Violette Leduc

The aim of this work is to discuss the literature written by women in a decentralized way to
what is culturally attributed to the feminine and the very notion of woman, which also compulsorily
supposes heterosexuality. The critical reading proposed has the basic concept of "space off" (DE
LAURETIS, 1994) to think the speeches that inhabit spaces inside and outside the dominant culture, the
"blind spot" implicit but invisible in a position of contradiction and resistance capable of (re)constructing
and (re)inscripting the gender. Initially, I seek to demonstrate why the notion of feminine is here
problematized, opting for thinking literature written by women and about lesbianity as a discourse that
comes from this alternative space, from the breaches of the hegemonic discourse, threatening its stability.
Then the work Thérèse et Isabelle (2000) by Violette Leduc is here analyzed to think about the possibilities
in the literature of a discourse, whose theme is not only an experience of women, but the relationship
between two girls, articulated in a text that explores the desiring body in its plurality. Such work is
identified as belonging to the “lesbian continuum” thought by Adrienne Rich (2010), whose very existence
is a way to break the hegemonic discourse through the fissures breaking out inside the discourse itself.

What does love have to do with sleep? In her philosophical essay "The Second Sex," Simone de Beauvoir reflects upon the sleep from the perspective of existentialist feminism, focusing on the French writer Violette Leduc and her novel "Je hais les dormeurs" from 1948 in which she describes how a woman unloads her hate for a man while he sleeps. These few passages remained widely unexplored within the phenomenological and feminist research. In this article, I explore Beauvoir’s existentialist reading of Leduc and suggest some alternative conclusions.

On ne sait pas si l'écriture était cathartique pour Violette Leduc, mais il est certain qu'on assiste à la libération progressive de Thérèse des contraintes de la société et de l'influence de son entourage – en l'occurrence de sa mère et de Marc. L'autrice met en scène une femme qui se libère des injonctions sans se soucier de l'avis et du regard des autres, allant même jusqu'à se faire avorter à plus de quatre mois et demi de grossesse. À la fin de ce processus, Thérèse est libre, et prête à
commencer une nouvelle vie, à propos de laquelle on n'a aucune indice mais dont on sait qu'elle sera certainement plus sereine.

Este trabajo explora comparativamente la elaboración de la trama madre-hija en algunas novelas de la francesa Violette Leduc, principalmente en L´Asphyxie (1946) y en Ravages (1955) y en Die Mittagsfrau (2007) de la autora alemana Julia Franck. Estos textos se discuten como críticas a las pautas y creencias sociales hegemónicas sobre los roles de la mujer y la maternidad, que resultan en una reelaboración de la clásica trama ficcional madre-hija. Nos proponemos indagar acerca de la construcción y el funcionamiento de esta trama en estas autoras y de esta crítica en la narrativa a la subjetividad femenina pensada desde una sexualidad binaria. A través del marco teórico del feminismo francés de Luce Irigaray, nuestra indagación pone de manifiesto el sustrato ideológico de estas representaciones simbólicas en sus ficciones. El análisis encuentra en las obras puntos de contacto con las teorizaciones de Irigaray sobre la maternidad, donde las autoras parecen elaborar un contradiscurso a las narrativas públicas sobre la figura de la mujer-madre y, así también, revertir la tradición de la representación simbólico-literaria de la misma.

L’intento di questo saggio è quello di offrire una preliminare analisi di due romanzi autobiografici pubblicati da Violette Leduc nel 1964 e da Sapienza nel 1967. Considerando i temi principali – specialmente l’infanzia –, alcune parole chiave, i riferimenti intertestuali e le recensioni uscite dagli anni Sessanta a oggi, si traccia un breve itinerario critico cercando di rivelare come Leduc possa essere stata un modello letterario ma anche editoriale per Sapienza.