Citation1894, 19.
16 Maizeroy quotes this same passage in the opening of his review of Prévost. Maizeroy Citation1893b.
17 For Mesch, male authors like Jean Lorrain are also important to the debates being addressed by Belle Epoque literary feminism. Mesch Citation2013, 144–155.
18 Although I do not discuss it here, I also wonder if féminisme may have influenced the representation of the sexuality of the éclaireuse, the French figure of the post-New Woman in the Belle Époque discussed by Mary Louise Roberts in Disruptive Acts. Roberts Citation2002, 37–47.
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Notes on contributors
Raisa Rexer
Raisa Rexer is an assistant professor of French at Vanderbilt University. Her research focuses on literature, early photography and the history of sexuality in nineteenth-century France. Her first book, The Fallen Veil: A Literary and Cultural History of the Photographic Nude in Nineteenth-Century France, was published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2021.