Coming of age—vive la différence!

Professor Beth Gale's research
"Je trouve que les poètes et les romanciers n’ont pas assez connu ce sujet d’observation, cette source de poésie qu’offre ce moment rapide et unique dans la vie d’un homme."

"I find that poets and novelists have not sufficiently known this subject of observation, this source of poetry, offered by this rapid and unique moment in one's life"—author George Sand on adolescence
Research question: How is "coming of age" portrayed in 19th century French fiction, and how does that depiction reflect and influence trends in French society?

Literature focusing on "coming of age" and related issues has a wide appeal among the reading public. Many of us can easily identify with portrayals of the uncertain and awkward years of adolescence. French professor Beth Gale and her students certainly do—but with a difference. They study coming of age novels written in French, in the context of French and Francophone culture.

Recently, Professor Gale examined a nineteenth-century coming of age novel written by brothers Edmond and Jules Goncourt. Novelists receiving France's coveted Prix Goncourt are in the company of such literary luminaries as Marcel Proust and Simone de Beauvoir. The prize is offered by the Académie Goncourt, established by Edmond (1822-1896) de Goncourt in honor of his brother Jules (1830-1870). Together they co-authored a number of novels, including, in 1864, Renée Mauperin, the story of a young woman reluctant to abandon her single state for marriage and motherhood. For Gale, such literature is a window into French society of the time and its views on adolescence.
Renée Mauperin was written during the mid-1800s, and Gale's research notes that, until this time in France, rigorous education was not considered necessary for females, whose role in life was to become wives and mothers. The Catholic Church controlled what little education was available, and it was an education deemed appropriate for a life of domesticity. French girls like Renée often married in their mid to late teens, and thus had little opportunity to develop an independent identity before passing from the authority of parents and convent to that of husband.

Increasingly, however, members of French society and then the French government began to voice disagreement with this viewpoint, and to suggest that girls should be educated so that they would be more interesting companions for their husbands and better mothers when it came to educating their children. State controlled education would also have the advantage of countering the power of the Church. Some scholars suggested that it might be better for girls to wait until they were out of their teens before marrying.

But at the age of twenty, Renée Mauperin is still not married, although not for want of proposals—during the course of the story she turns down at least fourteen suitors. The novel illustrates her reluctance to surrender to the constraints of matrimony the freedom she enjoys as the daughter of an indulgent father who is tolerant of her outspokenness and boyishly free behavior. Although at one point she begins to feel a romantic attachment for her adopted brother, she decides to replace that feeling with the less risky ones of friendship and respect.

A picture of vitality, Renée nonetheless dies prematurely at the end of the novel. Gale interprets her death as a symbol of the temporary incompatibility of the "vierge moderne"—literally, 'new virgin'—with a society not quite ready for her.