Mirroring Difference: Figuring Frames

The use of the mirror in nineteenth-century French literature reveals that male fear of female difference leads male writers to seek in the women they love a reflection of themselves, enhanced and intensified. From Banville and Gautier to Flaubert and Zola a narcissistic longing to perceive the beloved not as other but as extension of the self throws into doubt affirmations by Genette and Lacan regarding desire and raises the question of whether transpositions d'art are less an experiment with the possibilities of different media than attempts to house the beloved in the safe category of the male-created ideal. (RHL)