Onan, Martha

English

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Literary Onomastics Studies
Volume 9 Article 6
1982
Naming Would-Be Overthrowers of Men in the
Novels of Michela Perrein
Martha Onan
The College at Brockport
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Repository Citation
Onan, Martha (1982) "Naming Would-Be Overthrowers of Men in the Novels of Michela Perrein," Literary Onomastics Studies: Vol. 9 ,
Article 6.
Available at: http://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/los/vol9/iss1/6
LOS 53 
l'H,J'.III-!G VlOULD -BE OVEETrtROWERS OF i'IIEN 
IN rnm NOVELS OF MICHELE PERREIN 
Martha Onan 
State University of New Yorl::. 
College at Brockport 
The would-be overthrawers of m=n in the novels of Michele 
Perrein are characters named Odile Chanret, Camille; and Gerrma 
Lapidaire1 who represent the spirit and determination of French 
feminists after 1945, the year French \\Olren gained the right to 
vote. The characters are conterrp:>rary with the birth of the 
Fifth Republic (1958); termination of the long revolution of 
Algeria against France (1962); law }?e:rmitting waren to have a 
bank account without authorization of their husbands (1965); 
revolt of students (May-June 1968) led by such war cries as 
"Students liberate yourselves from gods a!\d masters. Liberate 
yourselves from your parents. . . . Long live madness! "; 
creation of a Department of Wbmen's Affairs (1974); law }?e:rmitting 
abortion under certain conditions (1975); and, a .great setback for 
\\Olren1 tennination of the only wonen' s studies program in a 
French university (1981). 
Coming a.fter Sinone de Beauvoir, Marguerite Duras, Nathalie 
Sarraute, and ·Marguerite Yourcenar, Michele Perrein is a contem-
porary of such writers as M:>nique Wittig, Helene Cixou.s, and Julia 
Kristeva. In varying degrees, .these writers may be classified as 
feminists who denotince sexual discrimination and exploitation of 
� as sex objects, who want to leave their prison-hare and to 
exist in their own right, and who are beginning to camunicate 
with � everywhere. These desires are similar to those pre-
sented by the M:.mvem:mt de Liberation de Femnes in a tract in 1974. 
Perrein sees in each woman three distinct stages which, if 
she were naming a girl, would be included in the combined narre, 
Reine-Agneau-Barbara. 'Queen-Lamb-Barbara.' She defines at great 
length the combined narre in her essay, Le Male aimant. 2 Reine 
means the girl who is the center of activities when, for exarrple, 
still very young she· can play on the sidewalk with boys and enjoy 
independence and then, in elem:mtary school, when she fervently 
believes her admired oration of the Declaration of the Rights of 
Man and of Citizen. Agneau is the conventional, sacrificial, 
all-giving woman, a role which is taught first by, of all people, 
the nother and finally by the man who 11devours" the woman . The 
third narre, Barbara indicates the feminist who wears boots and 
cap and who knows how to stand on her awn � feet and .avenge 
herself. Reine-.Agrleau-Barbara,., the combined name used in her 
j 
essay, is too all-inclusive for any single character in her 
fiction. However, the heroines f9-ll under the category of 
Barbara . ' stranger, ' having the meaning of being different fran 
the docile little girl marna wants to train and the adoring 
inferior the man wants to possess. 
Perrein' s Barbaras have rather disappointing narres--
LOS 55 
especially OOile Cha.rnet and Camille, while Gemna I..a.pidaire is 
rrore suggestive of a combative, proud woman . It would seem that 
a twentieth-century French writer would invent names as powerful 
as those of her Precious sisters of the seventeenth century who 
originated terms to describe accurately a woman' s age, psychology, 
looks, and history: Dirce who, according to the Dictionnaire des 
pretieuses, wants to separate from her husband and will be success­
ful because she has a great deal of spirit; Felixerie who is a 
rrost singular person, for she is insensitive to love; and a final 
exarrple is Istrine, thirty-eight years old, who once had 
Sidroaste, and he would still love her had he found in her as nuch 
sweetness as mind power. 3 But in her novels, Perrein lets the 
parents name their daughters. 
