My dissertation tracks the persistent representation of sibling and friend figures in modern French literature. At a time of leveling social hierarchies, horizontal familial relations took on new importance, forever altering peer relation politics. In 1992, the philosopher Charles Taylor noted that this challenge to vertical authority pushed individuals into the depths of their being: the classic definition of the Romantic mal du siècle. Sexual relations and orientation were deeply affected by these upheavals.
This dissertation studies texts dating from 1802 to the 1930s. Their protagonists are either orphans or come into the fiction as fully-formed, adult characters. They try to seek solace in their peers, be it through incest or various forms of homosociality. Their sexuality is profoundly queer: they are assigned a sex without knowing what to do with it. Scholar Sara Ahmed explains how the body is perpetually redefined depending on the environment that surrounds us. She reminds us that life is not always linear and that it, therefore, lead us to what she calls “the drama of life.” I show how this “drama of life” can be melancholic and tragic or farcical and amusing. But the malaise remains the same, and insures that these slightly outdated heroes are still profoundly meaningful today, when social and sexual norms are constantly redefined
