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Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

Cette thèse analyse le pouvoir social des femmes de la haute aristocratie à la cour de Louis XV (1723-1774). La société de cour, telle que théorisée par le sociologue Norbert Elias, était formée d’une multitude de réseaux de courtisans dans lesquels les femmes jouaient des rôles essentiels. Ne pouvant exercer le pouvoir politique au même titre que les hommes, ces femmes avait tout de même une capacité d’agir (agency) au sein de la cour. Elles développèrent des stratégies utilisant leur pouvoir social, soit leur capacité d’intervenir dans les relations sociales de la cour, pour consolider et favoriser leur mobilité sociale et celle des membres de leur réseau. Ces stratégies furent étudiées par l’entremise des mémoires de cinq femmes ayant fréquenté la cour et les courtisans au XVIIIe siècle, soit Madame de Brancas, Madame du Hausset, Madame de La Ferté-Imbault, Madame Campan et Madame de Genlis. D’abord, cette thèse analyse le temps, soit celui de la cour de Louis XV, celui de la rédaction des mémoires et celui de leur publication, ainsi que l’espace de la cour en tant que composantes qui orientèrent les stratégies féminines. Bien que ces composantes fussent des contraintes à l’action des courtisanes, ces dernières développèrent tout de même leurs stratégies en fonction du temps et de l’espace pour parvenir à leurs fins. Leurs stratégies ont été également façonnées selon des règles d’étiquette et d’éthique comportementale qui régnaient à Versailles. Ne pouvant en faire abstraction, les courtisanes surent les utiliser à leur avantage. Enfin, se trouvant au coeur de réseaux complexes, les femmes de la noblesse développèrent des méthodes d’utilisation de ces réseaux afin d’atteindre leurs objectifs d’ascension sociale. Cette thèse démontre donc que les femmes de la noblesse avaient une capacité d’agir bien réelle par l’exercice de leur pouvoir social et qu’elles étaient essentielles au fonctionnement de la mécanique de la société de cour qui, au XVIIIe siècle, n’était pas en déclin, mais avait plutôt atteint l’apogée du processus de civilisation.

Color and light, consistent with most visual phenomena in Madame Bovary, are more than mere descriptive tools: they actually serve as vehicles for Flaubert's characteristic use of symbolism. When taken cumulatively throughout the novel, the meanings ascribed to certain color and lighting effects often symbolize specific situations or a character's psychology, while at the same time reflecting a particular point of view. This dissertation initially examines the questions of point of view, major themes and Emma's psychology. Though most of the novel is recounted by an omniscient third-person narrator, he frequently takes a back seat so that Emma's point of view, for one, becomes the dominant manner of presentation. By shifting from one point of view to another, the narrator presents us with much conflicting symbolism--are we witnessing a scene and its color and light through Emma's dreamy gaze or perhaps in a more objective light shed by the narrator? An additional source of conflict is to be found in Emma's psychology and the major themes of Madame Bovary, as they both center around the heroine's inability to distinguish dreams from reality, with reality eventually gaining the upper hand and crushing Emma's dream world. Color and light symbolism naturally mirror all of these conflicts, with positive symbols often overshadowed by negative ones. There are three basic types of illumination present in the novel--(1) dim light reflecting Emma's romantic nature; (2) harsh, revealing brightness which, in the present, sheds light on an all-too pervasive reality; and (3) a lack of illumination emphasizing Emma's depression and leading ultimately to the utter darkness of death. Seven individual colors are explored for their symbolic aspects: blue, white, yellow, black, red, pale, and green. Blue symbolizes Emma's dreams and aspirations, her desire to attain an always nebulous higher state of being, which of course she will never reach. White can at times be interpreted along classical lines as representing innocence, naivete, and potential, or conversely emptiness and ennui, as in the case of this same potential remaining unfulfilled. Yellow signifies reality which is always ready to engulf Emma and her dreams and is seen as yellowing the whiteness of her potential. Black takes on several symbolic connotations, usually dependent upon the point of view of the person lending it symbolic value. It can be seen as a reflection of the Church, of mystery, or, for Emma, of the perfect romantic hero who must dress in black. As the narrator is aware, however, and communicates to the reader, all meanings of black in the novel merely culminate in its traditional connotation, that of death, in this case, Emma's of course. Red is another shade which can be divided into positive and negative aspects, with the positive signifying sensuality, voluptuousness, and by extension a certain erotic vision of love. On the negative side, we find many characteristics of red that Emma herself would consider disagreeable: a peasant origin, outlook or attitude, and a lack of sophistication sometimes coupled with crudeness or insensitivity. One or more of three basic meanings can be ascribed to pale in any given context; it can represent a dull uninteresting existence, a romantic ideal--for Emma--, or merely a pallor caused by illness or indisposition. Green, the final hue treated, is a secondary color on the artist's palette combining the blue of dreams and the yellow of reality, thus crating a feeling of malediction for Emma and a fatal mixture, since one cannot survive in the face of the other. In the end, Emma is forced to recognize the reality which had been so clearly illuminated throughout the novel by the narrator and, unable to face the light, she ironically turns instead to the total darkness of death.

