Madness in Twentieth-Century French Womens Writing

This book offers a discussion of the trope of madness in twentieth-century French womens writing, focusing on close readings of the following texts: Violette Leducs LAsphyxie (1946), Marguerite Durass Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein (1964), Simone de Beauvoirs La Femme rompue (1967), Marie Cardinals Les Mots pour le dire (1975), Jeanne Hyvrards Les Prunes de Cythre (1975) and Mre la mort (1976). The discussion traces the evolution in the way madness is taken up by women authors from the key period starting just prior to the emergence of second-wave feminism and culminating at the height of the criture fminine project. This study argues that madness offers itself up to these authors as a powerful means to convey a certain ambivalence towards changing contemporary ideas on the authority of authorship. On the one hand a highly enabling means to figure transgression, the madwoman is equally the repository for a twentieth-century anxiety of authorship on the part of the woman writer.