DRESSING AND UNDRESSING THE PRINCESS OF CADIGNAN: FEMALE DRAPERY/NARRATIVE STRIPTEASE

Romanic Review, May 2004 by Moger, Angela S

"I write the words of woman on water," says an ancient Greek proverb. This misogynistic formulation may shed light on the use of the so-called "feminine" as a metaphor for the genre; narrative may be as fickle. If what is abiding in woman is her mobility, if her sartorial inventions act to confer instability on the referent, the measure of a text like this one is, as scrutiny reveals, to resist being finally fixed.

This instability is made clearer, furthermore, by consideration of another arresting pattern in "Les secrets de la Princesse de Cadignan." The plot displays a hyperbolic insistence on surrogacy. The substitution of one person for another ranges from the literal to the abstract. Thus, at one end of the spectrum, the revolutionary Michel Chrestien deflects not his own but the aim of a comrade, so that a bullet meant for Diane's husband hits a substitute victim; and, at the other end of the spectrum, not only is Diane implicitly substituted for the writer, but also d'Arthez, a professional writer, is substituted for the reader, as he is the addressee of the message. Between these extremes, then, are similar instances of surrogacy. Most prominent is the replacement of Michel Chrestien by d'Arthez, who takes his dead friend's place as an ardent pursuer of Diane. Diane herself has succeeded her own mother when she becomes the Prince of Cadignan's wife, as her mother had been the longtime mistress of the Prince in the years preceding his marriage. D'Arthez, or course, replaces the Prince when he goes off to live with that man's wife. As to the historical backdrop, the reigning prince is a substitute for the exiled king, Charles X. The new government supplants the old; in the person of d'Arthez, the Man of Letters takes the place of the Man of Court. This is a lot of musical chairs in one short tale, and the analogy is quite pertinent. Who's sitting in which chair depends on the moment; the role played by each person is situational, not absolute.