Descendants of Charles Bovary: Male anxieties through the figure of the cheated husband in French Fin-de-siècle novels and silent films

Berthelon, Julien

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Description

Title

Descendants of Charles Bovary: Male anxieties through the figure of the cheated husband in French Fin-de-siècle novels and silent films

Author(s)

Berthelon, Julien

Issue Date

2024-07-03

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Proulx, François

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Proulx, François

Committee Member(s)

• Chaplin, Tamara
• Kritzman, Lawrence D.
• Maroun, Daniel Nabil
• Rushing, Robert A.

Department of Study

French and Italian

Discipline

French

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

• masculinities
• silent film
• France

Abstract

Tracing the figure of the cheated husband across turn-of-the-century literature and early cinema, this dissertation shows the continuous masculinity crisis at the heart of a character depicted at once as the victim and the culprit of his unresolved relationships with women and the male order. Starting from the trial brought against Gustave Flaubert for the “immorality” of his novel Madame Bovary in 1857 in which the heroine’s husband is at once criticized for his mediocrity and praised for his unconditional love, I show the recurrence of this ambiguous representation of the mari trompé in fiction. I first explore the themes of adulterous triangular desire, homosociality, and homoeroticism at play in Paul Bourget’s Un Crime d'amour (1886) and Guy de Maupassant’s Bel-Ami (1885) within the context of the Belle Époque period in France. I delve into the intertwined relationships between the authors, their female muses, and the exploration of adultery, masculinity, and societal concerns in their works, shedding light on the complex dynamics of intimacy, influence, and literary creation during that era. Using René Girard’s concept of mimetic desire and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s theory of homoeroticism, Chapter 1 reveals how the personal experiences, friendships, and shared inspirations between Bourget and Maupassant influenced their portrayals of seduction, betrayal, and emotional bonds in their respective novels, offering a deeper understanding of the interconnected themes of desire, power, and identity in late nineteenth-century literature. In Chapter 2, I show how the intimacy of the couple quickly became a subject of interest to experiment with the intrusive potential of a new form of visual art: cinema. I first analyze literary adaptations to show how directors started exploring different ways of portraying male responses to betrayals from both their wives and a male rival through the themes of madness and lethal jealousy. I then unearth and analyze under-discussed and forgotten dramas to illustrate how early melodramas continued exploring masculine visual responses to hostile and deceiving wives and male outcasts. I also show how early comedy first set the ground for scopophilia by exploring the intrusive potential of the camera. As it relied on slapstick tricks and/or inspired by vaudeville theater recalled a similar uncertainty in portraying the cuckolded man, I identify Max Linder’s film persona as the embodiment of an evolving masculinity. Finally, Chapter 3 shows how the outbreak of World War I intensified masculine fears of betrayal and empowered women in the scarce film production of a French nation in crisis. Amidst the challenges faced by the French film industry which lost its hegemonic influence over its international competitors, directors like Léonce Perret first adapted their narratives to reflect wartime sentiments and societal changes in propaganda films before tackling the sensitive subject of female infidelity in dramas. As Cecil B. DeMille’s The Cheat marked a change in French film demand and production, I analyze Abel Gance’s Mater Dolorosa (1917) and La Dixième symphonie (1918), to show the portrayal of inspiring new masculine values such as forgiveness, fatherhood, and creativity. I conclude this last chapter by noting that these optimistic portrayals of masculine recovery and artistic epiphany and female character’s growing agency show more inclusive and less misogynistic depictions of women, at least in the works of progressive directors like Gance. However, the immediate postwar realities as the need to repopulate the country and protect it against foreign threats were to push women back to their traditional gender roles by reassigning female characters maternal roles and warning them about the same “disillusions” that Emma Bovary had encountered before them.

Graduation Semester

2024-08

Type of Resource

Thesis

Handle URL

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/125774

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2024 Julien Berthelon

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