The Ghost of Lucretia: Seduction and Consent in Samuel Richardson's Clarissa and Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Julie (original) (raw)
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Martryed Mothers Never Die: The Legacy of Rousseau's Julie
Journal of the Motherhood Initiative for Research …, 2002
In his autobiography, The Life ofHenri Brulard (1973), the French novelist Stendhal tells a story that exemplifies the impact of Rousseau's (1967) preromantic novel, Julie, ou La Nouvelle Hkloiie, on the reading public of his time. Stendhal's grandfather recalls that, in 1760, the year of the novel's publication, a close friend of his, the Baron des Adrets, did not come down to dinner one evening. His wife sent a servant to look for him, whereupon the normally cold and formal gentleman appeared with tears streaming down his face. His wife, rather alarmed, asked: 'What's wrong, my friend?"' and he replied simply, "Ah, Madame, Julie is dead!"2 (1973: 184). Perhaps no other novel in the history of literature has so affected the attitudes, values, and sensibilities of its generation, not to mention those of generations to come. From its romantic beginnings to its tragic dknouement, Julie, ou /a Nouvelle Hkloiie serves as a practical manual for women, telling them how to act, how to think, and even, perhaps most importantly, how to die. Readers took the implicit masochistic values of female self-sacrifice as source of fulfillment or salvation as a model for a mythology of the ideal mother that perpetuates female abnegation. As we will see, it was Julie's death even more than her life that fired the imaginations of eighteenth-century readers and subsequently affected the lives of countless generations of women who would become mothers in the Western world. In her essay entitled "Stabat Mater," French psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva speaks of "the self-sacrifice involved in becoming anonymous in order to pass on the social norm" (1986: 183). Kristeva calls such self-effacement a ''pikeversion," a form of officially sanctioned masochism for which women are offered the reward of sainthood in exchange for total powerlessness in the symbolic world of patriarchy. As Kristeva writes:
2007
Political Thought and The Sexual Contract) rejects both of the aforementioned reactions to the paradox in Rousseau. Pateman claims that, with regard to Rousseaus philosophical project, his philosophy of freedom for men and his philosophy of servitude for women are mutually reinforcing and dependent upon one another. According to Pateman, the paradox cannot be resolved, and in rejecting Rousseaus philosophy of servitude for women, one must also reject his philosophy of freedom for men. The freedom of men depends on the servitude of women. As I see it, the reactions of Fermon, Schwartz, and Weiss are untenable positions. On this point I agree with Pateman. However, I disagree with Patemans claim that the paradox of Rousseaus sexual politics cannot be resolved because, as I in reference to women in Book V of Émile. For example, in its primitive sense, amour de soi means self-preservation, the preservation of ones body and ones life. This passion concerns the individual in relation to himself. In the civil state, with regard to men, Rousseau redefines this term to include the preservation of mans individual liberty. The faculties of amour de soi are attack and defense. With regard to women, Rousseau discusses the faculties of attack and defense, and the preservation of womens social status as well as the preservation of the family. However, Rousseau does not use the term amour de soi in reference to woman. Another important term in relation to man in the civil state is pitié, or compassion. This passion, or inclination, in its primitive sense, refers to the distaste one has for the suffering of others like oneself. In the civil state, with regard to men, this term is related to the ways in which man finds his moral footing with other men in society. This is the social/political passion. It also refers to mans compassion for those less fortunate. For woman, assuming her place in the moral order and her proper relationship to a man is crucial, but again, this term, pitié, is not used in reference to women. Moreover, cultivating compassion for others is not included in the domestic education for women. As I will show, in the civil state, woman and man are different kinds of beings, and pitié refers to mans relationship to his own kind. Yet another important term Rousseau uses with regard to man/men is amour propre, which is related to his notion of dependence on the will, opinions, and judgments of others. Part of Rousseaus understanding of individual liberty is being independent of the will, opinions, and judgments of others, deriving ones self-esteem
Written on the Body: Deconstructing the Patriarchal Ideology in the Classic Adultery Literature
2022
This thesis explores the multidimensional character of desire in Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body through a wavelength range of an in-visible spectrum. A closer look at the writer’s use of the imaginary and the erotic suggests that the narrative of “nameless desires” (Oranges 15) is at work with its own power, chipping away at the binaries that undergird the patriarchal regulation of sexuality and subjectivity. At the core of my analysis is the deconstruction of ideologically-privileged conventions which stifle desire and the fluid expression of identity. By undermining the ascendancy of the politico-cultural discourse in favour of an aesthetic of corporeal affectivity, Winterson manages to convey a sense of queer novelty, whilst fluttering some critical dovecotes within an ethical framework. In so doing, this study ventures to scout the Wintersonian subversive quest as the writer creatively experiments with stylistic patterns in unlimited ink of poetic love and fetishistic desire against the hollowing of hackneyed clichés. As she presses on the deep connection between flesh and word, text and body, language and sensuality, Winterson brings the reader into her imaginative world that is opened up to unforeseen possibilities beyond all bounds. For that reason, I seek out to correlate the act of reading with the process of writing, each of which is driven by an overflowing force of desire. Most crucially, to elaborate on the idea of a volatile ‘plural subjectivity,’ this paper endeavors to demonstrate how the unity of the desiring subject is dissolved in “the constructive secretions of the spider’s web” (Barthes 64) where meanings are interwoven on the palimpsestic body of text.
Rousseau in Drag: Deconstructing Gender
Rousseau in Drag: Deconstructing Gender, Palgrave, 2012
Rousseau in Drag rethinks feminist readings of Rousseau. I argue that Rousseau’s writings provide a critique not only of normative gender identities (“masculinity” and “femininity”) but also of normative familial and kinship relations (the heterosexual couple and nuclear family). Such a critique is particularly apparent in his fictional and autobiographical works in which one finds the proliferation of “perverse” identifications and desires that call into question the normative framework he seems to promote elsewhere. I conclude that for Rousseau strict gender identity and the normative (heterosexual) familial model (exemplified in the idealized patriarchy of Geneva) might be preferable to the narcissism of 18th century Parisian society, but for a truly democratic future more fluid identities and kinship relations need to be imagined. Rather than giving the reader a prescriptive model of what these new relations and identities might be, Rousseau instead provides oblique suggestions of alternative models of love, friendship, and politics based on equal and fluid identifications.