Le genre monstrueux: la construction d’une identité genrée dans L'Asphyxie et La Bâtarde de Violette Leduc

Abstract

This master’s thesis seeks to highlight the French author Violette Leduc and two of her works La Bâtarde and L’Asphyxie. The research first focuses on the autobiographical aspects of her works, and notably, as we will see in the second chapter, how they might also fit into the controversial definition of autofiction according to Serge Doubrovsky. Furthermore, the two first chapters examine the ways in which Violette Leduc challenges the autobiographical pact defined by Philippe Lejeune, and inversely, the way in which she legitimises the identity of her narrator and character in the two works. The third chapter offers a reading of Judith Butler’s gender theories, and the subversion of gender norms. This chapter seeks to highlight the way in which Leduc portrays an ambivalent and malleable gendered identity that saps the stable notions of gender and sex. All in all, the thesis investigates the relation between autobiographical genre choices and the construction of a gendered identity in the mentioned works of Violette Leduc.