L'Indécidabilité de genre (gender) dans le premier roman du cycle de Marie, de Jean-Philippe Toussaint

ABSTRACT

In the first novel of the Marie cycle, Faire l'amour, categories of gender seem initially stable both in terms of the protagonists’ emotional and professional lives. But the author proceeds to perform a first inversion in conferring an aggressive virility to his feminine heroine. Conversely, the male character, also subjected to this redistribution, finds himself deprived of the attributes of masculinity.

Yet the double destabilization of gender norms does not allow for the discovery of a new equilibrium, except in the ironic mode. In fact, as the Japanese way of life brings a counterpoint that undermines the so-called legitimacy of Western norms, the gender reconfiguration is dramatized through the intercultural context. Toussaint subjects this unlikely couple set between two continents, between two cultures, to an overwhelming displacement that symbolizes the stakes of civilization and paradoxically sparks empathy through its own incapacity to create new norms. In a masterly manner, Toussaint succeeds in transforming this tragedy of coexistence into the humorous saga of a world in transition, freed from ancient stereotypes but still powerless to reinvent itself.

KEYWORDS:

• Body
• femininity
• virility
• inversion
• masquerade
• intercultural

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Marie-Françoise Berthu-Courtivron

Teacher-Scholar (MC) in Literature at the University Rennes 2 in Brittany, Marie-Françoise Berthu-Courtivron teaches French Literature to foreign students at the CIREFE (University Center for French as a Foreign Language in Rennes). She is a specialist of Colette and is the author of Espace, demeure, écriture – La maison natale dans l’œuvre de Colette (Nizet, 1992) as well as Mère et fille: l'enjeu du pouvoir (Droz, 1993). She is one of the co-editors of the critical edition of Colette's Œuvres (La Pléiade, Gallimard, 2001). She also writes on Duras: “Le Paysage durassien: entre abstraction et fantasme,” Série Marguerite Duras (Garnier, 2017), and is interested in gender studies in literature (“Les Distorsions du genre dans les premiers romans colettiens,” La Littérature en bas-bleus 3, 1870–1914. Garnier, 2017). She is co-organizer of the colloquium “Les redistributions du genre dans la littérature de langue française du Moyen-Age à l'extrême contemporain: les reconfigurations du masculin et du féminin” to be held at the University of Rennes 2 in March 2018.