Catherine Parayre, University of Georgia
Marie Darrieussecq's Pig Tales: A Novel of Lust and Transformation (first published in France under the title Truismes) makes power issues and women's experience of oppression its central concern.[1] In the case of Pig Tales, the question about women's agency is more than just a theoretical one. An instant best-seller, it soon became a commercial as well as a literary success. A controversy ensued around Darrieussecq's novel involving not only a meditation on the agency of fictitious characters or a theoretical analysis of what agency means, but also a debate on the author's influence. The book's sales strengthened the author's voice and filled her bank account (as well as her publisher's). However, as she herself suggests, the mainstream acceptance of her work defused some of the impact she intended to make.[2] I want to argue that the way in which the narrator of Pig Tales connects the central event in her life to the motif of monstrosity establishes parallels with a number of heavily gendered issues: pornography, beauty, and disability. I will show that the fuzzy, unstable meanings attached to the narrator's monstrosity share slippery, almost indefinable contours with those issues and, thus, that Darrieussecq's perspective can be integrated into broader debates within gender studies.
Simply put, the book is about naming (defining oneself, others, and one's experience) and about the power provided by naming. It tells the story of a young woman who could initially fit within the group of women whose condition Betty Friedan calls "the problem that has no name."[3] Friedan includes within this category white, middle-class women. Our protagonist is indeed a white woman, isolated and inarticulate, who dreams of a comfortable life shared with her male companion. However, her silence exceeds this overall definition. First of all, the reader never knows the narrator's name. Nevertheless, the latter frequently mentions her first and second boyfriends' names (Honoré and Yvan respectively) as well as the names of other characters. In the first sentences of her narration, the young woman insists on the importance of naming and indicates that she is about to write a testimony in which she wants to define different events in her life. Yet, naming proves to be a challenging task, and her narration never fulfills its promise. She is unable to describe clearly and effectively her own experience with self-image, the male mirror of this image, her own words, or other people's words. In the last paragraph, she mentions her contentment living in a forest and writing in her notebook. However, she reveals that, at night, she looks at the moon and dreams vaguely of a different fate. In fact, her adventures have not made self-analysis easier. She cannot define any liberating insight and does not understand the extent and/or the limits of her happiness, even though she confusedly senses them. This open ending is about not naming, not defining any delineation to her experience. By the end of the novel, the reader is left with the initial question intact: Who is this young woman? What did she achieve? She has indeed written her story. Yet, in the end, she remains nameless and unable to articulate her needs and desires.
The plot develops along simple lines. Jobless, the female narrator is, one day, interviewed for a sales position in a perfume store where the director tells her: "The important thing [is] to look lovely and well groomed at all times" (PT 3). Eager to enjoy financial independence and to prove her worthiness to her boyfriend Honoré, she accepts the job offer enthusiastically, but soon discovers that the sales position is not so much about selling perfume as it is about selling her own body to wealthy, if not always pleasant, customers. She willingly complies and becomes a favorite among clients. She also notices that she is quickly gaining weight, that her dietary needs are changing, and that she is developing a curious-looking pilosity all over her body. She first blames these symptoms on an unwanted pregnancy, and subsequently gets an abortion. However, she soon has to admit that her bodily changes have not disappeared and are, on the contrary, more and more visible. Never criticizing her job or her boss, always attempting to make the best of her ever-changing body, she still enjoys having a few regular customers. Nevertheless, her relationship with Honoré deteriorates. The young man finds her increasingly repulsive. Inevitably, he turns her out of his apartment and leaves her homeless. After a few days of roaming, and on the verge of being arrested by an Animal Control unit, she realizes that she has been transforming into a sow and has now to adjust to a new lifestyle. Around this time, she meets a greedy politician, Edgar, and is abused by him and his entourage. She also falls in love with Yvan, a man who regularly changes into a werewolf. Together, they kill pizza delivery boys so that Yvan can eat fresh meat. Discovered, the two of them go into hiding. Eventually, the police catch Yvan and kill him. Heartbroken, the sow escapes into the woods where she meets "a very handsome, very virile wild boar"(PT 150) and sets to writing her metamorphic adventures in her notebook.