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Au travers de ses six romans, Jane Austen a revisité sans cesse une seule et même histoire, l’accession d’une héroïne au mariage. Dans Histoire de Madame de Montbrillant, Madame d'Épinay dresse le portrait de l’échec d’un mariage, et plus généralement de l’échec d’une femme à conférer un sens à une existence décevante. A priori, rien de plus éloigné que ces deux manières de relater une existence féminine. Pourtant, les deux œuvres s’avèrent extrêmement proches dès lors que des fissures apparaissent dans le tableau brossé par Austen : loin de dessiner l’accomplissement d’une existence, les romans de cette femme de lettres font toujours ressortir les multiples déceptions et échecs d’une existence traversée par la soumission et par les clichés. Bien plus, est-ce seulement de la vie des femmes que traitent les deux auteures ? À travers leurs héroïnes, et à travers une écriture qui délaisse la fluidité au profit de l’accroc, de la rature, de la mise en évidence des faiblesses, ces deux femmes s’interrogent sur les moyens dont disposent les femmes pour acquérir une voix qui leur soit propre : trop marquée par l’autorité des siècles passés, la voix féminine est-elle irrémédiablement vouée à répéter des codes sur lesquelles elle n’a pas prise ? Les œuvres de Jane Austen et de Madame d'Épinay s’inscrivent dans un courant littéraire apparu dans la seconde moitié du XVIIIe siècle, caractérisé par l’épanouissement des romans écrits par des femmes et par la reconduction de stéréotypes d’un ouvrage à l’autre, dont les principaux, inspirés en grande partie de Samuel Richardson, sont le respect accordé à la tradition, un schéma diégétique invariable, l’autorité indéfectible de la voix narratrice, et la focalisation autour de l’héroïne. Cette reconduction presque inchangée de traits communs permet de réunir ces romans sous la commune appellation de romans de l’immuable. Si les deux femmes de lettres étudiées n’attaquent pas frontalement ce courant, et même en réutilisent de nombreux traits caractéristiques, elles fondent leur écriture sur sa contestation, en soulignent les insuffisances et mettent en évidence son inadéquation à la réalité. Ainsi, l’écriture se trouve saturés par des références qui sont l’une après l’autre dénoncées comme inappropriés pour le monde contemporain : l’héroïne perd son rayonnement exclusif, le schéma dramatique est montré comme artificiel, et le narrateur est dépossédé de sa toute-puissance (si Jane Austen utilise l’ironie pour contester cette figure, Madame d'Épinay emploie la multiplicité des voix narratives propres au roman épistolaire). Les clichés du roman de l’immuable sont donc violemment attaqués ; cependant, ils continuent d’occuper l’espace romanesque, comme autant de cicatrices dans une écriture qui ne parvient pas à se débarrasser entièrement d’eux. Cela signifie-t-il que les deux auteures sont impuissantes à expulser des préceptes adoubés par la tradition et destinés à imprégner leurs œuvres ? Ou bien Austen et Madame d'Épinay posent-elles comme préalable à cette expulsion la dénonciation systématique, fût-ce au prix de la pureté idéale d’une écriture affranchie de toute tutelle antécédente ? L’impossibilité de se détacher d’un passé omnipotent dissimule en effet un questionnement autour des moyens dont dispose l’expression féminine pour exister, qui sont étudiés au travers des différentes héroïnes et des autres personnages féminins. Austen et Madame d'Épinay se concentrent ainsi sur le moment où l’expression naît, plus que sur une parole achevée : c’est l’éclosion qui est considérée, non l’aboutissement. Et de fait, toutes ces personnes nées de la fiction échouent à construire un langage commun ; bien plus, les stratégies utilisées dans l’avènement du discours sont invariablement débusquées ou contournées par leurs homologues masculins, qui s’assurent ainsi la mainmise sur le dialogue. Mais cet échec du discours féminin n’est pas seulement celui des personnages. Il concerne tout aussi bien les auteures, incapables de congédier définitivement les influences qui pèsent sur leur expression, et contraintes de montrer cette impuissance au cœur de leurs ouvrages. Il s’agit donc bien d’ouvrages de dénonciation, mais qui, pour faire éclore cette dénonciation, sont obligés d’en exhiber les stigmates. Nulle tranquillité née d’un accomplissement total chez les deux auteures, mais au contraire l’inquiétude d’une parole forcée de s’avouer sous tutelle, et toujours menacée de se découvrir vaine (les personnages féminins, de même que les narrateurs, ne cessent de proclamer leur incapacité à rendre compte du réel, et craignent perpétuellement de tomber dans l’ineffable). Pourtant, de cet échec naît aussi une ambition : Jane Austen et Madame d'Épinay fixent les exigences pour la constitution d’une écriture nouvelle. L’expression féminine doit s’édifier dans la conscience de ce carcan primordial, et les deux auteures ont pour tâche de faire ressortir la puissance, mais aussi les limites de celui-ci. Si bien que l’on