Jouissance des vierges: La topique de la virginité dans deux romans de Marcelle Tinayre

In both Avant l'amour (1897) and Hellé (1899), Marcelle Tinayre (1872-1948) investigates the discursive, narrative, and ideological extrapolations offered by female virginity. In both cases, virginity allows a discourse of opposition to normative patriarchal preconceptions, and a discourse of repossession of female sensuality, freedom and independence to emerge. Thus apprehended, the preserved hymen symbolizes the temporal, spatial, physical, and ideological threshold where the heroines stand. (In French) FG-K).