[by Mikhail Kostylev]
There are few things I enjoy reading as much as good feminist prose. Politically, the movement often bungles – but literary, it is a treat. Even its worst excesses then become interesting: V. Solanas’s famous “SCUM Manifesto” may be a call for male genocide, but it is so furious and full of life that we readily forgive it.
But since MeToo, we have seen something completely different take hold: an official feminist art. In a few years, the Cause has become a small state religion with its plethora of (and poorly paid) clergy of civil servants and associations, its televised high masses on March 8th... and its books of piety to recommend to the faithful.
Official art can be of an excellent standard (think of the Sistine Chapel), but it rarely succeeds for the radical left. Extremely inventive as long as they are a minority, activists often become absolutely conservative when their ideas have triumphed.
And the petty intellectual terror that the wokes reign over, with blows of cancel and moralizing ukases, their perpetual fear of offending the slightest minority, do not encourage the taking of artistic risks: one does not write the Human Comedy if one has to stop every five seconds to point out a trigger warning.
We will therefore encourage works that are sometimes very average, but which conform to the ideological canons in force.In the USSR, we spoke of a "social order" - a term that our ministerial ENA graduates would not have disowned.
We will study a typical example: a politically compliant novel... but bad beyond belief. We will see that this did not prevent him from accumulating literary prizes and critical acclaim. Like the "socialist realism" of the communist countries, the new "feminist realism" has the right to be as bombastic as it wants, as long as it "toes the line" and thus pleases the cultural bureaucrats in power.
The Bourgeois with a capital B
This is a novel published in 2019 by a major French publisher. The action takes place in Paris in 1885, and is about a women's asylum. I am not allowed to say more - and it's a shame, I like the smell of threats of trial in the early morning.
It all begins in the heroine's Bourgeois family. Bourgeois with a capital B, because that's all they are - the characters have no depth. They are stereotypes of the "ruling class" taken from a Belle Époque picture book.
The father is a Bourgeois Patriarch: he therefore only talks about money, the destiny of France and the inferiority of women. The mother is a Bourgeois Wife: she keeps quiet and serves her husband.
The son is a Young Bourgeois: he is therefore weak and soft. The daughter (the heroine) is a Feminist: she therefore only talks about Feminism. In the background, the servants evolve " discreet and faithful ", worthy of the Bibliothèque Rose, which every Bourgeois Family must have.
Another attribute of a Bourgeois Family: an absence total of feelings. No love, no hate: no affect for each other. It is psychologically impossible, but the author insists: we only love Reputation and Interests.
And to be sure to convince us, she repeats it... six times in the text!
The only exception is the affection between the grandmother and the heroine, lively and determined to escape from her condition. In addition to her feminism, she hides a terrible secret: she "sees people who are dead", as they say in bad horror films.
This gift will be enough to set against it another patriarchal power: Religion – described, as we will see, in an even more ridiculous manner than the Bourgeoisie.
Religion with a capital R (and Spiritism)
Because the Bourgeois are obviously Religious: which means that they live permanently in panic fear of the " diable "," sign themselves discreetly " when they see something strange, and scream " blasphème " against every unorthodox opinion.
For the author, a French Catholic of 1885 is therefore a curious mixture of Islamic fundamentalist and Spanish inquisitor... for the worse.
Better, the young Bourgeois are even more grotesquely Religious than the old ones ! This is what the heroine hears them say about spiritualism:
The author makes twenty-year-old boys speak like little Torquemadas from an operetta!
And the funny thing is that at the time... spiritualism was fashionable everywhere! Half of the Bourgeoisie of France (and Europe) turn tables and question Ouija boards – and have been doing so for a long time: the squires of Bouvard and Pécuchet were already having fun there thirty years earlier.
– …But this man was a heretic. His books should be burned! [...]
"I have read it, and I assure you that some of the remarks deeply offend my most intimate Christian beliefs. What do you have to do with the words of a man who claims to communicate with the dead? He dares to affirm that there is neither heaven nor hell. He minimizes the termination of pregnancy, claiming that a fetus is devoid of a soul! – Blasphemy! – Such thoughts deserve the rope!”
But the author absolutely wants us to believe that the Spiritists are " heretics » persecuted. She insists: the mere sight of a spiritualist book " triggers panic and condemnations from anonymous people » (they actually sold in the thousands…). Wanting to talk to the dead gives you « ensures immediate internment " (we would then have had to lock up half the country...).
Why violate historical truth so much? To get a message across as thin as a truck: Spiritism is the Truth that oppressive Religion hides from usThe author describes an occult bookstore to us, with great emphasis on commonplaces:
“These authors had gone looking elsewhere, further, where few dared to go. There was something intimidating about setting foot in that world—as if one were leaving the traditional paths to enter a distinct, abundant and captivating universe, a universe hidden and silenced, and yet which did indeed exist. In truth, this bookstore had the forbidden and fascinating aspect of realities that are not mentioned.”
