Isabelle et Marguerite and the folds of femininity

Abstract

Isabelle de Charrière (1740-1805) shows in her epistolary novels, in content as in form and style, a constant preoccupation with separation, absence and lack. Here, the Lettres écrites de Lausanne will be of particular interest from this perspective. Throughout her work, Marguerite Yourcenar (1903-1987) traces the lines of a desire that never ceases to exhaust itself in its losses and failures. More specifically, it is the short story Anna, Soror…, a story of incest set against a Baroque backdrop, that displays the traces of familiar strangeness coloring the fictional impulse. The two writers cross paths in a similar scriptural bond.