The Melancholic Feminine

She did not know why she had done it. Perhaps she had wanted to trouble her husband who was so sure of his ideas, so little inclined to doubt, thinking like his family, like his milieu of origin. Rather than letting himself be disturbed by the paradoxical thoughts of his wife, he always gave priority to this affiliation to his social class and his fidelity to tradition. For her part, she could see right through him as well as them, the members of his family, and her lucidity was unbearable for him. She could see just how much death was already present in their life. But it was not appropriate to think in ways that went beyond certain forms of propriety; one's thinking had to be “on the path”, like chariot wheels following, without ever leaving them, the ruts left by their traces. The marriage had been consummated; she passed over on to the side of the “band” of those who knew the man. A life was awakening in her; she was not looked at for herself, but for what she represented: the continuation of the line. She wanted to die, and hoped that this life inside her would never awaken. When she gave birth, she did not take care of her daughter.

One day, out of fatigue, she failed to say anything when her husband made a mistake with his medication, taking twice the prescribed dose. He had fallen ill. Then, without knowing why, she gradually poisoned him. Perhaps it was so that he would be a little troubled, a little less sure of himself.

The reader will have recognised Thérèse Desqueyroux, the novel by François Mauriac published in 1927. Beyond the description of the Catholic bourgeoisie in Bordeaux, Mauriac depicts the female soul in which melancholia is allied with charm to exert their forces of attraction. Intelligence and lucidity are in the foreground, along with the weakness of narcissistic construction. Thérèse only thinks about herself; she cannot forget herself, even for the sake of taking care of her child. She is unable to explain it to her friend Anne: “She doesn