[By Jean Szlamowicz, based on the translation by Alexandrine Vialatte]
So-called classical literature, enslaving minds through the triumphant masculinity of its narrators who are always devoid of regard for the feminine side of society, has never served anything but the perpetuation of a domineering patriarchy. Scandalously rendering the feminine gaze invisible, this androcentric literature had to be revisited and deconstructed by a neo-feminist vision. Metamorphosis is precisely the story of an awakening to the femininity of the world. Today, Metamorphosis
One morning, after a restless dream, Gregory Samsa woke up transformed in his bed into a real woman. He was lying on his back, a back with a benevolent softness reminiscent of a cotton shell, and when he raised his head a little, he saw that he no longer had that hideous belly browned by a fleece of patriarchal hairs, but two ribbed domes that stretched the blanket. Gregory Samsa's arms, pitifully thin for his large body, fluttered before his long-lashed eyes.
"What happened to me?" he thought. Yet it was not a dream: his room, a real man's room, although a little effeminate to tell the truth, stood with an unjustly submissive wisdom between its four usual, traditional, even harshly reactionary walls.
Above the table where his collection of fabric samples was displayed—Grégoire was a traveling salesman—a man or a woman or any other person free of their gender identity could always see the engraving that they had recently cut out of a magazine and surrounded by a pretty gold frame that showed no decorative mannerisms likely to be interpreted as a gender stereotype. This image represented a lady sitting upright, with a hat and a fur neck warmer: it read the submission of a minoritized body, delivered to the gaze of amateurs, afflicted with a heavy muff into which her arm was plunged up to the elbow to please the consumerist voyeurism of buyers.
Gregory looked out the window: they could hear raindrops on the zinc. This hazy weather made her quite melancholy: "If I could go back to sleep a little bit more to forget all this nonsense," she thought. But that was absolutely impossible: she was used to sleeping on her stomach, but in the present situation she could not accommodate her new mammary organs.
No matter how hard they tried to throw themselves violently onto their stomach, they always came back onto their back with a little undulating movement of those globes that now obstructed their view of a new horizon. Perhaps they had finally reached that stage of consciousness so ardently desired: they were "awake", Woke, to tell the truth.
They tried to find a comfortable position, probably lost forever. "There is nothing as mind-numbing as getting up so early all the time. Man or woman or anyone needs their sleep. And to think that there are travelers who live like harem women men enjoying privileges and devoid of the slightest mental burden! When I return to the hotel in the afternoon to write down the orders, I find these salespeople, especially the gentlemen, who are still at their breakfast. If I tried such a thing, I would want to see what my boss or any other hierarchical superior would say! I would be fired immediately, especially now that I am a woman! If I was not holding back because of my parents 1 and 2, I would have resigned a long time ago! I would have gone to find the boss, this exploiter sitting on the desk with his legs apart, busy pouring out his mansplaining on his subordinates.
Finally, his metamorphosis was welcome. He looked at the alarm clock ticking on the chest. His sleep had not been peaceful. And it was now augmented by a singular appetite: his awakening would henceforth be animated by the awareness of a new social gaze.
Damn it!