The most striking element in Pig Tales, the young woman's metamorphosis into a sow, is reflected in the animal imagery that saturates the text and that applies to both women and men. Yvan turns into a wolf while the narrator's boss at the perfume store is once called a pig (PT 75). However, the protagonist is the only character who undergoes a complete and lasting metamorphosis and who is considered a monster. She certainly does not think of herself as such, but she mentions a number of scenes when she is shown and exposed as if she were an incredible phenomenon. (The word monster derives from the Latin "monstrum," prodigy.) Pig Tales is indeed about showing. The young saleswoman at the perfume store exhibits her body to customers and lures them into the store. Her job turns her into a monster, and the metamorphosis into an animal is the visual manifestation of her social status, though the narrator never mentions such words as "monster," "freak," or "metamorphosis." The realization that she is becoming a sow dawns on her slowly and is mediated through the gaze of strangers and acquaintances alike. In fact, the text strongly suggests that her metamorphosis is hardly nameable. For the protagonist (as well as for the reader, who knows that such a transformation is the product of the writer's imagination), it is a blurry, unaccountable event that cannot be rationalized.
Since Ovid's tales, monstrous metamorphosis has always pointed to shifting, unstable identities. In her study of medieval British texts, Andrea Schutz problematizes such identities in the following way: "Transformed characters blur the lines between divisions, making nonsense of strict dividing lines even as they are (frequently) demonized by them."[4] Bruce Clarke adds that "metamorphosis determines at once a monstrous exhibition and a total concealment of the self.… Metamorphoses underscore the slipperiness of human identity."[5] Such a statement makes for a potentially rich social exploration. James Maurice Ivory's study explores the social implications of literary metamorphosis: "Some writers who use themes of metamorphosis represent the fissure created between the empowered who have a voice and the unempowered who attempt to gain or regain equality by speaking from the cultural margins.… Themes involving metamorphosis are not only about radical changes in bodily forms, but about extraordinary changes or recommendations for changes in culture."[6]
Thus, Pig Tales invites the reader to examine how limited the young woman's agency is and to ponder a number of social questions. A very sober account of what turns out in the final analysis to be a prostitute's life, it includes no blatant statement on the narrator's situation. In fact, the young woman's concerns are to be detected, for the most part, in her silences. Contrary to, for instance, pornographic movies or the Marquis de Sade's novels, the narrative never insists on scenes describing the novice saleswoman prostituting herself or depicting her being physically abused. One could say that Pig Tales is about pornography without being pornographic. The young woman's disempowerment results both from social oppression and from her inability to voice her experience. This double constraint is also apparent in her obsession with beauty. She struggles constantly to appear attractive to her boyfriend and to other men. One of her motivations in accepting her job is that she will get discounts on beauty products. She also spends a lot of time trying on clothes and often describes her efforts to look beautiful. In fact, she considers herself beautiful. Never realizing how much such a concern makes her an object that men either consume or discard, she proves unable to connect her fate to her looks. Nevertheless, her problematic perception of beauty leaves the reader with the impression of an unresolved crisis. Finally, an allusion to disability is made when the young woman explains that she needs to write her story urgently because, as a sow, she finds it increasingly difficult to effectively use her hands. She is also dismissed from her job because she is not able to perform her task adequately (that is, according to her boss's criteria). Naturally, she would never entertain the thought that she is socially/physically disabled; yet, the assumption floats dimly throughout her narration.
In order to grasp the full extent of Pig Tales's social involvement, it proves helpful to depart for a moment from literary matters and look more broadly at various cultural representations of monstrosity. Helen Deutsch and Felicity Nussbaum stress that the only--and very artificial--tie that united the prodigies and monsters enlisted to work in so-called freak shows during the nineteenth century was their deviation from the norm.[7] In addition, they insist that monstrosity includes every one of us, not only "freaks," because monstrosity is a social construction interlocked in a tight system of accusing gazes: We are all "potential monsters."[8] Deutsch and Nussbaum also associate monstrosity with femininity: "The cultural construction of femininity [is] natural monstrosity."[9] These variable associations show how unstable any definition of monstrosity is likely to be. Monstrosity is a convenient label for any powerful individual or group to attach to potentially threatening "others."
