Mes Tissages : self-fashioning and performance in the autobiographical work of Sand, Bernhardt and Colette

This dissertation examines the self-fashioning of three female writers/artists, George Sand (1804-1876), Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923) and Gabrielle-Sidonie Colette (1873-1954). Considering their shared affinity with writing and the theater, I argue that each author refashions her self-portrait and public image by means of a unique textual performance, which is conveyed through clothing on stage as actresses (Bernhardt and Colette), backstage as playwrights, and on the page as authors. My goal in this work is to connect the autobiographical corpus of these three writers to the art of needlework and textile in the context of genre, gender, identity and performance. I am particularly interested in the ways fabric serves as a literal and metaphoric second skin to Sand, Bernhardt and Colette, who present the private self (the feminine body) to the public. First, I will analyze how Sand uses a patchwork of various genres in Histoire de ma vie (1854). Next, I will focus on Sarah Bernhardt’s ability to use the autobiographical genre as a draping cloth to perform various identities in a fiction of her reality in order to conceal the self in Ma double vie (1907) and in the visual arts. I ultimately show how Colette embroiders an imaginary canvas as a form of metaphor in Claudine series (1900-1904), and La Vagabonde (1911) as well as three later works: La maison de Claudine’s “La couseuse” (1922), Mes apprentissages (1936) and Broderie ancienne (1944). Textual analysis of autobiographies, memoirs, auto-fictions, and manuscripts, as well as close studies of agendas, newspapers and correspondence comprise the various sources I examine. I most importantly focus on the role of textiles in and within the autobiographical narratives in order to analyze the authors’ strategies to subvert the dominant phallocentric discourses and power structures from the fall of the July Monarchy with the Revolution of 1848 to the end of La Belle Époque in 1914.