eBook

Writing with a Vengeance

Mossman, Carol A

2009

Overview

Writing with a Vengeance examines the life and works of a nineteenth-century French courtesan, Céleste Vénard, later the Countess de Chabrillan. A notorious Paris courtesan, Chabrillan married into the nobility, taught herself to write (penning two series of memoirs) and, upon being widowed, wrote novels to support herself - ten, between 1857 and 1885. These novels and memoirs constitute exceptional literary and historical documents, particularly as very few sex workers before the twentieth century have left written records of their lives. Writing with a Vengeance intertwines the courtesan's autobiographical account of the horrors of her life on the streets with that era's political, medical, and cultural discourses surrounding prostitution. Though French society both silenced and refused to pardon the prostitute, Carol Mossman's literary analysis of Chabrillan's novels contends that it is through the process of writing itself that she arrived at self-forgiveness and ultimately refashioned for her damaged self a new identity and narrative.

• Publisher: University of Toronto Press,University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing
• Subject: 19th century / Authors, French / Biography / Chabrillan, Celeste Venard de, comtesse, 1824-1909 / Chabrillan, Céleste Vénard de, comtesse, 1824-1909 / Chabrillan, Céleste Vénard de, comtesse, 1824-1909 -- Criticism and interpretation / Courtesans / Courtesans -- France -- Biography / Criticism and interpretation / European / France / French / French literature / Language & Literature / LITERARY CRITICISM / LITERARY CRITICISM / European / French / LITERARY CRITICISM / Women Authors / Prostitutes in literature / Prostitution in literature / SOCIAL SCIENCE / SOCIAL SCIENCE / Women's Studies / Sociology / Women Authors / Women authors, French / Women authors, French -- 19th century -- Biography / Women's Studies
• ISBN: 9780802096913, 0802096913, 1442697199, 9781442697775, 9781442697195, 1442697776