摘要：By stripping the Bildungsroman of its traditional male associations and employing
the stylistic patterns of the Nouveau Roman, Monique Wittig achieved in L¡¯Opoponax a
reputation of literary innovation and infused a marked feminist element into these genres.
In this novel about the evolution of young women, Wittig carved out progressive
ideological terrain by suggesting same-sex intimacy among young schoolgirls, thus
¡°outing¡± the characters of her first novel against the backdrop of the sexist/heterosexist
society of the early 1960s. Wittig accomplished in this novel the important task of
identifying and valorizing gay women in literature through her unapologetic depictions of
lesbian romance and fledgling eroticism, but the circumstances into which she released
her characters were hostile. Although Simone de Beauvoir¡¯s recounting of the torture of
Djamila Boupacha had raised consciousness about the abuse of women in France during
this era, being lesbian in the anti-lesbian milieu of the early 1960s was nonetheless still
dangerous: in July, 1960, homosexuality was declared a ¡°social plague¡± in France
(Robinson 4), and until political solidarity within the gay community arose in the late
sixties and early seventies, most discussions of homosexuality were either rife with
homophobic dysphemism or heterocentric explanations of gayness: for example, in 1973,
a member of the women¡¯s group ¡®Psychanalyse et Politique¡¯ offered this interpretation:
¡°l¡¯homosexualit¨¦ primaire des femmes devrait n¡¯¨ºtre qu¡¯un passage vers une
h¨¦t¨¦rosexualit¨¦ retrouv¨¦e et vraiment libre¡± (Muchnik 64). Logically, given this
environment of antagonism, Wittig¡¯s subsequent narrative projects began to battle the
structures that had facilitated the establishment of homophobic/sexist hegemony, and
beginning with Les Gu¨¦rill¨¨res, violence became a central theme in her novels. However,
as H¨¦l¨¨ne Vivienne Wenzel notes, ¡°The serious reader of Wittig would quickly discover
that already germinal in L¡¯Opoponax are all the elements of feminist ideology which are
developed further in her later works¡± (Wenzel 265). Consequently, it is precisely through
the treatment of violence and bellicosity in this novel that Wittig first actuates a
subversive undermining and deconstruction of sexism and homophobia.
