2 - Rabelais and the representation of male subjectivity: the Rondibilis episode as case study

Summary

The status of women and what may be characterized as a power struggle, the inevitable war between the sexes, is a seminal topos in French Renaissance literature. The relationship between men and women, and the ideological implications that it entailed, had its roots well developed in the Middle Ages (for example, in Jean de Meung's Roman de la Rose [1398–1402]) when the discussion which focused on the institution of marriage portrayed woman as inferior to man both on physiological and theological grounds. In the France of the 1530s, this debate between feminist and antifeminist forces, known as the Querelle des Femmes, took on a new meaning when it concerned itself with the nature of love and the comportment of woman. Most clearly, the antifeminism of that period owed its existence to the universality of misogyny and gynophobia perhaps as much as it does today. As Jean de Marconville suggests, for example, in De l'heur et malheur du mariage (Paris, 1564), woman's insatiable sexual drives can only be characterized as a ploy to ruin man's health and drain him of his vitality. In another, but equally revelatory, context François de Billon's work Le fort inexpugnable de l'honneur du sexe femenin portrays the delight of woman in the utter destruction of man “suivant la coustume d'icelles Amazones, qui (comme bien savez) se servoient des Hommes, seullement pour maintenir leurs puissance à engendrer des filles, pour leur rompre la teste.”