assiste à une écriture inquiète, mécontente d’elle-même, mais aussi une écriture qui se refuse à la naïveté, et qui fait du roman un espace complexe où la mise en perspective devient possible : les auteures n’écrivent plus dans la droite ligne d’écrits et d’autorités antérieurs, elles contestent ceux-ci en les confrontant à leurs impasses, et, si elles ne proposent pas de voie résolument nouvelle, font du roman le lieu d’un nouveau scepticisme. Les certitudes anciennes sont abolies, et leur est substituée une expression insatisfaite mais consciente d’elle-même, prélude, peut-être, à l’avènement d’une autre écriture, que les deux auteures se refusent, ou échouent, à envisager. / In her six novels Jane Austen has constantly revisited the same and only story of a heroine eventually acceding to marriage. In Histoire de Madame de Montbrillant Madame d’Épinay has described the failure of married life and more generally the impossibility for a woman to give meaning to her disenchanted life. At first glance nothing could be farther removed than those two ways of relating a woman’s existence. Yet the works of both writers prove quite close from the moment that some cracks appear in the picture painted by Jane Austen : far from depicting the fulfilment of a lifetime, she keeps bringing out in her novels the many disappointments and setbacks suffered by women tangled up in submission and mediocrity. But do the authors only deal with women’s lives after all ? Through their heroines, and through an écriture where fluidity is abandoned and leaves the field clear for cutting and slashing and the uncovering of all kinds of weaknesses, the two women-writers wonder about the means left to women to win a voice of their own — because the authority of past centuries has imprinted too heavy a mark on woman’s voice, would it then not be irrevocably doomed to repeat codes which it has no hold on ? The works of Jane Austen and Madame d’Épinay fit in with a new literary movement that appeared in the second half of the 18th century and which was characterized by a blossoming of novels written by women and the re-using of the same stereotypes novel after novel. Those stereotypes, mostly inspired by Samuel Richardson, dealt with the respect of tradition, an invariable diegetic pattern, the unfailing authority of the narrative voice and focalization on the heroine. The recurrence of these dominant features in 18th century fiction has led us to distinguish the novels that shared the same characteristics as novels of the immutable. If the two women-writers have made no frontal attack upon this literary movement and have even used for themselves most of its relevant features, they have nevertheless based their writing on the contestation of it, stressed its weaknesses and emphasized its inadequacy to reality. As a consequence their writing is overloaded with references that are denounced one after the other as unsuitable to the contemporary world : the heroine has lost her particular radiance, the dramatic pattern is shown as artificial and the narrator is deprived of her omnipotence (if Jane Austen makes use of irony to dispute this figure, Madame d’Épinay uses all of the narrative voices that belong to the epistolary novel). The clichés of the immutable novel are thus vigorously questioned but they are maintained in the fictional space like as many scars in an écriture that could not get rid of them. Does that mean that both authors are powerless to do away with precepts dubbed by tradition and intended to permeate their works ? Or do Austen and Madame d’Épinay have systematically recourse to denouncement as a prerequisite, should it be at the expense of absolute purity of writing freed from all previous constraints ? The impossibility for Jane Austen and Madame d’Épinay to get rid of an overpowering past actually conceals their questioning about the means — explored through their heroines as well as other female characters — for feminine expression to exist. Austen and Madame d’Épinay focus their attention on the very moment when expression is revealed rather than on the accomplished parole, on birth rather than achievement. And it is a fact that all these characters born out of fiction fail to construct a common language, with the result that the strategies used to bring speech into existence are invariably driven out or bypassed by their masculine counterparts who thus secure their hold on dialogue. The failure of feminine discourse does not only belong to the characters but is also due to the authors who are unable to do away with the influences that weigh heavy on their manner of writing, and who are compelled to show their impotence to the core of their novels. We are thus faced with novels of denouncement in which the stigmatae have to be displayed for denouncement to be brought to light. No peace then after full achievement for our two women-writers but the restlessness of an expression forced to admit its dependance and always threatened to be faced with its uselessness — the female characters, and