Politics and Narratives of Birth

• Acknowledgements; A note on translations; Introduction: conception of this book; Part I. Stendhal: Delivering a Plot: 1. Death and transfiguration in the Vie de Henry Brulard; 2. Palimpsest and pregnancy: reading across Stendhalian autobiography; 3. Stendhalian fictions: plotting the unspeakable; Part II. Production, Reproductions and Narrative Form: Adolphe: 4. Introduction; 5. The economy of production: the paternal and narrative form; 6. Reproduction: (de)composing mother; 7. Rebirth and the performance of matricide; Part III. Gynocolonization: Rousseau, Michelet, Zolar and the Nineteenth-Century French Novel; Section 1: 8. Introduction: toward a bodied politics; 9. For unto us a son is born: Emile; 10. Birthing the body politic: Du contrat social; 11. The politic in the body Rousseau: Emile revisited and 'La Reigne Fantasque'; Section 2: 12. Introduction: birth, motherhood and the disease of democracy; 13. The flesh made word: Enfants du siècle and pathologies of reproduction in the nineteenth-century French novel; 14. Liberty, equality, maternity: Michelet as body snatcher; 15. Into Africa: Zola and gynocolonization; Conclusion; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

"Mossman's presentation, while demanding, rewards the reader by providing an innovative contribution to feminist criticism. Her study has the merit of introducing a measure of balance to traditional interpretations of nineteenth-century fiction that focus on the father." Hollie Markland Harder, Nineteenth-Century French Studies