The Male Worship Of Yourcenar

As the first female academician of the French Academy, Marguerite Yourcenar and her works enjoy a very special position in the 20th century French literature, which have a profound influence on the contemporary French literature. Yourcenar places great emphasis on the Figure Sculpture. Her unique skills render it hardly possible for readers to sense the female existence. Few of her works, be them historical fiction, autobiography or other genres, embodies female writing. On the contrary, her works are often filled with the daily and emotional experiences of men. And the works themselves reflect the writer’s own experience of life and her inner world. This paper takes the male figures in the world of Marguerite Youcenar as the main object. In order to study the male worship in her works, it analyses the causes leading to this worship and then discusses the impact of this worship on the artistic creation of Marguerite Youcenar.Based on the review and analysis of the subject at home and abroad, the ahthor clarifies in the introduction the reasons and the foothold of the selection of this topic.In the first chapter, the author mainly analyses the male image in Marguerite Yourcenar’s works. The three typical characters are:national hero Marko Kralievitch, the young man in pursuit of freedom Eric von Lhomond, homosexuals Alexis and Emperor Hadrian. In this chapter, we interpret the main male image, meanwhile, compare the male image with the female image in the same work. Based on the interpretation and comparison, we can establish the connotation of the male image in Yourcenar’s works, which leads to the male worship in her artistic creation.The second chapter focuses on further clarifying the male worship behind the creation of Marguerite Yourcenar’s works, then analyses the reasons for this worship, which can be divided into internal and external factors. The internal factors refer to the living experiences of Yourcenar, while the external factors concern the influence of Andre Gide and other writers as well as other cultures on Yourcenar. Regarding the experience of growing up, the innate homosexuality of Yourcenar, the absence of her mother Ferdinand and the education of her father Michel all contribute to the artistic talent of the writer, meanwhile they also develope her masculinity which distinguishes her from the other female writers. Besides, every relationship of Marguerite Yourcenar seems to push her into homosexual love. The artistic creation of Yourcenar is inevitably affected by Andre Gide, the writer she admires. In addition, her broad horizon opens herself a door to the oriental culture, especially Japanese litterature. Murasaki Shikibu and Mishima Yukio are both the writers appreciated by Marguerite Yourcenar. Coincidentally, the sexual orientation of Andre Gide and Mishima Yukio are well-known. In certain respects, the creation of Yourcenar is influenced by both of them. We also need to point out that Yourcenar expresses in so many of her works her respect and appreciation of ancient Greek culture which advocates homosexuality. It is not difficult to explain, in Yourcenar’s works, the male image, from civilian Alexis to emperor Hadian, has become a typical symbol of homosexuality. It clearly shows the preference of Yourcenar on this subject. In a word, the male worship of Yourcenar is caused by multiple factors, which lead to her unique masculinity and her writing concept of male worship.The last chapter discusses the impact of Marguerite Yourcenar’s male worship on her works. This chapter firstly mentions the theory of the androgynous mind, proposed by Virginia Woolf in A room of one’s own, to analyse the male worship of Yourcenar and her characters. According to Woolf’s theory, Marguerite Yourcenar has clearly been awared of her natural tendency and well dealed with the relationship between the male power and the female power that she possessed. She combines androgyny seamlessly. Her writing is beyond her own gender so that her works have an unique glamour. Androgyny is not only embodied in the theme of her works, but also in the charaterization. In the world of Marguerite Yourcenar, only male characters can achieve the best form of androgyny and become complete individuals. Whereas female characters can only have female power and there is always some kind of defect of their images. The second part of this chapter analyses the specific impact of Yourcenar’s male worship on her characterization. Influenced by the masculinity and male worship of Marguerite Yourcenar, her male characters are tagged by her own personalities:noble, heroic and homosexual temperament. In short, Yourcenar inserted her own masculinity and homosexual experiences into her literary creation so that her male characters have all become her incarnation.With the rise of Feminism Criticism, in order to evoke the female consciousness in female writers’works, the interpretation and study of female writers and their works often revolve around the image of women, and then go back to writers’ own personal experience and creative writing. Since the end of the 20th century, Feminism Criticism has always prevailed, which was the main focus of most researches into occidental female writers and their works from the 18th century to the 20th century. Different from the majority of female writers, Marguerite Yourcenar " wrote like a man ". Most of the protagonist in her works which possess a strong male consciousness are men. The standpoint of this paper is that the author is so interested in Yourcenar’s writing that she decides to appreciate her works by dint of analyzing the image of men in her works, her male consciousness and her male worship.In Mishima, or the vision of the empty, Marguerite Yourcenar herself distinguishes between《writer》,《individual》and《character》.It should be noted that Yourcenar considers《character》as 《the shadow or reflection of the individual himself》. Therefore, we can assume that Yourcenar’s works are the reflections of her life experience and her temperament. From male characters of Marguerite Yourcenar’s works, this paper explores the connotation of male characters, analyses the male worship of Yourcenar and its underlying causes. It finally looks at the impact of this male worship on the creation of her works.Since 2000, studies of Marguerite Youcenar have sprung up in American and European literary world, but none has touched upon 《 male worship in Yourcenar’s works》. The author hopes to provide readers with a new perspective to interprete Marguerite Yourcenar and her works, so as to understand her concept of men and literature.