“Reconstructing Woman is a very rich study, immensely suggestive, well researched, well written, and sophisticated in its scholarly approach. Because it is so elegantly argued and so intriguing, this study has the potential to open up new avenues of research.” —Mary Donaldson-Evans, University of Delaware

Reconstructing Woman explores a scenario common to the works of four major French novelists of the nineteenth century: Balzac, Flaubert, Zola, and Villiers. In the texts of each author, a “new Pygmalion” (as Balzac calls one of his characters) turns away from a real woman he has loved or desired and prefers instead his artificial re-creation of her. All four authors also portray the possibility that this simulacrum, which replaces the woman, could become real. The central chapters examine this plot and its meanings in multiple texts of each author (with the exception of the chapter on Villiers, in which only “L’Eve future” is considered).

The premise is that this shared scenario stems from the discovery in the nineteenth century that humans are transformable. Because scientific innovations play a major part in this discovery, Dorothy Kelly reviews some of the contributing trends that attracted one or more of the authors: mesmerism, dissection, transformism and evolution, new understandings of human reproduction, spontaneous generation, puericulture, the experimental method. These ideas and practices provided the novelists with a scientific context in which controlling, changing, and creating human bodies became imaginable.

At the same time, these authors explore the ways in which not only bodies but also identity can be made. In close readings, Kelly shows how these narratives reveal that linguistic and coded social structures shape human identity. Furthermore, through the representation of the power of language to do that shaping, the authors envision that their own texts would perform that function.

The symbol of the reconstruction of woman thus embodies the fantasy and desire that their novels could create or transform both reality and their readers in quite literal ways. Through literary analyses, we can deduce from the texts just why this artificial creation is a woman.

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By Dorothy Kelly
184 pages | 6 x 9 | 2007
ISBN 978-0-271-03266-5 | cloth: $65.00 sh
ISBN 978-0-271-03267-2 | paper: $25.00 sh

Penn State Romance Studies Series
Pennsylvania State University Press (January 16, 2004)

CONTENTS
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: The Science of Control 1
Transformation, Creation, and Inscription: Balzac 19
Women, Language, and Reality: Flaubert 49
Rewriting Reproduction: Zola 89
Villiers and Human Inscription 125
Conclusion: The Power of Language 153
Bibliography 165
Index 171

INTRODUCTION: THE SCIENCE OF CONTROL

Honore´ de Balzac’s Raphae¨l de Valentin describes himself as a new Pygmalion who transforms a lovely flesh-and-blood woman into his imaginary creation. Gustave Flaubert’s Fre´de´ric Moreau ultimately prefers his ideal reveries about Madame Arnoux to a real relationship with her.

E´mile Zola’s Claude Lantier neglects his wife and desires instead to give life to the women he has painted on his canvas and for whom his wife has sometimes posed. Villiers de l’Isle-Adam’s Thomas Edison replaces Alicia Clary with a perfect android woman. In all these cases, in various ways, the real woman is replaced by man’s artificial re-creation of her.

This book looks in depth at the fantasy of a male being able to create a woman in the works of these four French novelists. My premise is that this shared representation stems in part from what Mark Seltzer describes as the discovery in the nineteenth century ‘‘that bodies and persons are things that can be made.’’ One of the major factors contributing to this discovery is the science of the time, and throughout the readings, we will look at selected scientific trends that attracted one or more of the authors: mesmerism, dissection, transformism and evolution, new understandings of human reproduction, spontaneous generation, pue´riculture, and the experimental method. ...

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