Le Roman du bijou fin-de-siècle

Abstract

The plot, the vocabulary, and the aesthetic of French narratives at the end of the nineteenth century are endowed with jewels. Because jewels represent objects of strong connotations, they charge the narratives with their own aesthetic, social, economical or political meanings. Above all, the text analyses presented here reveal that through jewels, interrogations central in the social discourse of the time are raised and problematized. In accordance with a sociocritic approach this study of jewels in the fin-de-siecle novel shows that they condense the aesthetic and social implications of the text. Specifically, jewels in fin-de-siecle literature summarize tensions of the time: being emblems of secular aristocratic lineages in a bourgeois world they are common objects which can be sold; albeit signs of the submission of the feminine body to a masculine authority they can become a weapon for freed female heroes; they embody a substance cherished by dreamers and craftsmen through which the text positions itself with regards to Zola’s hegemony and to other artistic practices of the time. Each of the three sections of the thesis (l’objet, le corps, la matiere) explores one of these power struggles and is divided into two chapters presenting completing or competing points of view. This thesis leads to the identification of various aspects (rarity, duality nature / culture, etc. ) by which gems become a favourite metaphor for authors of the time. Among these attributes, the precious stone’s resistance – always in tension with the inexorable work of duration – leads to a better comprehension of the fin-de-siecle aesthetic and its equivocal relations with the world and with time.