Violence et révolte des femmes dans le théâtre de Marguerite Yourcenar, Nathalie Sarraute et Marguerite Duras

Extract

In their plays, Yourcenar, Sarraute and Duras repeatedly portray women who oppose men, sometimes violently. Drawing on several examples, this paper aims to define a typology of female characters by analysing the double theme of violence and revolt. Some women find themselves imprisoned both by men and by their epoch; all they can do is to submit to the system put in place by society, against which they struggle in vain for freedom. After an initial submission to the rules of society, they are impelled towards a more or less successful revolt and this allows them to find fulfilment through rebellion. In the case of Yourcenar, woman resists as best she can; despite everything, her happiness is found in revolt and especially, perhaps, in revenge. In the case of Sarraute, the emergence and development of the Sarrautian ‘tropism’ becomes both an act of affirmation for the female character and an act of struggle against the other, the male. Woman, for Duras, is hi a position of quasi-imprisonment by two psychic spaces which occupy her totally: both violence and revolt are expressed through the body, its behaviour and its sexual pleasure. But there is also a contained violence, already filtered by an attempt, sometimes vain, to express it through words. However, many of the lines spoken by these women demonstrate a clear self-awareness through violence which is either contained or which can explode in a bid for freedom.