Different scholars have established connections between monstrosity and the three themes explored in Pig Tales: pornography, beauty, and disability. For instance, Diana Holmes associates pornography with monstrosity.[10] As she demonstrates, Rachilde's L'Animale is a convincing example. It recounts how Laure slowly changes into a cat, partly because she feels sexually and maternally attracted to her feline pet. Aware of her unusual desires, she considers herself a monster,[11] and the novel plays up the connections between her alleged deviant female sexuality, her maternal feelings, pornographic scenes, animality, and monstrosity. The final scene describes her pet's brutal attack on her, resulting in her death. Before dying, she realizes that the monster is not herself, but the male cat. She also faintly remembers that she has recently met a stranger who promised her happiness, but did not tell her his name. She dies wondering about the man's name.[12] Thus, Rachilde weaves together a pattern that assembles pornography, animal-like femininity, monstrosity, and the inability to know (in this instance, the name of a man). Beauty is also tied to monstrosity. Noël Carroll argues that, usually, we define beauty in opposition with monstrosity.[13] The association of beauty with monstrosity has been further analyzed by Joanna Frueh. Instead of opposing monstrosity to beauty, she challenges our deeply rooted conception of these two notions by conjoining them, thus attempting to redefine our aesthetic response to human configuration.[14] Finally, disability also conjures monstrosity. Rosemarie Garland Thomson indicates how individuals with a physical disability are often called freaks.[15] From these various studies a pattern emerges that conflates monstrosity with each of the themes underlying Pig Tales. The common traits such notions share are, first, their visual component, and, second, their oppressive potential.
Definitions of pornography abound and often clash, usually when they address its impact on the exploitation of women in patriarchal societies. In the U.S., one of the most active feminists to denounce pornography is Andrea Dworkin. In her opinion, "pornography is concrete."[16] However, she is aware of the moving boundaries that feminists have erected between, for instance, pornography and erotica.[17] Yet, she argues that all instances of pornography can be subsumed to one dominant motif: "The major theme of pornography as a genre is male power … the power of self, physical power over and against others, the power of terror, the power of naming, the power of owning, the power of money, and the power of sex."[18] These interlocked levers of power make the narrator in Pig Tales silent. Even though she describes her job in glamorous terms, there is no doubt that she is an abused, ill-paid prostitute. In Pig Tales, however, the most prominent lever of oppression, the one that catches the reader's attention immediately because it informs the very rhetoric of the protagonist's testimony, is the power of naming. Dworkin suggests that, through pornography, men attempt to define themselves and name what they are as well as what they think they possess. By doing so, they make it impossible for women to name themselves, thus depriving them of identity and autonomy. In fact, she argues that pornography is interpreted in various ways so that it can accommodate all male needs, whether men are progressives or conservatives.[19] Even though she herself adheres to a strictly limited definition, she acknowledges that the power of pornography lies partly in its blurry boundaries. Because of its ability to name, pornography is shaped in different ways by its consumers. In Dworkin's opinion, the only characteristic such shapes share is violence against women.
Larry Langford takes up Dworkin's and Catharine McKinnon's belief that, with pornography, "fiction is used to mask the historical reality of sexual oppression."[20] Because only a thin line separates fiction from reality in pornography, pornography has been perceived over the centuries as either fantasy or reality.[21] Such a reflection also informs our perception of art. Is art totally fictive, an ineffectual representation, or does it partake somewhat of reality? Or still, as Dworkin would have it, is art reality? Where does pornography fit within this continuum? Is it any different from any other form of human expression? As the debate around pornography develops, all the finely constructed boundaries, usually assumed to be strongly defensible by the various participants in the discussion, can be stretched, deformed, and finally ruptured. Pornography seems to have no fixed name, and the main point of contention underlying this issue remains a question of agency: What exactly does pornography do? Does it only depict a social situation, or is it an agent of this situation? Langford's survey of various feminist positions, from Susan Sontag's[22] and Angela Carter's[23] to Dworkin's, confirms how divisive such flexible boundaries prove to be. Pornography has been read and viewed as diversely as the ultimate entrenchment of words into fiction; as a purveyor of smut; but also as a benefactor of civil liberties.[24] As Drucilla Cornell indicates in her introduction to Feminism and Pornography, a book that gives a voice to different feminist points of view, "pornography is shown to be a dynamic construct continually shaped and reshaped."[25] She argues that "pornography is not one clearly designatable pedagogical object," and that, to understand it, it is important to take into account at least three conditions: the individual perspective, geography, and history.[26] Pornography generates different interpretations, while it is also used in various media. With their high visual impact, pornographic movies are likely to elicit different reactions from those to fictive written accounts. These analyses of the pornographic genre leave us with our initial question: Where does Pig Tales fit? Pornography is indeed no simple phenomenon.