We find an old moon of wokeism: the liberation of women through New Age nonsense. Astrology and tarot are described as "transgressive", a weapon for women to escape the rigid order of masculinity, whether moral or religious.[1]
What follows is a painful dissertation on the theme "Constituted religion = oppressive dogmatism/Soft theism = liberating and tolerant", such as I have seen spread out a hundred times on final year exam papers: not everyone can be Voltaire.
Having read a spiritualist book, the heroine " finally knows who she is "After a heavy melodrama scene (thanks to her gift, she finds a lost precious object), she must confide her secret to her grandmother. The latter, with tears in her eyes, assures her of her affection and her silence...
…and immediately betrays her, much to the reader's perplexity. Why? Later, we are briefly described as a woman of a " false sweetness "," master of deception "...but it takes more than that to knowingly and without regret send one's own granddaughter to end her days in an asylum: no convincing psychological motive will ever be given to us.
The father immediately has the heroine committed, with great theatrical retorts:
« In my eyes my daughter no longer exists! » "The devil has something to do with it!"(sic!)
There, she will meet the third enemy of women: after the Bourgeoisie and Religion, Science.
Science with a capital S
It is treated in an equally farcical manner. Among the Scientists, everything is necessarily rigid and icy: Scientific outfits, Scientific bearing and even a (relentless) Scientific eye capable of "read you, whether you want to or not »(Sic).
As for their Leader, he is simply a Superman of Science, whose " just [imposing] presence destabilizes you ". He is " the man we desire, the father we would have hoped for, the doctor we admire, the savior of souls and minds. "...
The Scientist is cold to the tips of his nails... except when it comes to exploiting a woman. There, he immediately lights up with a kind of sadistic intellectual pleasure.
"Their hands enjoy using instruments that terrify those on whom they are about to use them."
These scientists use the women in the asylum for psychiatric experiments, which seem justifiable at first, but which quickly turn into pure and simple abuse. The "mad women" are exhibited, mocked, brutalized... generally treated in a dehumanizing manner, both by the doctors and the nurses who assist them.
And even more than Bourgeois Patriarchy and Religion, Science (of Men) oppresses Spiritism (of Women). The heroine, a spiritualist, is seen as a " witch ", and so " dangerous ":
“[She] suddenly reminds him of a witch – yes, this long-haired brunette is exactly what witches of old must have been: charismatic and fascinating on the outside, vicious and depraved on the inside.”
The witch is a recurring figure in woke thought – always according to the idea that “ Cartesian reasoning and scientific logic " (I quote the author) would be weapons of white male domination, and therefore discriminatory by nature.
To "free" ourselves from them, we must therefore return to traditional and magical beliefs: the ecologist Sandrine Rousseau thus affirms that she prefers " women who cast spells on men who build EPRs ».[2] And a militant anthropologist praises us very seriously the "alliance of feminists and new witches, the Wiccans, who invent new feminine rituals to fight against patriarchal and capitalist oppression which is destroying the planet ».[3]
The heroine then meets the stewardess (head of nurses), a woman committed to the cause of Science and therefore of Masculinity: as stiff as justice, she venerates the Chief Scientist as much as a " St. " or one " God ».
Under her command, she (tactfully) maintains discipline among the imprisoned Women, and prepares them for the heinous experiments of the Men: in plain terms, she is a head. But an involuntary kapo: if she betrays her sex, it is because of the trauma caused by the death of her younger sister.
An assault then deprived her of any compassion for the "mad women". Since then, she has repressed her Spiritist, therefore Feminine, side, without being able to suppress it completely: she writes "letters" to her dead sister that she keeps in a box. But the heroine will allow her to speak with her ghost, and will make her return to the Women's camp.
The (critical) cherry on the cake
While talking with her fellow prisoners, the heroine makes another discovery: the cause of most madness is…male domination ! If a woman loses her mind, it is most often because she has been raped, beaten, narrowly escaped marital murder...
We believe we are reading a militant sub-parody of Foucault... or rather what the young Foucault himself wrote in his first work. Mental illness and personality (1954)
At the time, a member of the Party and very influenced by the "materialist science" coming from the USSR, he rejected Freud, and found the source of mental illness in the " contradictory experience that man has of man ", following " competition, exploitation, imperialist wars and class struggles[4] ».
Shortly afterwards, the Lysenkoism scandal broke out, to the great discredit of intellectuals who had taken Soviet ideology for a valid science. Foucault would then regret this book which had become embarrassing, prevented its reprinting, and even denied having written it.[5].
We also find a similar theory in the work of the psychiatrist and racialist activist Franz Fanon: if the native goes mad, it is because of colonialism.[6]. Of course, the author probably hasn't read Fanon, (or even Foucault) but their ideas circulate - in a very simplified form - in the milieu. Woke. Along with those of Bourdieu, they fuel his fundamental dogma: the idea that everything that goes wrong on Earth is first and foremost the fault of the “domination”… even climate change (“petro-masculinity”[7]).
