Animal attractions: The question of female authority in Zola, Rachilde and Colette.

Abstract

The notion of women's connection to nature had significant consequences for conceptions of female authority in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Many have noted that nineteenth century evolutionism generally reaffirms women's exclusion from men's intellectual endeavors by characterizing female intelligence as "animalistic." What has not been adequately appreciated, however, is that the concept of female animality entails an identification of women with the natural milieu, regarded as a metamorphosing influence. The milieu emerges as a model of female authority, not only in Lamarck and Darwin, but in other naturalist works describing women's bodily odor as a seductive "atmosphere" capable of revitalizing, transforming, and dominating men. This dissertation examines the relationship between "masculine" intellect and "feminine" animality as models of authority in post-Darwinian works. Zola's naturalist novels develop the ideological dimensions of these gendered models of authority. The conflict between men's claim of intellectual and spiritual superiority and the transformative influence of "animalistic" women emerges as a struggle between hierarchism and egalitarianism. These novels also reveal that women's "natural" influence consists of an ability to manipulate the discourse on which hierarchies depend. Rachilde's Monsieur Venus, La marquise de Sade and L'animale pose the problem of how an "animalistic" woman may assume the status of an intellectual. Rachilde's "feline" heroines employ their metamorphosing powers in a calculating manner; they become "masculine" aesthetes or philosophers largely by feminizing men. However, these novels also evoke the limitations of the intellectual's mastery, and idealize submissive characters whose purely "atmospheric" influence is more transforming. Colette wrote in a post-decadent literary climate promoting a "return" to nature. While this naturist movement was conducive to women's writing, Claudine s'en va, Douze dialogues de betes and La retraite sentimentale reflect the difficulty of reconciling the innocence and "instinctual" intelligence valued by naturists with the "virile" intellect attributed to the writer. These works adopt decadent paradigms of women's "feline" mastery, while revealing the limits of such authority. La retraite sentimentale in particular underscores the gap between two female figures: the dominating, intellectual Earth goddess and the sensual woman whose animality consists in subverting such mastery.