So, the parents in her first nove_l, La Sensitive (1956), 
name their baby girl OOile, and she becarres OOile Cha.rnet. But 
they do not expect her to be the real OOile, a strong woman who 
becarre a saint after having established a rronastery in the Vosges 
.M:mntains in the years 660 to 720. The parents do not object to 
their OOile becoming "ric�, " the connotation of her name, and want 
to help her make a good rrarriage. Cha.rnet is suggestive of 
"chann" but as a family name is a diminutive of cha.:r:Ire 'a tree 
typical of a yard or estate' or 'hornbeam tree. '
4 
OOile Ch.a:rmet, the twenty-year-old heroine of La Sensitive, 
is a law student at the university in Bordeaux. Making a 
\ 
LOS 56 
psychological portrait of herself fran the age of six to nineteen, 
she finds that she has been taught to be retiring, yielding, 
pleasing. Here is an episode from the tiire when she was six: 
At six, she said to the cat, "Excuse rre. 11 
She had been taught to say, "Excuse me, Sir, 11 
"Excuse rre, Madarre. • • • [ QJ ui te naturally, she 
uttered, "Excuse �' Pussy." (.§_, 9) 
The little paragon of docility, even at thirteen, lets a saleslady 
sell her shoes � sizes too large. Docility has been dinged into 
her ears by her: nother and teachers who try to destroy her COitpet-
itive nature. 
But the higher she advances in school, the nore decisive she 
becorres. She loves literary qUarrels. With other students, she 
"interprets the classics as if those \\Orks were about her own 
r· 
glory" (.§_, · 44). In fact, she is not lukewann to the classics. 
Quite the contrary, she foams them (.§_, 44) . When she is fifteen, 
she identifies herself with those heroines (people like the 
. � 
historical OOile, the Alsatian saint whose name she beal:'s) who 
renounced happiness and human weaknesses for the gods, rules, and 
laws (.§_, 44) . 
At this tiire, the school principal, a rotund man with a 
drooping nus tache, takes her aside and advises: 
"Remember, Maderroiselle, what I tell you . • • • I ' 11 
LOS 57 
not always be able to save you. You nust never take the 
.bull by the horns • . . .  Don't say what you think. " (§_,45) 
But this type of advice is contrary to CXiile' s ambition which soon 
is to lead her to Bordeaux to study law with the hbpe of becaning 
the greatest lawyer of her time and a member of the highest court. 
In Bordeaux, she discovers that her parents, teachers, and 
rren have been trying to teach her to play the role of La Sensitive, 
or Mimosa pudica, a plant which loves light, frequent waterings, 
and hot houses, which has leaves so sensitive that they roll up at 
the least touch, and which exudes a poison fran its bark. However, 
she lets the wishy-washy :minosa in her die and , in great irony, 
begins to live her real name, CXiile, a name which her family never 
intended her to follow. To becare CXiile, a strong woman, a 
"saint," she detennines never to be the victim of any m:m . 
"Armed to detest rren, to no longer suffer" fran them (§_, 203), she 
makes progress toward becaning a lawyer, a defender of victims 
like herself who have to live in a world of oppression. 
Oppression is also the major question in La Chineuse (1970), 
a novel about Camille, a journalist-illustrator sent to the war-
' 
disturbed Orient of the 1960s to make sketches of people and places 
in Cambodia, Saigon, Hong Kong, Macao, and Singapore--all areas 
oppressed by varying fonns of colonialism. She is paid to make a 
pretty picture which is the significance of La Chineuse, a word 
meaning "a Chinese artisan who dyes different colors on threads 
\ 
before weaving a material in order to obtain a design in the woven 
fabric." Her conscience refuses to let her paint a picture in 
order to present a ·preconceived idea of how well France is govern-
ing in the Orient. She prefers to be a rejected ( "maudi t") artist 
who works for truth and not for rroney and glory. That goal makes 
her rrock her employers who are partners of oppressors, an action 
which ·shows her to be une .chineuse in the sense of a person who 
mocks or ridicules others. 
