Obliged to Sympathise: Infanticide in Il y a longtemps que je t’aime and A perdre la raison

Abstract

How can one sympathise with a murderer of children? And furthermore, how can one sympathise with a mother who has murdered her own child? Infanticide is considered to be a particularly heinous crime, possibly because it confronts so many taboos. It functions as a specific threat to symbolic and social orders in which mother operates; by biological prescription, women are givers of live, not takers of it. Such a confronts notion that women desire, nurture, protect and love their children instinctively and it testifies to propensity of women to commit violence. Most irksome, perhaps, is that infanticide asks what may be lurking in depths of human psyche to enable such act. As Catherine Stimpson states, the murdering mother [...] has travelled beyond human boundaries within which we normally dwell [...] She signifies possibility of being us and not-us simultaneously.'*Ever since Euripedes stylised Medea as a perpetrator of infanticide in his play of same name, murdering mother has become a recurring trope in literature. Peggy McCracken has shown that infanticide was presented in medieval literature as a means for women to obtain revenge.* 2 She contrasts murdering mother with murdering father, noting that when fathers murder their children, they do so for sacrifice. Barbara Newman's work adds corollary of what she calls the maternal martyr plot: mothers may agree to murder of their children for sacrificial purposes, such as in Chaucer's Clerk's Tale, but someone else performs act.3 Lady Macbeth's reference to infanticide is, according to Stephanie Chamberlain, indicative of representations of in early modern period, during which a generalised anxiety surrounding patrilineage rendered maternal agency both a social and political concern; infanticide in England, in consequence, became a crime against both person and lineage.4 Cath Quinn has interrogated representations of infanticide in nineteenth century and shows that influence of psychiatry encouraged infanticide to be considered as a symptom of illness, termed puerperal insanity in England. She argues that this development allowed reconciliation of contrasting images of mother and lunatic [...] This process further constructed, and constricted, women in terms of their maternal role. Their potential for maternity had become a potential for insanity.5 Although this applies specifically to England, Mark Jackson has studied court proceedings of infanticide cases from several Western countries and claims that they share strikingly common traits.6In contemporary period, such representations appear to retreat from connecting mental illness with infanticide and suggest that women kill knowingly. Julie Wheelwright demonstrates that individuals surrounding murdering mother, such as her parents, partner or other children, are presented as victims, that there is a reluctance to view infanticide as a consequence of mental disturbance and an absence of a philosophical framework for understanding infanticide beyond ?mad/bad' framework.7 8 Yet in two recent French-language films, viewer is asked very directly - is even compelled, I will argue - to sympathise with infanticidal woman. Philippe Claudel's II y a longtemps que je t'aime (2008) and Joachim Lafosse's A perdre la raison (2012) both focus on a central female protagonist who has committed infanticide; in former, a woman has to readjust to civilian life after spending fifteen years in prison for having killed her son, and in latter, a woman descends into a psychological spiral that culminates in her murdering her four children. Interestingly, these films coincide with publication of several recent works of fiction in French that portray infanticide. Examples of this phenomenon include Paule Constant's La Bete a chagrin, Veronique Olmi's Bord de mer, Laurence Tardieu's Le Jugement de Lea, Susanne Jacob's Obeissance, Marie Darrieussecq's White, Mazarine Pingeot's Le Cimitiere des poupees and Ying Chen's L'ingratitude? …