Jennie O'Donnell
Thesis Title (MLitt)
APPETITE AND SHAME IN CONTEMPORARY FRENCH WOMEN’S WRITING
My research aims to investigate the link between the themes of appetite and shame in contemporary French women’s writing. I propose that appetite, and the behaviours that it inspires — eating, sexual activity, reading, and buying — are central themes in recent texts by women writers. I argue that these behaviours can hardly ever be detached from shame in women’s writing, whether this involves being shamed by others or feeling ashamed within oneself. This project seeks to explore representations of appetite and responses to these through close readings of contemporary French women’s writing. Examining the work of writers such as Annie Ernaux, Delphine de Vigan, Leïla Slimani, Marie Darrieussecq, and Amélie Nothomb, I will also demonstrate how contemporary literary texts, both fictional and autobiographical, figure eating disorders in relation to appetite and to self-control and how these texts explore the relation between trauma and appetite. This project will break ground in writing on the relation between appetite for sex and for food, and on the impact of the connection between the two on narrative constructions of the self. I will also bring together readings of key contemporary French women writers who have not been read together in this way to date. Drawing on theorists such as Hélène Cixous, Julia Kristeva, Lauren Berlant and Judith Butler, and their work on affect, écriture féminine and desire will support my textual readings. Berlant’s work on appetite in particular, which argues how women mobilise food, sex, and reading as strategies for coping in the world, will be key in aiding my investigation.