Her outrage in front of oppression is intensified by ten 
years of marriage to Clerrent 'merciful' . who insults her by his 
double standard: he has a mistress but will not tolerate his 
wife having an affair. He reasons that it is all right for men to 
have mistresses, but extramarital love affairs of � threaten . 
) 
the very foundations of marriage ;i;tself. Shocked by his point of 
view, Camille refuses to live in an un.eg:ual, onerous situation. 
She has to take a stand in order "to know once and for all whether 
[she] is a subordinate or a human being" (CHIN, 170). Finally, 
she :Eaves him, "decolonizes him. . • • [She] tells him to leave, 
[she] pushes him outside the bor�rs" (CHIN, 80). Her action is 
just one � le of the theme of oppression which dominates 
Michele. Perrein's novelistic world--oppression of the powerless by 
5 the powerful who are always men • . 
· Camille, personally freed from her lmsband, is not yet 
politically freed from one meaning of her. name which is related 
LOS 59 
to camillus 'a young man who helps in various cererronies. ' Even 
though as an artist she does work rrockingl y, she is involved with 
the oppressors of the Orient--that is, she helps them in their 
cererronies. Yet, she is becoming the Camille of Comeille's 
Horace, a heroine who "revolts against the male values of old 
Horace. ,.G Once in the Orient, Perrein' s Camille, _like Virgil's 
Camilla, Q.lee..Tl of the Volsci, throws herself into battle. · There 
is a sensitiveness inside her as an oppressed wanan which makes 
her empathize with all the downtrodden she sees in the Orient: 
men who pull ricksha�, _children given away, the hareless, defense­
less people, all the humiliated and the starving. ·She blushes 
crlinson because of France--particularly because of its "vanity 
which is the product. . . nost COllllOnly exported abroad" (CHIN, 175) . 
She realizes that the responsibility for colonialism and war 
rests with rren: "No war, " she says "is a woman' s war . • • • For 
centuries, warren have been watching men plan wars. II (CHIN, 124). 
"On the left and on the right, a woman is a woman; her position is 
restricted" (CHIN, 78). The result is that at last Camille 
"decolonizes" herself of all re� for colonialism, for oppres­
sion--political and personal--and remains in Cambodia where the 
nomings "used to be r:ure in bursting light" and where she may 
perish in battle, for the Orient is too real, too gigantic for 
any victory, .but the continent is a place for her to begin being 
a conqueror of men and their oppression. 
LOS 60 
Away from the real world and .in an .imaginary oountry, Gemna 
Lapidaire has a different story although it begins cminousl y as 
she passes a man on the rocky beach of a peninsula as he joyfully 
thinks and sings of riclmess--that is, sex, sex, sex (GL, 5) • The 
eight-year-old Germla has been reared by four 11IIDthers11: her real 
nother Dolores 'sorrows, ' grandrrother Leone 'lion, ' great-grand-
nother Flavie 'golden hair, ·• and great-great-grandrrother Angeline 
i 
, 'angel. ' · The four �'rtothers11 have been so exploited by rren that 
they decide to spare Gemna the pain-in-the-neck her real father is 
and encourage her to create in her .imagination an . ideal father. In 
this lack of infonnation about her father, Gerrma. is no worse off 
than many of Perrein' s characters whose. fathers are absent either 
because of death or indifference to their childr�. These fathers 
even in absence are patriarchal and bring oppression into the 
family, a type of oppression which Gemma does not suffer� 
The four � who exclude rren from their lives stay entirely 
\_ 
by themselves. They indulge in. female activities, those in which 
women have a privileg�, mystical relationship with nature, such 
as healing with their .hands and conmmicating with an.iroals. But, 
nost of all, they act and think for thernsel ves. Even their god is 
femal�, a stone seulpture which resembles a woman to whom they 
pray: 11I hail thee light-goddess, nother-goddess, dust-goddess, 
waman11 (GL, 123) • Mc:iny rren on the peninsula object to the way 
these women live and begin to threaten them and call them witches. 
