The separate sphere ideology, dominant but never hegemonic in Victorian Britain, dictated that women’s natural vocation was to be wives and mothers. Between the years 1850 to 1901, the surplus woman problem and a nascent feminist movement challenged the separate sphere ideology. It was also reinforced by imperialist ideologies that held the British family as a sign of Britain’s superiority, and eugenics which placed great importance on heterosexual marriage and reproduction. How did novelists, especially women novelists, respond to the challenges against the separate sphere ideology? How did they depict unconventional women such as surplus women, women who behaved in transgressive ways, feminist women, lesbians, and women who were in interracial relationships? The conventional narrative stressed the importance of marriage, and unconventional characters either reformed themselves or met tragic fates. This remained consistent throughout the second half of the 19th century. At mid-century, unconventional women were the ones who rejected marriage, had an affair, etc. As women began to gain rights in education, work, and civic rights, the temptations that drew middle class women away from conventional life shifted to wanting to work or becoming feminists. Novels also depicted alien others, such as lesbians and non-white people, as menaces and threats to conventional marriage. Acceptable unconventionalities were limited: it was acceptable for women to be unconventional if they were exceptional or they broke one convention but upheld another, such as motherhood. At the end of the century, New Women novelists and other novelists that sympathetically depicted unconventional women critiqued the separate sphere ideology, but were overwhelmingly pessimistic about the possibility that women could escape convention.

La thèse analyse l’évolution de l’écriture féminine en Sicile aux XIXe et XXe siècles, sur la base d’un corpus de 24 romans de femmes écrivains : Cecilia Stazzone, Rosina Muzio Salvo, Elvira Mancuso, Angelina Damiani Lanza, Adelaide Bernardini Capuana, Maria Messina et Goliarda Sapienza. Dans la première partie, selon une approche socio-littéraire et en utilisant des inédits ou des textes rares mis au jour, nous avons illustré cette production dans l’histoire littéraire et dans la réception (à l’époque et contemporaine), étant donné certains oublis puis redécouvertes ultérieures, grâce surtout à l’activité éditoriale de Leonardo Sciascia (Mancuso et Messina), à la connaissance du rosminien Giuseppe Pellegrino (Lanza) et au succès des traductions françaises (Sapienza). Dans la deuxième partie, nous avons indiqué comment ces femmes écrivains ont différemment représenté la condition féminine de leur époque, en utilisant pendant le Romantisme des modèles romanesques masculins, en développant pendant le Décadentisme des structures et styles personnels qui corrodaient la langue et les schémas constitués, et enfin en créant des formes résolument autres à l’époque contemporaine. Ce sont surtout les romancières de l’époque contemporaine qui ont contribué significativement au développement du genre romanesque au féminin, en particulier Sapienza qui a, de façon unique, modelé au féminin l’autobiographie, le roman-épopée et le roman-enquête. / In this doctoral thesis, we examine the evolution of women’s writing in the XIXth and XXth centuries in Sicily. We based on a corpus of 24 novels by seven women writers : Cecilia Stazzone, Rosina Muzio Salvo, Elvira Mancuso, Angelina Damiani Lanza, Adelaide Bernardini Capuana, Maria Messina and Goliarda Sapienza. In the first part, applying sociological Criticism and using unpublished and rare texts, we show how this production can be understood through the development of textual history and history of reception. There have been some omissions and also rediscoveries, especially thanks to Leonardo Sciascia’s editorial activity for Mancuso’s and Messina’s works, to the Rosminian philosopher Giuseppe Pellegrino for Lanza’s works and to the great success of Sapienza’s French translations. In the second part, we analyze the different forms how these women writers represented the female condition in each phase : during the Romantic age, they followed their contemporary writers’ models, while during the Decadent movement they invented a structure and a personal style so as to erode the linguistic and formal canons. In the contemporary period, they created their own patterns. The women writers of the twentieth century contributed to the development of the female novel, especially Sapienza, who elaborated a personal pattern for female expression in several genres : autobiography, epic and psychological inquiry.

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Les romancières du XVIIIe siècle ont rencontré – en leur temps – un succès réel et vif à l’échelle européenne. Elles ont pourtant été écartées de la transmission du patrimoine littéraire. Il importe d’élucider les causes et les circonstances de cette mise à l’écart. Elles bousculent, avec une rare insolence, les présupposés liés à l’auctorialité, au genre romanesque et à l’écriture des femmes. Ce travail explore les destinées de quelques-unes de ces romancières – Mme Riccoboni, Mme de Tencin, Mme d’Epinay – et de leurs textes afin de prendre la mesure des représentations imaginaires qui ont façonné leur réception. Il s’agit par conséquent de renouveler la lecture de ces textes que, peut-être, nous ne savons pas, ou plus, lire. C’est ce que permet la notion de décalage. Par le jeu des discours, les romans de Mme de Tencin et de Mme de Fontaines subvertissent l’ordre symbolique de la société patriarcale. De ces romans se dégagent les spécificités d’une position féminine. Ces textes ont tendance, pourtant, à figer in fine les termes du discours romanesque. L’ironie aux multiples usages est le discours qui permet de sortir des impasses discursives rencontrées dans cette étude. Dans sa diversité, l’ironie est la plus à même de maintenir, pour les personnages féminins de Mme de Souza, de Mme Cottin ou dans les romans de Mme de Charrière, l’ouverture du décalage, l’insolence du questionnement, véritable condition du littéraire et du féminin. / 18th century female novelists enjoyed, in their time, strong and vibrant acclaim throughout Europe. Their work nonetheless did not become part of the literary heritage. It is important to analyse the circumstances and reasons for this exclusion.They irreverently question the codes and conventions of authorship, as well as fiction and women’s writing. This work explores the fate of some of these writers – Mme Riccoboni, Mme de Tencin, Mme d’Epinay – and their work, so as to understand the full extent of the collective projections that explain how they have been perceived.Hence, we need to go back on these novels which, maybe, we no longer know how to read. This is made possible by the notion of distance, incongruence or discrepancy. Through the play of different discourses, Mme de Tencin’s and Mme de Fontaines’ novels subvert the symbolic order of patriarchal society. Their novels set out the contours and specifics for the position of women. Yet, they tend to overly constrain the rules of fictional discourse.Irony, in its multiple shapes, is the discourse that allows to circumvent the discursive traps encountered in this study. In its diversity, irony is best suited to sustain – for the female characters of Mme de Souza, Mme Cottin or those in Mme de Charrière’s novels – the opening brought about by distance, the irreverence of questioning – true requirement for literature as well as for all that is feminine.