French Romanticism and the Reinvention of Love.

Abstract

The dissertation focuses on French Romanticism as a space of experimentation for imagining alternative social contracts founded on the reinvention of heterosexual gender standards and sex-practices. By depicting the unhappy fate of heterosexual couples–whose love is challenged by sexual and gender norms, and expectations such as monogamous marriage, parenthood, and unequal domesticity,–novels by Germaine de Staël, George Sand, and Théophile Gautier articulate, I argue, a notion of “heterosexual trouble” by triggering a Romantic utopian vision of a non-normative heterosexuality. In chapters devoted to dandyism, I develop this idea by exploring the tensions in the efforts of authors such as Charles Baudelaire and Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly to define dandyism as a male preserve in spite of the advent, in their own texts, of the female dandy and her problematic relationship with her male counterpart. I include an analysis of style in my study, and argue that specific features of these works can be considered the formal inscription of the notion of “heterosexual trouble.” In addition, the dissertation extends beyond the French literary context to consider Spanish Romanticism. I argue that the theme of “heterosexual trouble” can also be found in the works of Spanish authors such as Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, Rosalia de Castro, and Carolina Coronado. In the final chapter, devoted to the reinvention of love in fin-de-siècle Decadent literature, I argue that the theme of “heterosexual trouble” is depicted through a parody of the language and practices of the new science of sexology. The dissertation approaches Romantic love through the perspective of both men and women in their reaction to a normative heterosexuality and shows men to be as tormented and frustrated (if not more so) by the dynamics of masculine domination as women are.