Du 'geant remueur de terre' a 'Monsieur jardine': valorisation et devalorisation des images de la terre a la Belle Epoque
Titel:
Du 'geant remueur de terre' a 'Monsieur jardine': valorisation et devalorisation des images de la terre a la Belle Epoque
Auteur:
Gantrel, Martine
Verschenen in:
Modern & contemporary France
Paginering:
Jaargang 12 (2004) nr. 2 pagina's 213-224
Jaar:
2004-05
Inhoud:
Images of the Earth in Belle Epoque fiction are frequently called upon to express an author's view of what defines an individual's relationship to self, history, and society. This article focuses on two examples whose significance is highlighted by the fact that the authors have radically opposed ideologies. In Diary of a Chambermaid (1900), Octave Mirbeau uses the provincial backyard garden satirically, as a site where society's repressed, sadistic and anal impulses are let loose. By contrast, Rene Bazin's highly conservative Donatienne (1903) illustrates the author's Catholic belief in the biblical sanctity of the relationship between a man and his native place. How uniquely relevant to the representation of the fictional Subject these images are is further demonstrated by the fact that women are unapologetically excluded from them. As it happens, these novels' female protagonists are both domestic servants, whose defining relationship is not to the Earth where they were born, but—second in the order of Creation—to the home where they live.
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