Andre Gide’s L’Immoraliste

1. Andre Gide’s L’Immoraliste A Feminist and Psychoanalytic Reading

2. What does feminist criticism do? • deconstructs predominantly male cultural paradigms (models) • reconstructs a female perspective and experience, in order to change the tradition that has oppressed, marginalised or silenced women • Feminist Literary Criticism (Gayle Greene and Coppelia Kahn 1985, p.1)

3. First type of feminist criticism • critiques male-authored texts • sees canonical male-authored literature as discourse in collusion with patriarchal ideology • Examines ‘the images and stereotypes of women in literature, the omissions and misconceptions about women in criticism, and the fissures in male-constructed literary history’ (Elaine Showalter,‘Towards a Feminist Poetics’ 1979, p.25)

4. Second type of feminist criticism • ‘gynocriticism’ focuses on the woman as writer • explores the themes and structures of women’s literature • looks at the relationship between the established male literary tradition and women’s writing • this reading belongs to first type, focuses on character Marceline, male writer Gide, and male first person narrator Michel. A feminist, but not a gynocritical reading.

5. Psychoanalytic literary criticism • grew out of writings of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) on the human psyche • traditionally analyses either the unconscious traits of the author, or of the central character(s) • since 1970s, tends to analyse the structural (formal, linguistic) properties of the literary text, based on dictum ‘The unconscious is structured like a language’ (Jacques Lacan) • this is traditional reading – of unconscious desire of narrator character Michel to destroy his wife (two aspects)

6. Narcissus and Echo (Segal 1988) 1 • explores treatment of women characters in 15 male-authored, male-narrated French confessional récits • argues a relationship exists between male author, male narrator and implied male reader (= reader invited/expected by text) • maintains that ‘frame narrative’ told to other men constructs an ‘implied reader’ in a similar position to the narrator’s audience

7. Narcissus and Echo 2 • récits Segal analyses usually recount failed male life to other men in frame narrative (failure is reason for telling) • woman is involved in man’s failure and also dies. He is haunted by and tells her story with his own. • woman is marginalised and silenced • woman fails narrator as ‘mother-mirror’, and dies

8. Narcissus and Echo 3 • Narcissus is ‘a closed, bisexed unit’, ‘suicidally complete’ (p.9). Echo is ‘the detached part of an inconceivable whole, having neither life nor, finally, death’ (p.9) • Michel (Narcissus) seeks out (male) doubles to act as mirrors to his (unconsummated) homosexual desire. • He also seeks, unconsciously, to makes Marceline into a mirroring other. He fails in this, but destroys her in the process.

9. Michel’s male doubles • Bachir (Biskra), introduced by Marceline (164) • Moktir, who steals Marceline’s scissors (165) • Coach driver, his desire for whom is transferred to Marceline in single consummation of his marriage (165-6) • Charles at La Morinière (Marceline is pregnant and ignored) (166) • Ménalque (Marceline miscarries when Michel spends night away with him) (167-9) • 2nd coach driver ‘delicious as a fruit’, whom Michel kisses (172)

10. Conclusion 1 • Michel slips passively into sex with woman provided by Moktir (again, desire is mediated) while Marceline vomits blood • Neither destruction of Marceline nor telling her story (with his) brings Michel any release from narcissistic desire

11. Conclusion 2 – Segal’s reading • Clearly sets out how an apparent tale of heroic male self-discovery is actually a complex account of male narcissism, exploitation and misogyny • Doesn’t fully explain nature of link between Marceline’s decline and death and Michel’s unconscious pursuit of homosexual love objects.