Sex & The Book / Thérèse and Isabelle, carnal passion and forbidden love between hiding and homosexuality

Illegitimate daughter of a maid and a rich bourgeois who did not want to recognize her, Violette Leduc was born in Arras on 7 April 1907 and was raised by her mother in a rigid and claustrophobic climate, bordering on the morbid. His literary passion took shape in the college of Douai, but also that for his fellow student Isabelle P. and, later, for the music teacher Denise Hertgès, who was dismissed when their relationship was discovered. After moving to Paris, Violette did not pass her final exams and began working as a secretary in a publishing house. Thanks to the lucky meeting with Maurice Sachs and Simone de Beauvoir, both struck by his talent, he made his debut in 1946 with the novel Asphyxia, appreciated by the most important writers of the time. In '64, he almost won the prestigious Prix Goncourt with what soon became his greatest success, the autobiographical La Bastarda.

"You run away from me," he said.
I looked in the mirror at her hands gathered on her pubis, I felt a solitary pleasure.
"Aren't you undressing like me?" Isabelle asked.
I hugged her knee, looked at myself in the mirror, loved myself in her gaze.
“Don't mind me,” Isabelle said.
I detached myself from the mirror: sex from the sweet depths. But the mirror attracted me, asked me for more solitary caresses. I stroked Isabelle's lips and crotch with her finger.
I felt the weight of pleasure between my thighs.
"What are you doing?"
"Sleep for a moment."
“I wonder if you love me,” Isabelle said.
I didn't want to answer yes.

The largely autobiographical novel Thérèse and Isabelle, from which the passage is taken, tells the story of the love initiation of the young protagonist Thérèse (first name of Violette) by her schoolmate Isabelle, the aforementioned Isabelle P.

The work was actually the first chapter of a larger novel, Ravages, published in 1955 by Gallimard in a censored version and with large cuts including, precisely, the entire collegial affair. The relationship between Thérèse and Isabelle - made up of clandestine meetings in the dormitory, between classrooms, in promiscuous hotel rooms - was described in such a detailed and explicitly carnal manner as to cause a sensation. It was Simone de Beauvoir herself who invited Leduc to a work of self-censorship before proposing the manuscript to Gallimard. But Violette's revision was not enough: "If we published it as it is, the book would cause a scandal," wrote Lemarchand, the publisher. Some pages by Thérèse and Isabelle, albeit modified, were accepted La Bastarda, but we will have to wait until 2000 to finally be able to read this splendid and poignant story in full version.

See also

Erotic games for couples: 6 tips (and some ideas) for hot nights at i

How to make love the first time: how is it? It hurts? Our practical advice

The 10 best positions for making love in the shower

The scene reported takes place in the squalid room of an hourly hotel where Isabelle dragged Thérèse, tired of having to whisper between the dormitory curtains. However, the escape, albeit temporary, is experienced by the girls in a way that is anything but liberating. Therese notices a hole in the wall and is convinced that someone is spying on them. Panic takes hold of her and they decide to leave. Before this happens, however, the two girls begin to love each other in front of a mirror. It is this moment, in which Thérèse observes Isabelle's nakedness reflected and pushes her to touch herself in front of her, to reveal all the loneliness that this passion is imbued with, the need that Thérèse has to become Isabelle and to merge with her in order to find finally herself.

The love described by Leduc with powerful and nervous words, in a tense, lyrical and visionary style, is the impossible love of total fusion, an unpronounceable love made of hate and secrets, fear of being discovered, jealousy and desire to death. It is love for one's own double, love for the mirror. Isabelle is Thérèse and Thérèse is Isabelle. When they meet themselves in the world and are able to say who they are, they will stop loving that way. Yet, I'm sure, they will continue to dream. What else, if not the first love, has ever made us feel immortal?

by Giuliana Altamura

Opening photo from the film "Thérèse and Isabelle "

Here you can read the previous appointment with the column, Sex & The Book / When eros becomes obsession. Jealousy, abandonment and lesbian love in the verses of Sappho