| This thesis is an inquiry into the image of the veil as it is found in the psychoanalytic work of Sigmund Freud and in critical responses to Freud, and also as it is constructed in nineteenth-century French realist prose. The thesis seeks to put into question the implicit femininity of the metaphor of veiling, and to interrogate the image's limitations as well as its potentialities within fiction and critical theory.;The first chapter concentrates on Freud, and presents a reading of his theories on femininity and the feminine symptom of the veil. It proposes that both Freud's speculations and his creative departures allow him to formulate these theories, though he himself claimed to avoid these styles of writing. It looks at some of the major feminist responses to Freud, and then examines Derrida's later reading of Beyond the Pleasure Principle.;The second chapter is on Honore de Balzac, and traces out psychoanalytic readings of the image of the veil in his Etudes philosophiques , by both furthering and critiquing such readings. It examines particularly how Balzac's formulation of realist description allows him to use connotation to augment the veiling effect of metaphor, thereby bringing out a rich interplay of the notions of text and textile---one that is adopted very enthusiastically by his commentators. The chapter explores balzacian imagery in its descriptive excess, and brings into relief how Balzac uses metaphors of veiling to simultaneously reinforce and blur gender distinctions.;The third chapter turns to Gustave Flaubert, and to his important reworking of realist language. His new understanding of the relation of signifier to signified means that the feminine image of the veil is employed to put into question the linguistic security of the characters; both in their use of language, and in their representation by means of description. The chapter focuses on two important novels that are dedicated to feminine characters, Salammbo and Madame Bovary. |
