“[L]e divorce terrible entre le cœur et la chair:” Joseph Kessel’s Belle de Jour (1928)

Abstract

The publication in 2020 of Joseph Kessel’s writings in Gallimard’s distinguished Pléiade series prompted Gaby Levin to publish an article titled “France Rediscovers Joseph Kessel, the Jewish Writer of Belle de Jour.” It is curious that out of all of Kessel’s many publications Levin should single out Belle de Jour given that it has garnered virtually no scholarly attention, in contrast to Luis Buñuel’s 1967 film adaptation starring Catherine Deneuve. The novel tells the story of Séverine Sérizy, a wealthy young married woman who, in sync with her husband emotionally and intellectually but not sexually, takes up afternoon work as a prostitute. In the preface, Kessel explains, in reaction to accusations of “licence inutile, voire de pornographie,” that his intent was simply to “montrer le divorce terrible entre le cœur et la chair, entre un vrai, immense et tendre amour et l’exigence implacable des sens.” This study focuses at the micro-textual level on how Kessel works out his promised chair/cœur binary, one which not only figures into, but structures, a text that by all appearances follows the blueprint for a classic roman de formation, a generic classification that Kessel ultimately problematizes.

Keywords:

• Kessel
• Belle de Jour
• prostitution
• roman de formation
• female sexuality
• Hirsch

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Filmmaker Martin Scorsese undertook a limited re-release of the film in the United States in 1995 followed by the release of a DVD in 2002.

2 Serge Linkès, presumably speaking for many readers, wonders, “[J]usqu’où est allé le plombier que Séverine, lorsqu’elle avait huit ans, a croisé dans le couloir entre sa chambre et celle de sa mère,? L’attouchement sexuel est explicite mais l’évanouissement de la fillette a-t-il arrêté l’agresseur ou bien est-il à l’inverse, la conséquence du viol de Séverine?” (1736–37).

3 Also recently, a blogger has compared Belle de Jour to E. L. James’s Fifty Shades of Grey (2011). https://poserorprophet.wordpress.com/2015/03/11/desire-full-stop-is-always-the-desire-of-the-other-reflecting-on-representations-of-female-sexual-desire-in-belle-de-jour-fifty-shades-of-grey-and-under-the-skin/.

4 See Hope Christiansen, “A Madame Bovary for the New Millennium: Leïla Slimani’s Dans le jardin de l’ogre,” Dalhousie French Studies, vol. 120, 2022, pp. 79–94.

5 Kessel’s biographer, Yves Courrière, explains that after the publication of Belle de Jour, readers accused Kessel of trying to “rééditer l’exploit de Victor Margueritte” from six years earlier (328), the “exploit” being the creation of a young woman who, after being betrayed by a man, lives life on her own terms by, among other things, having multiple sexual partners, including female ones. The work cost Margueritte his Légion d’honneur.

6 The number of maisons de tolérance (licensed brothels) had declined in the second half of the nineteenth century, due to the Haussmannization of Paris and to changes in the ways the police managed street prostitution (Ross 37). Jill Harsin states that the rendez-vous was an important aspect of neoregulation, the late-nineteenth-century attempt to counteract the abuses of the police de mœurs, calling it “a successful sleight of hand on the part of a prefecture that was increasingly conscious of public relations” (321). A madam (patronne) was obligated to keep updated records on each prostitute including biographical information and a photograph; although the women did not have to be registered with the police, they had to be checked weekly by a police doctor and brought to the prefecture if ill. Prostitutes could live in the maison de rendez-vous only if the business occupied an entire building (320–21).

7 Irish feminist Sarah Grand coined the term New Woman in 1894. For valuable discussions of la femme nouvelle and Belle Époque feminism, see Mary Louise Roberts (Disruptive Acts: The New Woman in Fin-de-Siècle France (U of Chicago P, 2002), Diana Holmes and Carrie Tarr (“New Republic, New Women? Feminism and Modernity at the Belle Époque,” in A ‘Belle Époque? Women in French Society and Culture, 1890–1914, eds. Holmes and Tarr [Bergahn, 2006, pp. 11–22]), and Anne Tomiche (“Figures de ‘femmes nouvelles’ dans le premier tiers du XX^e siècle.” Sociopoétiques, no. 4, mis à jour le 25/11/2019. http://revues-msh.uca.fr/sociopoetiques/index.php?id=772.

8 References to a maternal relationship abound (34, 35, 37, 38, 101, 139), as do indications that Séverine and Pierre are engaged in a master/slave dynamic in which they tend to switch roles.

9 The narrator speculates that Pierre considers it unjust to have a partner who loves him but has “un corps incapable du parfait mélange dont il avait un désir farouche et religieux” (38).

10 See Peter Cryle, who discusses Victorien Du Saussay’s Femmes, amour, mensonges (1905), Adolphe Belot’s La Femme de glace (1878), Jean-Louis Dubut de Laforest’s Mademoiselle de Tantale (1883), and Catulle Mendès’s Méphistophéla (1890), among other works he classifies variously as romans de moeurs, romans passionnels, romans parisiens, and romans contemporains. I would add Armand Dubarry’s eleven-volume series titled Les Déséquilibrés de l’amour which includes a volume titled Les Femmes eunuques (1898).

11 Michel experiences a similar kind of rebirth as he heals: “J’oubliais ma fatigue et ma gêne. Je marchais dans une sorte d’extase, d’allégresse silencieuse, d’exaltation des sens et de la chair” (48); “Il y avait ici plus qu’une convalescence; il y avait une augmentation, une recrudescence de vie, l’afflux d’un sang plus riche et plus chaud qui devait toucher mes pensées, les toucher une à une, pénétrer tout, émouvoir, colorer les plus lointaines, délicates et secrètes fibres de mon être” (61). Interestingly, after Gaston Gallimard handed the manuscript of Belle de Jour over to Gide, the latter thanked the publisher for understanding that the novel “était de nature à [m]’intéresser tout particulièrement” (qtd. in Linkès 1732).

