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Under house arrest: women, narration and transgression in novels of Balzac, Flaubert and Zola
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Under house arrest: women, narration and transgression in novels of Balzac, Flaubert and Zola
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Women, narration and transgression in novels of Balzac, Flaubert and Zola
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Boyle
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Carol A.
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Carol A. Boyle
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Diamond
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Josephine
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Josephine Diamond
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Schilling
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Derek
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Derek Schilling
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Shaw
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Mary
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Mary Shaw
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Walker
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Janet
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Janet Walker
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Rutgers University
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Graduate School - New Brunswick
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theses
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2008
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2008-05
Language
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English
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electronic
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v, 201 pages
Abstract
This dissertation studies the narrations of the domestic spaces assigned to nineteenth-century bourgeois women in Eugénie Grandet, and La vieille fille by Balzac, Madame Bovary by Flaubert, and L'assommoir and Une page d'amour by Zola. The female protagonists in these novels are represented in relation to the houses they inhabit, and architectural elements--doors, windows, stairs--stage the boundaries and the tense association between the women and their domestic environments. Since I primarily use phenomenological analysis in this study, I focus on the various narrative perspectives which introduce the reader into domestic spaces meant to remain private.
The narrators, often unnamed but distinctly present in the text of Balzac's Eugénie Grandet and La vieille fille, relate the situation of unmarried, provincial women whose houses embody the possibility of inheritance or the transmission of a fortune. The houses become prisons. Eugénie Grandet submits to the authority of a possessive father, while Rose Cormon loses her autonomy as the owner of her venerable home and submits to the rule of her financially ambitious and vulgar husband. In Madame Bovary, a provincial married woman, caught between domesticity and a desire for a more expansive life, is represented through various narrative focalizations, including the perspective of female neighbors who function as a moral police, watching her every move. Windows, in this novel, articulate a privileged vantage-point. In L'assommoir, Zola, through a narrative eye that functions as a voyeuristic camera, exposes the permeability of the public and the private spheres in a working-class context; and, in Une page d'amour, he reveals the dramatic strategies of upper bourgeois women to adapt to the stifling interiors of their Parisian apartments. I show in my analysis of these novels how narrators penetrate private domestic spaces, and how efforts on the part of the female protagonists to reconfigure or escape the confinements of the male guardians of the home, result in frustration and failure.
The narrators, often unnamed but distinctly present in the text of Balzac's Eugénie Grandet and La vieille fille, relate the situation of unmarried, provincial women whose houses embody the possibility of inheritance or the transmission of a fortune. The houses become prisons. Eugénie Grandet submits to the authority of a possessive father, while Rose Cormon loses her autonomy as the owner of her venerable home and submits to the rule of her financially ambitious and vulgar husband. In Madame Bovary, a provincial married woman, caught between domesticity and a desire for a more expansive life, is represented through various narrative focalizations, including the perspective of female neighbors who function as a moral police, watching her every move. Windows, in this novel, articulate a privileged vantage-point. In L'assommoir, Zola, through a narrative eye that functions as a voyeuristic camera, exposes the permeability of the public and the private spheres in a working-class context; and, in Une page d'amour, he reveals the dramatic strategies of upper bourgeois women to adapt to the stifling interiors of their Parisian apartments. I show in my analysis of these novels how narrators penetrate private domestic spaces, and how efforts on the part of the female protagonists to reconfigure or escape the confinements of the male guardians of the home, result in frustration and failure.
Note
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Ph.D.
Note
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Includes bibliographical references (p. 194-199).
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French
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Women in literature
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Balzac, Honoré de, 1799-1850--Criticism and interpretation
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Flaubert, Gustave, 1821-1880--Criticism and interpretation
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Zola, Émile,1840-1902--Criticism and interpretation
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Graduate School - New Brunswick Electronic Theses and Dissertations
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doi:10.7282/T32J6C6R
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ETD doctoral
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Carol Boyle
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Rutgers University. Graduate School - New Brunswick
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I hereby grant to the Rutgers University Libraries and to my school the non-exclusive right to archive, reproduce and distribute my thesis or dissertation, in whole or in part, and/or my abstract, in whole or in part, in and from an electronic format, subject to the release date subsequently stipulated in this submittal form and approved by my school. I represent and stipulate that the thesis or dissertation and its abstract are my original work, that they do not infringe or violate any rights of others, and that I make these grants as the sole owner of the rights to my thesis or dissertation and its abstract. I represent that I have obtained written permissions, when necessary, from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis or dissertation and will supply copies of such upon request by my school. I acknowledge that RU ETD and my school will not distribute my thesis or dissertation or its abstract if, in their reasonable judgment, they believe all such rights have not been secured. I acknowledge that I retain ownership rights to the copyright of my work. I also retain the right to use all or part of this thesis or dissertation in future works, such as articles or books.
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