Violette Leduc: Mothers, Lovers, and Language

by Alex Hughes

This study, which reads Leduc's narratives from a feminist and psychoanalytic perspective, has a double focus:- Part One scrutinizes the intricacies of her treatment of feminine bonding, seeking to bring new insights - inspired inter alia by theorists such as Melanie Klein, Freud, and Luce Irigaray - to bear on her representations of mother/daughter and lesbian relations. Part Two examines Leduc's use of language in Therese et Isabelle, probing the extent to which this novella contains examples of feminist and/or feminine discourse. By exploring Leduc' s lyrical evocation of feminine homosexuality from both a gender-related and a more traditional, formalist standpoint, the writer exposes the limitations of a purely feminist approach to her work.

160 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 1994