Le rôle de la femme disparue dans deux oeuvres de Patrick Modiano : Voyage de noces et Dora Bruder

Abstract

The aim of this project is to investigate the importance accorded to the personage of the missing woman in two texts by Patrick Modiano: Voyage de noces (1990) and Dora Bruder (1997). Where necessary, allusions to other works will be included in order to showcase contrasting or complimentary depictions of the feminine. As has often been noted by readers and academics, Modiano’s publications contain a strong element of auto-fiction or autobiography. Above all else, it is the memory of his father, Albert Modiano that is invariably revisited. It is possible to argue that the entire body of work, spanning more than four decades is an attempt by Patrick, the son, to come to terms with the influence his father had on his life and the subsequent burden that has been imposed upon him. Curiously, the role and representation of Modiano’s female characters has been largely neglected in critical discourses. I therefore hope to prove that the various depictions of the female figure should not be overlooked in favour of the more obviously visible portrait of the father. Modiano’s heroines are largely inspired by the presence of his mother, or by women who frequented a similar social milieu. In each account, the tragic heroine exerts an implacable hold on the narrator’s existential welfare. However, though some heroines may qualify as “maternal archetypes” this is not always the case. Dora Bruder, especially, reveals the enduring presence of a fraternal theme. In spite of larger, seemingly more universal or transparent motifs that might present themselves, the emotional core of each narrative involves the narrator’s inability to process the inexplicable loss of the heroine. I will argue that the male narrator’s predicament is determined almost entirely by the memory he preserves of the missing woman. This same loss is closely connected to the narrator’s adolescence and to what one might call the end of innocence or youth. Perhaps even more than the protagonist himself, it is the latent presence of a maternal or fraternal “substitute” that must claim responsibility for the haunted quality of Modiano’s literary voice. This project will propose a comprehensive exploration of the different representations of female characters, proving that the importance accorded to the feminine should not be neglected, but rather welcomed as one of the most important aspects of the Nobel laureate’s canon.