Chapter 3: Thérèse et Isabelle: An Idyll Abandoned
Alex Hughes
From Violette Leduc: Mothers, Lovers, and Language (1994), pp. 81-113, doi:10.59860/td.c59cb1f
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| Part of the book: Violette Leduc Alex Hughes MHRA Texts and Dissertations 37 W. S. Maney & Son Ltd for the Modern Humanities Research Association Abstract. Constituting as it does a revised version of what was originally the opening section of Ravages, Thérèse et Isabelle contains themes and images which are also present in that novel; however, the account of female-to-female bonding which Leduc’s 1966 novella offers is undoubtedly more radical, and more visionary, than that which emerges from Ravages. In Thérèse et Isabelle, whose focus is the electrically homoerotic relationship that exists between its epony. mous, adolescent heroines, Leduc is writing in a pioneering mode. This chapter explores the nature of the sexual relation Leduc envisions in Thérèse et Isabelle, and to argue that while it proves to be transitory, it is characterized by a harmony which distinguishes it from the feminine familial/sexual bonds depicted in Ravages. In creating an account of what might be termed ‘love of the same in the feminine’, Leduc looks forward, instinctively, to Irigaray’s vision of a female homosexual economy, based upon subject-to-subject relations of pleasure and desire between women. Full text. This contribution is published as Open Access and can be downloaded as a PDF, or viewed as a PDF in your web browser, here: |