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French Studies

Volume 54, Issue 4, October 2000: pp. 469-478

COLONIAL VIRILITY AND THE FEMME FATALE: SCENES FROM THE BATTLE OF THE SEXES IN FRENCH INDOCHINA

Jennifer Yee

¹ University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne

The three Belle époque novels dealt with here follow the tradition of nineteenth-century decadent literature by highlighting the figure of the femme fatale who, often compared to Cleopatra or Salome, is inherited from late-Romantic Orientalism. At the same time, another kind of 'exoticism` had become an increasingly fruitful literary subject, with the rise of the French colonial novel. This article examines the conjunction of the Middle-Eastern, Orientalist references associated with the femme fatale, and the colonial context, which is here specifically that of French Indochina. These two 'exoticisms` do not simply overlap. The first, Orientalist type of exoticism is associated with the theme of decadence, which saw gender roles as being threatened by the joint figures of the femme fatale or New Woman, and the effeminate male. But in these novels this sexual decadence is chal lenged by a new virility, called forth in response to 'l'[oelig]uvre coloniale`. The colonies are thus used as a new terrain for the battle of the sexes, between beleaguered masculinity and the 'virago`, and they are portrayed as a privileged terrain where threatened gender identities can be reaffirmed.

Keywords: femme fatale; woman; Indochina; colonialism; fin-de-siècle; gender; Orientalism

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