Vanessa Springora et le fossoyage des mythes de la séduction « à la française »

Abstract

Le Consentement by Vanessa Springora took the French literary world by storm in 2020. In the wake of the #metoo movement, the memoir’s impact has much to do with its ability to uncover the concealing power the persona of the seductive, “civilized,” French man; relatedly, it demystifies a notion of romantic and sexual consent that is problematic in its association of female amorous and sexual desire with the guilt and violence of a destructive and romantic passion. This essay first proposes to historically and culturally situate the twofold deconstruction that Springora achieves within a genealogy, not of love, but of the “French” occultation of violence and sexual abuse. It offers historical distance by putting Le Consentement in dialogue with the cultural context of the First World War, which the essay frames as a rupture that marked a significant change in gender relations in modern France and produced longstanding myths shaped in response to traumatic sexual violence. Second, the article focuses on how Vanessa Springora deconstructs gender domination as conveyed by fairy tales and literature to show that the denial of consent is not romantic.