New Figures of Women

In 1832, Balzac wrote a novel titled A Woman of Thirty (1832, 1897). In 1932, curiously, Freud ends his lecture on femininity with some considerations on the thirty-year-old woman. Balzac and Freud were writing a century apart, in two different languages, were living in two countries, and although they were both Europeans, operated within two different discourses.

The title Lacan gives to his seminar, L'envers de la psychanalyse (1991), is an allusion to another title by Balzac, The Reverse of Contemporary Life (L'envers de la vie contemporaine) (1903).1 Balzac, obviously, writes from the point of view of the reverse (envers). As for Freud, in 1932, when he gives his final assessment of his analytic experience of women, his message is radically opposed to Balzac's.

The implicit message of Balzac's novel, seen from a contemporary viewpoint, is one of progress, which anticipates something of the evolution of women's conditions. Balzac writes to say that at the age of thirty, his heroine, despite her misfortunes, has her life in front of her. In this case, the future means love, and also the possibility of determining her own life. As the jacket of my copy of the novel says, “She is not forbidden from becoming a human being.”

This has nothing in common with Freud's final paragraph, which although well known, is still very striking:

A man of about thirty strikes us as a youthful, somewhat unformed individual, whom we expect to make powerful use of the

This article was translated by John Holland, Ph.D.

Excerpt from What Lacan Said About Women by Colette Soler © 2006 Colette Soler, translation © 2006 John Holland, appears with the permission of Other Press LLC.

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possibilities for development opened up to him by analysis. A woman of the same age, however, often frightens us by her psychical rigidity and unchangeability. Her libido has taken up final positions and seems incapable of exchanging them for others. There are no paths open to further development; it is as though the w