Let's save the worst for last
The book will end with a series of even worse inconsistencies. The nurse will take advantage of the annual ball of the insane to help the heroine escape. This ball is also the last one agreed upon: a countess can obviously only boast of her " fortune ", from his " castle » and his « diamond river ", the Bourgeois only chuckle and make fun of the "crazy"...
In the meantime, all The men in the asylum have turned out to be scum. The Chief Scientist suddenly starts humiliating the housekeeper who had worshipped him for twenty years. A young lunatic believed in the knowledge of the doctors and the promises of marriage of an intern: in five days, she finds herself paralyzed by the brutal experiments of one and raped by the other: it is beautiful and nuanced like Alice Coffin.
Nurses, kapos in the service of Men, are no better: the betrayal of women by women is one of the recurring themes of the novel. This is how the author describes them: "Having found themselves here by default, because they could just as well have been domestics as washerwomen, they care for patients as they could have served tea or beaten laundry."
A teasing mind would speak here of a classist stereotype (and sexist one for that matter). The author sows them everywhere in the novel, without even wanting to: knowing how to express herself only through clichés (the Bourgeois, the Scientist, etc.), she cannot help but do the same for Poor Women.
Let us also note the psychological improbability of the thing: no nurse behaves like this! One does not live for years in contact with the same patients (sane or not) in complete indifference. The author understands as little how places of confinement work as he does how families work: when you want to take inspiration from Foucault, it's quite penalizing...
The heroine manages to escape, but the housekeeper who helped her is denounced. Everything would indicate a suspension, a visit to the disciplinary committee, a dismissal... not at all!
Hold on tight: if she helped an inmate escape, it's because... she contaminated her.
"She helped a crazy woman escape! She got sick too!"
Here again, it is a question of sacrificing all plausibility to ideology. The aim is to show first that in 1885 the most incongruous pretext can lead a woman to the asylum – and then that if the housekeeper allows herself to be interned, it is because she knows that in the end " Free or locked up, women are not safe anywhere. ».
The author repeats it a good half-dozen times, to make sure that this thesis gets through... but we are starting to get used to it.
The book ends with a final letter from the former internee to her dead sister. She has finally understood what is wrong with the world: Unwavering faith in an idea leads to prejudice. " Twenty lines after these strong (and original) words, the novel ends, to the reader's great relief.
That's the gist of it. We could go on for a long time: historical errors galore (the author believes that Hugo was an author feared by the Bourgeois in 1885...), risky metaphors (" illustrious names honored within a thick stone ») …
The worst are probably the "bravura pieces" where the author piles up commonplace upon commonplace with obvious pride:
Therein lay the difference between fact and fiction: with the former, emotion was impossible. We were content with data, with observations. Fiction, on the contrary, aroused passions, created excesses, upset minds, it did not call for reasoning or reflection, but led readers – especially female readers – towards sentimental disaster.
…or tries some deep psychological introspection:
“There are few feelings more painful than seeing your parents grow old. Realizing that this strength, once embodied by these figures that we thought were immortal, has just been replaced by an irreversible fragility.” We never really know if we did the right thing by revealing our truth. This moment of honesty, relieving at the time, quickly turns into regret. We blame ourselves for having confided. For having let ourselves be carried away by the urgency to speak. For having placed our trust in the other. And this regret makes us promise not to do it again.
Let's conclude: this book is not "bad", it is rubbish. in the mathematical sense of the term : nothing is good, from beginning to end. Stereotypical characters, flat dialogues, psychological inconsistencies, implausible plot, total ignorance of historical reality…
An overwhelming media success
…but it ticks all the right “activist” boxes: feminism 3.0, french theory…and it was written by a “daughter of…”, which may have played a role too. In any case, the Parisian establishment praised it to the skies with a unanimity worthy of North Korean elections.
This novel without qualities immediately won four prize: Stanislas for the first novel, BPE5 Heritage, Première Plume, as well as the Renaudot des Lycéens.
And you have to read what the press says about it: L'Express sees " superb characters painted with art and empathy ", the New Obs a book" impressive mastery » (sic). Le Figaro (?) even speaks of « documented and energetic pen " At 20 Minutes, it's ecstasy: " a powerful indictment » who does « capsize hearts and minds "!
Strange thing: the most honest review comes from… Libération. With great diplomacy, the journalist allows herself to point out the “ clear style (to excess) ", the "heavily planted decor", the conventional dialogues… we feel her going to the limits of what she can say: literary columnist, it is an occupation almost as peaceful as mine clearance.
She even dares to be ironic about a book by " informative, but not erudite "...but immediately makes up for it by recognizing a " honest picture of Paris in 1885 »: a caution which says a lot, I think, about what the cultural environment has become in France.
One can always discuss the quality of a text, but the enormous historical errors on which this novel is based are impossible to deny: especially the grotesque assertion that in 1885 spiritualism led to the right to asylum, while all the good society of the time was passionate about it, Victor Hugo and Camille Flammarion first and foremost.
The fact that even a (presumably) honest journalist cannot allow herself to raise them – or only in a whisper – clearly shows that when official feminist art is expressed, the freedom to criticize must be kept very small.