LOS 61 
Answering these nat, the great-great-grandnother asks why they 
hate � so nuch: "Because they are 'WOrtel1? Because the wcmen 
don't believe that their own ·dreams and thoughts are foolish? 
• • • Because .they are wcmen who represent wanan in her true, un-
corrupted, undiverted nature?" (GL, 55). 
To give the youngest 'VDnail of their ·family a name which will 
be true to their .expectations, the four "rrothers" decide upon 
Genma Lapidaire which sugges-ts both the precious stone and the 
craftsman who polishes it.· M::>st of all, the name describes a girl 
who initiates actions, makes decisions, and takes the lead. As 
she grows up, she "�ds her way .everywhere. • • . , no one. can 
keep her from sliding and creeping arrongst the stones or prowling 
along the beach. •. • " (GL, 19) • . . One day, an object fran a .wrecked 
ship is washed onto the beach. With her is Eirmanuel ' God  with us, ' 
a man who is afraid of·the object, for he has no idea what it is 
and also �use it. ilrplies that there nust be life beyond the 
peninsula. · But she hurries to explore the wreck where . she finds 
an arrp1tated hand, so terrifying to Errmarnlel that she alone has 
to decide what to do. When. she buries it, Emnanual thinks to 
himself that "Genma has authority" (GL, 128). Soon he becclres so 
traumatized that his own hands� paralyzed and she has to 
care for hlm. Illness and fear cause hlm to withdraw fran life, 
' 
but she participa.tes fearlessly .in .every situation. 
Genma LapidaJ.re is the only Perrein character whose naming, 
LOS 62 
rearing, and maturing are constant and rich. Unlike OOile and 
Camille, she does not discover one day that she should seek free­
dom to control her life. Fran birth, she naturally seeks freedcxn, 
I 
controls her. life, and is free frcm destruction and oppression of 
men . , The reason: iri the beginnil}g she is n.axred Genna Lapidaire 
and encouraged by her "nothers" to fulfill that narie . 
Martha Onan 
State University of New York 
College at Brockport� -
I 
\ 
LOS 63 
Notes 
1 
References to the novels • of Michele Perrein in which these 
three heroines appear will be lfsted by page in the text arid the 
' 
titles will be abbreviated: S� La sensitive (Paris: Julli�, 
1956); CHIN, La Chineuse (Paris: Julliard, 1970);: arid 
� . 
. 
' 
GL, Gentna Lapidaire (Paris: Flarimario�, 1976). The translations 
' 
from· these novels arid other works are mine. 
2 
I.e Male aimant (Paris: Julliard, 1975). 
! 
. 
3 : 
Scma.ize, ·r.e Grand Dictiorinaire historigue des· pretieuses, 
New Edition by .M. Ch.-L. Livet,. �VoL I of Le Dictionnaire des . I 
precieuses (1661; rpt. Nendeln, iLiechtensteili: Kraus Reprint, 
1970) 1 PP• 7.11 98, 114. 
4 
Albert Dauza:t, Dictionnaire etym:?logique des nans de 
famille et prenans de France, 3rd ed. (Paris: Larousse, 1951) • 
5 i 
SUsan.Husserl-Kappit, "Sexual Politics in Four Novels by . 
! 
Michele Pe:trein," Folio, No. 11 (August 1978), pp. 38-63. 
6 
Le �j_e aimant, p. 38. 



Naming Would-Be Overthrowers of Men in the Novels of Michela Perrein

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