As with pornography, our perception of beauty also depends on fluctuating concepts, and, while variations on the beauty theme may sometimes appear liberating, they also weaken women's agency. In The Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf claims that freedom from this myth is a "final unclaimed right without even a name,"[27] the grip of it being so strong that nothing can help women to theorize it. Her book shows how the beauty myth silences women and is firmly controlled by men.[28] Beauty is also unnamable because it encompasses various--and sometimes contradictory--aesthetic judgments and practices. As Marcia Eaton points out, beauty standards are in constant and rapidly changing flux, and our awareness of beauty's relativity confuses and hurts women.[29] She also notices our often conflicted appreciation of what we consider beautiful. Many evaluations of beauty take into account the widespread belief that beauty is independent from knowledge and values at the same time that they admit being influenced by various personal and societal beliefs.[30] Carroll also offers different definitions of beauty: "Some associate beauty with proportion and harmony; some with pleasure taken in the appearance of things; and some, more narrowly, with disinterested pleasure."[31] The artistic treatment of beauty promotes such complexity--even if, as Kathleen Higgins contends, beauty in the late twentieth century no longer motivates artistic expression.[32] In particular, Anita Silvers asserts that, in art history, beauty is not the inherent quality of a particular object, but the product of a more or less shifting point of view.[33] Beauty seems indeed to be in the eye of the beholder. Ugliness is likewise an unstable notion. As shown by Charlotte Wright, it elicits different definitions[34] and responses.[35] In many ways, beauty and ugliness are shapeless.
In fact, the concept of beauty is permeable enough to be subjected to new approaches and practices, and a number of feminists have appropriated the very elusiveness of beauty to shape it on their own terms. For instance, Wolf envisions a more or less long-term "pro-woman definition of beauty," one that will include "the pleasure of playfulness" in order to subvert the stilted demands of the current male-oriented beauty myth.[36] On her part, Luce Irigaray engages women to define what types of beauty would prove meaningful to them and suggests to work on perceptions of color instead of forms because forms reflect too easily oppressive beliefs.[37]
Yet, the beauty myth remains a destructive one. As a telling example, Sara Halprin points out a disturbing trend in psychiatry. It is a medical commonplace that neglect of appearances is an early symptom of mental illness in women.[38] It has therefore become commonplace for mental health professionals to impose beauty standards on hospitalized women. The "help" offered ranges from edifying lectures to sessions to improve posture or make-up/hairstyling sessions. Halprin notes that, for most of these female patients, "challenging the standards of appearance"[39] is often the only way to communicate their experience to others. Thus, it takes the anguish of female patients in psychiatric wards to completely reject the concept of beauty, and not try to accommodate it as many feminists do (but, of course, these women are locked up!). Pig Tales develops along these blurry yet constraining lines. The dramatically shifting forms of the protagonist and her constant claims that she still finds her body attractive emblematize the problematic consequences of the indistinct elasticity that characterizes our conception of beauty. Beauty indeed has no name, and the narrator struggles constantly with this complex notion.
Though she never acknowledges it, the narrator in Pig Tales also struggles with disability. After her metamorphosis, she notices how difficult it has become for her to write, find food, and feel comfortable, but she never comes to terms with her physical impairment. Thomson argues that disability corresponds to no objective or natural definition; it is instead "a repository for social anxieties about such troubling concerns as vulnerability, control, and identity."[40] She suggests that physical disability can only be described in terms that disclose the power of the able-bodied.[41] This logic implies that individuals with extraordinary bodies are consistently silenced. Inevitably, the otherness of disability echoes the otherness of femininity; women are perceived as disabled, while the disabled are consistently seen as feminized.[42] In literature, Thomson remarks that "disabled literary characters usually remain on the margins of fiction as uncomplicated or exotic aliens."[43] Literature, in her opinion, does not reflect adequately the fluidity of an experience such as disability: "Disability, then, can be painful, comfortable, familiar, alienating, bonding, isolating, disturbing, endearing, challenging, infuriating, or ordinary. Embedding the complexity of actual human relations, it is always more than the disabled figure can signify."[44] This impossibility of naming disability is further complicated by the absence of clear differentiations between the disabled and the non-disabled: "Anyone can become disabled at any time."[45]
Contrary to Thomson, Silvers shows convincingly that art does not "exploit … people with various kinds of impairments, or at least their images, in order to nourish non-disabled people's fictions about their own perfections."[46] Art can be appropriated by those who want to position disability on more positive ground: "Art's history … receives rather than repudiates new forms of identity, for art's history is interpretive, not coercive."[47] As with pornography and beauty norms, the experience of disability allows for transgressive exploration. The narrator of Pig Tales does just that; writing and fictionalizing her story give her tremendous pleasure and help her to while away the more unpleasant moments of her transformed identity.
