Life without Father: Revisions of Paternity in Women’s Writing in France

Reading the Absence: The Shaping of Male Characters and Their Crises in the Void

“…Birkett examines Staël's Corinne, Sand's Mauprat (1837) and Lélia (1839), and Rachilde's La Marquise de Sade (1887), arguing that "[s]ons and daughters who collude with paternal power are drawn to destruction". 19 Similarly, discussing Corinne, Cohen argues that "[t]he inability to bury the dead Father drags son and daughter alike into the melancholy abyss". 20 Allan argues that as the father figure began to disappear from novels, "men lacked the role models to navigate the civil world", and shows that Staël and Duras "address a search for fathers through fatherlands" instead.…”