12 When Pierre touches her forehead, she shrinks back: “Elle se sentait si bien, elle se suffisait si entièrement à elle-même qu’elle avait besoin d’éviter tout ce qui n’était pas elle” (23–24).

13 Linkès mentions the motif of the mirror but only in passing: “La crise identitaire qu’elle traverse passe par le motif (cher à Maupassant) du miroir qui, tel un ressac, vient interroger les images que l’héroïne a d’elle-même” (1735).

14 Winterson’s novel deals with a love affair between the narrator, whose name and gender are never disclosed, and a married woman.

15 The film adaptation is remarkably different in the details. After firing at Pierre, Marcel is shot dead by police. Pierre is not only paralyzed but blind. Husson, not Séverine herself, tells Pierre about his wife’s secret life. And in one of the two endings—meant to be seen as Séverine’s fantasy—Pierre rises from his wheelchair and fixes a drink. One can only imagine what Kessel would have thought since he had always refused to bring the novel to the cinema, “estimant qu’il ne se prête pas à un film” (Linkès 1740).

16 Some turn-of-the-century medical experts believed that a woman’s frigidity was her male partner’s fault (Cryle 130). This problem figures fictionally in Mendès’s Méphistophéla, where the husband’s lack of “restraint and intelligence . . . drives his terrified wife to a life of perversion, causing rape, frigidity, and lesbianism to be narratively aligned” (Moore and Cryle 259).

17 Kessel draws on an extensive network of terms for the forces exerting control over Séverine, primarily, beginning with the basics, le hasard (62, 96, 134, 145), la fatalité (77), le destin/la destinée (77, 101, 113, 114, 167, 174), le sort (88, 130, 138). These are enhanced by such phrases as “victimes qu’un Dieu a choisies” (29), “des condamnés” (88), “[Séverine] n’y pouvait rien” (92), “[l’]existence [de Séverine] bien avant qu’elle fût née, [ayant] été déterminée ainsi” (101), “l’aiguillon qui la précipitait vers cette demeure obscure” (117), “les forces qui l’entraînèrent” (118), “la loi fatale du plaisir” (121), “la folle promiscuité où elle se laissait de plus en plus entraîner” (126), “des divinités interdites et mortelles” (138), “l’invisible, l’imminent adversaire” (141), “le tourbillon où elle était tombée” (145), “elle ne s’appartenait point” (149), “sans l’avoir voulu, elle franchit la grille” (150), “la chaîne fatale des événements” (154), “un cercle enchanté” (155), “Tout ce qui l’avait poussée chez Husson” (161). The word philtre—calling to mind Tristan et Iseut—appears three times (72, 125, and most notably, in this phrase describing Séverine’s perception of “un ténébreux univers qui avait employé contre elle des larves et des gnomes, des géants et des philtres” (138)).

18 Séverine occasionally believes she is in control of her destiny: early in the novel, we are told that though she “cro[it] se gouverner pleinement, Séverine n’avait aucun soupçon de ses forces essentielles, dormantes et, par là même, aucune emprise sur elles” (35); with her recovery from the illness comes the feeling that “tout se mit au service de Séverine comme auparavant dans un ordre favorable à son équilibre” (41); much later, she sets out (but fails) to “redresser le cours du destin” (113). Indeed, she is never really in control, thanks to “la marche inflexible d’une destinée qu’elle avait cru façonner à sa guise” (114; emphasis mine).

19 The film adaptation takes a very different stance. According to Hector Ortiz, “For a film that pre-dated second-wave feminism of the 70’s (sic), Belle de Jour is quite revolutionary in its portrayal of female sexuality. All of the women in the film are in control of their actions. Even in Séverine’s masochistic fantasies, she is the star of her own humiliations. . . . The film . . . refrains from judging or punishing Séverine.”

20 Kessel establishes this idea very early on. Having heard about Henriette’s brothel work, Séverine “fut aussi proche de la folie qu’un morphinomane à qui sa drogue est enlevée au moment même de la piqûre” (51).

21 Other related terms, almost all used in reference to Séverine, include fou, s’affoler, démente, affolé, égaré, insensé, maniaque, aberration, hystérique, névrose. Of these, folie and its derivatives appear the most often (13 times). For the full slate of occurrences of this vocabulary, see 48, 51, 60 (x 2), 75, 85 (x 2), 86 (x 2), 92, 94, 96, 99, 112, 115, 117, 126, 134, 141 (x 2), 144, 147, 161, 163, 166, 167. Cryle and Downing aver that madness and sexual activity have in common excess, “the very dynamic of pathology. Madness was an overexcitation, and sexual activity with its natural excitement might easily give rise to imbalance” (3).

22 Ramirez observes that Kessel “fails to deliver the lived-in introspection required for this sort of material.”

23 Kessel was so taken by these letters that he wanted to publish select ones in book form (after changing the letter-writers’ names), a project that was thwarted when Gaston Gallimard left the letters in a taxi (Courrière 329).

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Hope Christiansen

Hope Christiansen is associate professor of French at the University of Arkansas. She has published articles on a wide range of authors including Colette, Sand, Baudelaire, Flaubert, Balzac, and Camus. Her most recent research focuses on novels written during the Belle Époque and interwar periods and on representations of feminism in nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction.