Reconsidering Flora Tristan's Narrative Art

Abstract

WOMEN IN FRENCH STUDIES Reconsidering Flora Tristan's Narrative Art Pérégrinations d'une paria is Flora Tristan's principle autobiographical narrative and the work that made her reputation as a writer upon its publication in 1838, although today she is as well known for her social exposés and agitation on behalf of the working classes and women. Pérégrinations was widely read in its day, largely as a travel documentary.1 In it the author recounts her journey from France to Peru, an attempt to reinscribe herself within the patriarchal social order as she seeks acknowledgment from her dead father's family as well as what she considers her rightful inheritance. On the surface, her quest is a straightforward, linear unfolding, much like that of the "classical narrative" described by Genette, in which narrative discourse follows the chronological order of events unless distinctly marked otherwise.2 The narrative sequence of any life story, however, also depends on the creative role ofthe artist as she gives form and meaning to past events. As Todorov remarks in Poétique de la prose: "[a]ucun récit n'est naturel, un choix et une construction présideront toujours à son apparition; c'est un discours et non une série d'événements" (68). A close reading of Tristan's text reveals a writer of surprising narrative complexity, an artist whose subversion of the classic narrative form has largely gone unappreciated. The literal and figurai displacements in the work reveal a "writerly" response to the conventional narrative process and the meanings it created in the 183Os, especially those created for women in the literature ofthe period.3 Tristan begins her story by taking leave of France: the beginning of her story is also an ending. As the child of an irregular union between a Peruvian noble and a French bourgeoise, Tristan has found herself déclassée because of her illegitimate birth, but above all she has become a pariah because she has abandoned an abusive husband in a country where married women have little or no rights.4 She explains the object of her journey to South America thus: "je résolus d'aller au Pérou prendre refuge au sein de ma famille paternelle dans l'espoir de trouver là une position qui me fit entrer dans la société" (Tristan 1: xxxix). Thus, on the surface at least, the narrator's efforts to have the powerful Tristan y Moscozo family of Peru recognize her as her father's daughter and legitimate heir dominate much of the narrative. After having braved the hardships of the rough sea voyage and an arduous trek through mountains and desert in order to reach the family home in Arequipa, she finds her uncle Pio, the family's head, absent. Her relation to the place itself, however, underscores her quest for her lost father: Je me trouvais donc dans la maison où était né mon père! maison dans laquelle mes rêves d'enfance m'avaient si souvent transportée, que le pressentiment que je la verrais un jour s'était implanté dans 45 WOMEN IN FRENCH STUDIES mon âme, et ne l'avait jamais abandonnée. Ce pressentiment tenait à l'amour d'idolâtrie avec lequel j'avais aimé mon père, amour qui conserve son image vivante dans ma pensée. (Tristan 2: 276) Unfortunately, when the man Flora hopes to substitute for her dead father finally arrives, he is only prepared to welcome her as an illegitimate niece. Although he receives her with warmth, he refuses to acknowledge her claim to the Tristan fortune, offering her a small allowance instead. When she realizes that she will have no success in her initial plan, Flora contemplates alternative paths to social acceptance and power, including a liaison with a dashing military leader for whom she would provide direction behind the scenes. In this last scheme, she would follow in the footsteps of Señora Gamarra, the wife of Peru's deposed president and the woman whose attempt to substitute one of her husband's allies in his place provokes civil war. This chronological sequence is in fact precisely the form that...