the narrators as well, keep proclaiming their inability to account for reality and never-endingly fear to fall into the ineffable. Yet, an ambition has been born of that defeat : Jane Austen and Madame d’Épinay have set the requirements for new writing. Feminine expression has to be built while the two writers are being aware of its original shackles and have to bring out the power as well as the limits of it. So much so that we can observe a kind of restless écriture, unhappy with itself but an écriture that refuses naïvety and turns the novel into a new complex space where a new viewpoint has been made possible. The two authors no longer write in the main thread of former writings and authorities which they dispute and set against their dead ends and impossibilities, and if they have proposed no really new way, they have nonetheless turned the novel into a locus for new scepticism. Old certainties have been done away with and have left the room for a new expression, unhappy with itself but self-aware, as a possible prelude to the rise of another écriture that the two women-writers have refused or failed to consider.

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The central theme in Delphine and Corinne, two novels by Madame de Stael, is that of the tragic and suffering heroine. The heroines die for ideals: those of freedom and the right to live their lives according to moral principles of the highest order. For Madame de Stael, the Parisian society she lives in, allows women no real freedom and therefore, there is no sense of morals where they are concerned. In Delphine, she draws a series of portraits of unhappy and psychologically scarred women, and she shows how prejudice and social convention brought this about. In Corinne, Madame de Stael's imagination explodes into her vision of the performing heroine who dazzles not only her fellow fiction characters but contemporary literary women. In both novels, the hero abandons the heroine and she dies. The theme of the tragic hero inspires early romantic literature. Madame de Stael introduces the essential characteristics of romanticism to the French in From Germany. The heroine's drama is her own. This thesis studies the guiding influences, the sources and the inspiration of Madame de Stael's ideas which led her to state that moral principles did not exist for women in the society of her day.

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Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T20:39:24Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Thalita L Nobre.pdf: 573590 bytes, checksum: cb51e0187a0b882d25ae4a5fd5d18210 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007-04-27 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / The purpose of this dissertation is to carry out a psychoanalytical reading concerning the protagonist of the literary composition Madame Bovary. This book, written by Gustave Flaubert and published in 1856 same year that Sigmund Freud was born caused a great repercussion in the French society, at that time. Because of that, the author was judged for offence to the public and religious moral . My objective using Ema Bovary as a study object, is because, principally, she presents some characteristics that can be understood, trough the Psychoanalysis like female hysteria. To become this agreement clearly, in this dissertation, I started with freudian´s theory and so I used the contribution from other authors about female psyche constitution and it accidents that cause the hysteric neurosis , after this, I present the Gustave Flaubert´s romance book with a psychoanalytical reading. Ema Bovary is not described by its author as a perfect, spotless and sufferer woman, but yes, she is described like a woman with real human beings characteristics. And these ones (of the protagonist) can have been determinative to this book became a workmanship cousin, until the current days / O objetivo desta dissertação é realizar uma leitura psicanalítica a respeito da protagonista da obra literária Madame Bovary. Este livro, escrito por Gustave Flaubert e publicado em 1856 ano do nascimento de Freud causou uma grande repercussão na sociedade francesa da época. Por causa disto, o autor foi julgado por ofensa à moral publica e religiosa . O meu intuito de utilizar Ema Bovary como objeto de estudo se deve, principalmente, pelo fato dela apresentar características que podem ser compreendidas, à luz da Psicanálise, como histeria feminina. Para tornar claro esse entendimento, nesta dissertação, parto da teoria freudiana e de autores que com ela contribuem sobre a constituição psíquica feminina e os desarranjos que ocasionam a neurose histérica , e após isto, apresento o romance de Flaubert com uma leitura psicanalítica do mesmo. Ema Bovary não é descrita, por seu autor, como uma mulher perfeita, impecável e sofredora, mas sim, com caracterísiticas humanas reais. E estas características da protagonista podem ter sido determinantes para que este livro seja considerado uma obra prima, até os dias atuais