This survey of pornography, the beauty myth, and disability brings out two main characteristics. On the one hand, these issues can all be understood as problems that have no real names. On the other hand, such an unnamable reality usually increases women's traditional lack of agency. The claim that the dissolution of our certainties endangers autonomy permeates Darrieussecq's novel. Thus, Pig Tales shows poignantly how the young woman's sense of completion depends on her ability to name herself as well as the nature of her oppression, and from then to direct her own fate in a conscious fashion. That she cannot do so designates her as a victim of patriarchy. The protagonist's powerlessness derives from her inability to voice the abuse from which she suffers, not only because she has internalized oppression, but also because there exists for her no clear approach to understanding her situation.
Yet, representational vagueness has had fervent defenders. Irigaray argues that the fluidity of women's experience challenges patriarchy.[48] Analyzing women's writing, Patricia Yaeger mentions the richness of silence and of unformulated motifs.[49] Pig Tales is a silent text; the narrator does not convey the measure of her exploitation. Yet, it proves engaging because it prompts the reader to fill in the blanks. Also, Yaeger insists that delirium, often seen as shapeless rhetoric, offers a powerful voice to women writers.[50] And what is Pig Tales other than delirium? Metamorphosis is indeed an instance of playful madness that challenges the ordinary and creates new patterns of thinking.
Darrieussecq's novel does not stray from the pervasive unaccountability that our culture promotes, whether to exploit women or to fashion a postmodern discourse. Its main themes thus connect agency to the power of naming (the studies I have mentioned do too) and do not resolve whether a confusing experience leads to misery or makes for energized subversion (the divergent opinions expressed in the various studies do not solve this point either). The novel does not volunteer any clear-cut solution by which women, and the narrator, might attain a measure of autonomy and self-fulfillment. In fact, up to a certain point, it perpetuates sexist stereotypes: The narrator's lover changes into a wolf, a dangerous animal, whereas the young woman becomes a sow, an animal that often evokes either a cute nature or dirtiness. However, Pig Tales is not solely written in acquiescence with existing cultural practices. Even though it can be read as the narrative of a failed quest, it also purveys a feminist viewpoint that reclaims female agency. First of all, the metamorphosis of a woman into a sow has been recently valorized. Monique Wittig claims that becoming a sow is, in lesbian vocabulary, synonymous with giving pleasure to one's partner.[51] In fact, Pig Tales registers as an able satire against patriarchy: The young woman is highly likable whereas the male protagonists often use despicable strategies to abuse her integrity. Comparing Pig Tales to other novels also fosters an empowering stance. For instance, Michel Houellebecq's The Elementary Particles (published two years after Truismes) is a best-seller with more than a pornographic hint that also explores issues of power.[52] Yet, contrary to Pig Tales, it posits insistently that men (often described as animals) are culturally conditioned to exploit women and that, all the while deploring this situation, they experience no freedom to act responsibly. Comparing Darrieussecq's book with Houellebecq's proves to be a refreshing exercise. Her young narrator is not conscious of her own limitations; yet, contrary to Houellebecq's hapless male heroes, she tries to find a voice. Finally, Pig Tales leaves enough free interpretive space to engage the reader (another nameless presence in the book) to develop her own agency and participate actively in meaning-making. The French title of Pig Tales is Truismes, a pun on truie ("sow") and truisme ("euphemism," "truism"). In French, to call a woman a sow is often deeply offensive, and to write truisms is considered bad writing. Yet, Darrieussecq turns these clichés into a valorized statement: the sows are invited to identify the hidden, explosive meanings that lurk behind cultural playgames. Thus, her protagonist has not conquered the world. Yet, she tries to write her account of it. In this way, Darrieussecq envisions agency for the nameless women whose drifting voices try not to be silenced and blurred.
