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Gender Difference and Cultural Labour in French Fiction from Zola to Colette

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The Labour of Literature in Britain and France, 1830-1910

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Abstract

Novels of the French Third Republic brought to bear a particular reflexivity and investment in their accounts of specifically cultural collaborations between men and women (such as journalism, painting, and the stage). This chapter compares the ways in which these joint efforts were depicted in male-authored mimetic fiction such as Zola’s short story Madame Sourdis (1880) and Maupassant’s novel Bel-Ami (1885), and in female-authored fiction such as Marcelle Tinayre’s La Rebelle (1905) and Colette’s La Vagabonde (1910). In particular, it examines the way in which the long lexical history of ‘association’, not least in post-revolutionary egalitarian politics, lends ideological weight to tales of artistic and romantic union, and the questions they ask.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    ‘Erziehung’ is to ‘enseignement’ (French) and ‘education’ (English) as ‘Bildung’ is to ‘éducation’ (French) and ‘upbringing’ (English).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Nicholas White

Authors
  1. Nicholas White
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Magdalene College, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

    Marcus Waithe

  2. Girton College, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

    Claire White

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White, N. (2018). Gender Difference and Cultural Labour in French Fiction from Zola to Colette. In: Waithe, M., White, C. (eds) The Labour of Literature in Britain and France, 1830-1910. Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55253-2_13

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