The work of memory: sexuality, violence and writing in Balzac’s Touraine

Heathcote, Owen; Heathcote, Owen

doi:https://doi.org/10.3828/jrs.3.2.15

Heathcote, Owen

Journal of Romance Studies (2003), 3, (2), 15–29.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3828/jrs.3.2.15
Language: English
Pages: 15

Abstract

This article examines the nature and the role of gendered violence in the representation of Balzac’s Touraine. Although, for a character like Félix de Vandenesse in Le Lys dans la vallée, Touraine seems to represent freedom and joy, it is also a site of violence: its waters, landscapes and vegetation either merge or submerge identities – hence leitmotivs of incest and adultery – or, via the theme of the desert, leave them vulnerable to exposure, attack and even death. By being associated with Touraine, violence is, however, not only naturalized but also feminized: it is Balzac’s women who tend both to suffer and inflict violence in a similarly feminized Touraine. Given, moreover, that the naturalized, feminized violence of a violent, feminized Touraine is remembered and perpetuated through art, the article then asks whether Balzac’s art exorcizes or yet further naturalizes the nexus of sexuality, violence and writing.

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