The Diaries of Geneviève Bréton 1874-1914

Abstract

This thesis establishes a critical edition of the diaries of Geneviève Bréton (1849-l9l8) written between 1874 and 1914. As 'diary' and 'journal' are synonyms, the words are used interchangeably throughout the thesis. Geneviève Bréton was an educated, privileged and literary woman, the third child in a prestigious Parisian family. In this thesis, I argue that her diaries or private writing play the role of an alternative to, for a woman, socially stigmatized public writing. Although she wrote compulsively throughout her life, experimenting with the novel, she devotes most attention to the diary genre, exploring it beyond its conventional parameters as a feminine outlet. Diaries provide a compromise for Bréton as she finds a way around the limitations imposed by sexual difference and cultural mores in nineteenth-century France. As a woman, and as a wife, she accepts the social and cultural imperatives of her environment but, where possible, on her own terms. I argue that for Bréton, the daughter of publishers and friend of writers, the diary genre is a surreptitious entry into their world, her private form of literary expression and creation. I suggest that she recognises this fact at the end of her life when she herself undertakes the preparation of her 1867-1871 journals for publication. The 1874-l9l4 diaries are held in manuscript form in the archives of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris. The first five years of the diaries, based on the material prepared by Bréton, were published in 1985. The present work will facilitate further publications. The corpus of the later diaries, transcribed over a four-year period in the National Library archives in Paris, is preceded by a three-part introduction: a presentation and discussion of the methodology chosen to transcribe the diaries; an analysis of the nineteenth-century family, social, and literary contexts that influence the writing; and the development of a thesis on the rationale behind the existence of the diaries, their character, content, and volume. Bréton began the task of editing and retyping her journals. This edition of the subsequent journals carries on the undertaking of 'publishing and republishing Silenced texts' Julia Swindells, 'Liberating the Subject? Autobiography and "Women's History": A Reading of the Diaries of Hannah Cullwick' in The Personal Narratives Group eds., Interpreting Women's Lives: Feminist Theory and Personal Narratives, 1989, p.24.: that of drawing out the untold stories of creativity and rebellion against confinement which are part of history and literary history.