Footnotes
1. Marie Darrieussecq, Truismes (Paris: P.O.L., 1996) and Pig Tales: A Novel of Lust and Transformation, trans. Linda Coverdale (New York: New Press, 1997). All subsequent references are to this edition and are cited parenthetically in the text following the abbreviation PT.
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2. John Phillips, Forbidden Fictions: Pornography and Censorship in Twentieth-Century French Literature (London: Pluto Press, 1999) 184.
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3. Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York: Norton, 1974) 15.
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4. Andrea Schutz, "Theriomorphic Shape-Shifting: An Experimental Reading of Identity and Metamorphosis in Selected Medieval British Texts," diss., University of Toronto, 1995, 28.
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5. Bruce Clarke, Allegories of Writing: The Subject of Metamorphosis (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995) 63.
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6. James Maurice Ivory, "Throbbing Between Two Lives: Identity and Narrative Metamorphoses," diss., University of North Carolina, 1996, 1.
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7. Helen Deutsch and Felicity Nussbaum, eds., "Defects": Engendering the Modern Body (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000) 3.
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8. Deutsch and Nussbaum 16.
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9. Deutsch and Nussbaum 20.
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10. Diana Holmes, "Monstrous Women: Rachilde's Erotic Fiction," French Erotic Fictions: Women's Desiring Writing, 1880-1990, eds. Alex Hughes and Kate Ince (Oxford: Berg, 1996) 39.
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11. Rachilde, L'Animale (Paris: Mercure, 1993) 155.
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12. Rachilde 268.
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13. Noël Carroll, "Ethnicity, Race, and Monstrosity: The Rhetorics of Horror and Humor," Beauty Matters, ed. Peg Zeglin Brand (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2000) 38-39.
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14. Joanna Frueh, Monster/Beauty: Building the Body of Love (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).
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15. Rosemarie Garland Thomson, Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997) 5.
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16. Andrea Dworkin, Pornography: Men Possessing Women (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1989) 9.
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17. Dworkin 9-10.
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18. Dworkin 24.
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19. Dworkin 208.
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20. Harry Langford, Fiction and the Social Contract: Genocide, Pornography, and the Deconstruction of History (New York: Peter Lang, 1998) 131.
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21. Langford 134.
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22. Susan Sontag, Styles of Radical Will (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1969).
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23. Angela Carter, The Sadean Woman and the Ideology of Pornography (New York: Pantheon, 1978).
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24. Harry Levin, "The Unbanning of the Books," Perspectives on Pornography, ed. Douglas Hughes (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1970) 18.
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25. Drucilla Cornell, ed., Feminism and Pornography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) 1.
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26. Cornell 1.
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27. Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth (London: Chatto & Windus, 1990) 2.
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28. Wolf 6.
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29. Marcia Eaton, "Kantian and Contextual Beauty," Beauty Matters 31.
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30. Eaton 33.
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31. Carroll 37.
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32. Kathleen Higgins, "Beauty and Its Kitsch Competitors," Beauty Matters 87-90.
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33. Anita Silvers, "From the Crooked Timber of Humanity, Beautiful Things Can Be Made," Beauty Matters 203.
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34. Charlotte Wright, Plain and Ugly Janes: The Rise of the Ugly Woman in Contemporary American Fiction (New York & London: Garland, 2000) 13-14.
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35. Wright 122.
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36. Wolf 240.
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37. Luce Irigaray, Je, tu, nous: Toward a Culture of Difference, trans. Alison Martin (New York & London: Routledge, 1993) 109.
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38. Sara Halprin, "Look At My Ugly Face!" (New York: Viking, 1995) 103.
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39. Halprin 105.
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40. Thomson 6.
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41. Thomson 7.
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42. Thomson 9.
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43. Thomson 9.
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44. Thomson 14.
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45. Thomson 14.
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46. Silvers 208.
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47. Silvers 217.
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48. Luce Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman, trans. Gillian C. Gill (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985) 237.
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49. Patricia Yaeger, Honey-Mad Women: Emancipatory Strategies in Women's Writing (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988) 154.
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50. Yaeger 242.
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51. Monique Wittig and Sande Zeig, eds., Brouillon pour un dictionnaire des amantes (Paris: Grasset, 1976) 61-62.
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52. Michel Houellebecq, The Elementary Particles, trans. Frank Wynne (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000), and Les Particules élémentaires (Paris: Flammarion, 1998).
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