“Il se met à me faire des papouilles zozées”: Gender, Sexual Violence, and “Le Comique” in Queneau's Zazie dans le métro

Abstract

This article analyzes the relationship between comic motifs and gendered sexual violence (and its threat) in Raymond Queneau's novel Zazie dans le métro (1959). Whether involving past episodes of abuse or present dangers, the young protagonist Zazie is constantly referred to in relation to being the victim of potential sexual violence as well as subjecting others to her own possible sexual malevolence. Whether or not the novel manages to make the subject of child rape and prostitution “risible” through the use of the absurd and word play, among other comic devices, the farcical treatment of sexual violence has meaning beyond its comic effects in terms of the possible questioning of gender roles in 1960s France. Through comparison with prior Quenellian novels in which the threat of rape was used for either dramatic (Un Rude hiver) or comic purposes (the Œuvres complètes de Sally Mara), this study presents Zazie dans le métro as depicting the most equivocal representation of sexual violence within Queneau's œuvre.

Keywords:

• comic devices
• gender
• narrative
• novel
• nymphette
• Raymond Queneau
• rape
• sexual violence
• Zazie

Notes

For comic elements in the work of Raymond Queneau, see Jaton (93–106) and Mathieu Bélisle (46–51; 204–09).

See Sophie-Marie Armstrong's “Zazie dans le métro and Neo-French,” for example.

Henri Godard views this series of young female characters as a balancing force to the “second pôle” of Queneau's fiction, “tournée vers la critique de cette fiction” (“Preface” xxi).

Marie-Noëlle Campana examines the erotic in terms of feminine characters in Queneau's œuvre in detail (99–172).

Nicola Dusi has created a somewhat helpful chart of different freedoms and constrictions (186).

We should note that this is similar to what is said of another young girl, Florette, in Le Chiendent: “Et son coeur saigne encore lorsqu’elle voit sa fille Florette traîner ses yeux cernés sur la braguette de tous les hommes. Enfant de vieux, Florette montre de remarquables dispositions pour ce que Mme Pic appelle le vice et Meussieu Pic la bagatelle” (149).

The word “satyre” appears eleven times in Zazie dans le métro (36, 38, 40, 45, 48, 56, 57, 78, 98, 169, 171).

Likewise, toward the end of the novel, Gabriel, upon recognizing Trouscaillon, will also use the verb “courser,” suggesting Zazie as a type of prey: “C’est un dégoûtant satyre, dit Gabriel. Ce matin, il a coursé la petite jusque chez elle” (Queneau, Zazie dans le métro 171).

“Casserole,” in Le Trésor de la Langue Française informatisé (accessed 3 March 2014).

See Godard's explanation of the novel's “genèse” for a more detailed explanation of how the biographical details of various characters in Zazie dans le metro became more ambiguous in the published novel (“Notice” in Queneau, Œuvres complètes 3: 1692–97).

Campana discusses sisters in Queneau in more detail (155–56).

Queneau, Zazie dans le métro 65.

Article 227–25 of the Code Civil makes it a crime to engage in sexual relations with anyone younger than fifteen years of age.

The age of marital consent (article 144 of the Code Civil) did not change from fifteen to eighteen years until 2006.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Deirdre M. Sennott

Deirdre M. Sennott (PhD, Pennsylvania State University) is Visiting Assistant Professor of French at Willamette University. Her research and publications focus largely on the intersections of narrative and gender in nineteenth- and twentieth-century French literature.