Astolphe de Custine and the querelle d'Olivier: Gossip in Restoration High Society

TY - JOUR

T1 - Astolphe de Custine and the querelle d'Olivier

T2 - Gossip in Restoration High Society

AU - Counter, Andrew

PY - 2014/4

Y1 - 2014/4

N2 - This article explores the relationship between gossip and sexuality in early nineteenth-century France, through consideration of the biography of Astolphe de Custine and the novels of the so-called querelle d'Olivier: Madame de Duras's Olivier, ou le secret (c. 1821); Henri de Latouche's Olivier (1826); and Stendhal's Armance (1827). These three romans à clé were inspired, at least in part, by two events in Custine's life: his breaking of an engagement to Mme de Duras's daughter Clara in 1818, and his ‘outing’ as a homosexual in 1824, when he was brutally beaten for having propositioned a guardsman. Both events occasioned outbursts of gossip within Restoration high society, and this article considers the Olivier novels as part of, and as responses to, that gossip: though motivated by personal or political animosity, the novels equally frame an ambivalent critique of the process whereby gossip enforces social norms, notably in matters of sexuality. The two later novels, composed in the wake of Custine's humiliation of 1824, even seem to anticipate the structure of the modern closet; but the article concludes by underlining both the historical specificity and the broad metaphorical valence of the texts' evocation of sexual secrets.

AB - This article explores the relationship between gossip and sexuality in early nineteenth-century France, through consideration of the biography of Astolphe de Custine and the novels of the so-called querelle d'Olivier: Madame de Duras's Olivier, ou le secret (c. 1821); Henri de Latouche's Olivier (1826); and Stendhal's Armance (1827). These three romans à clé were inspired, at least in part, by two events in Custine's life: his breaking of an engagement to Mme de Duras's daughter Clara in 1818, and his ‘outing’ as a homosexual in 1824, when he was brutally beaten for having propositioned a guardsman. Both events occasioned outbursts of gossip within Restoration high society, and this article considers the Olivier novels as part of, and as responses to, that gossip: though motivated by personal or political animosity, the novels equally frame an ambivalent critique of the process whereby gossip enforces social norms, notably in matters of sexuality. The two later novels, composed in the wake of Custine's humiliation of 1824, even seem to anticipate the structure of the modern closet; but the article concludes by underlining both the historical specificity and the broad metaphorical valence of the texts' evocation of sexual secrets.

U2 - 10.1093/fmls/cqt043

DO - 10.1093/fmls/cqt043

M3 - Article

SN - 0015-8518

VL - 50

SP - 154

EP - 167

JO - FORUM FOR MODERN LANGUAGE STUDIES

JF - FORUM FOR MODERN LANGUAGE STUDIES

IS - 2

ER -