The Pleasures of the Text: Violette Leduc and Reader Seduction

The book covers a lot more than Therese and Isabelle but that's the only part I want to write about. I'll note the pages that most of the movie/book related material refers to.

Page 72: Violette claimed to be masturbating to 'locate' Therese and Isabelle, a gift in the form of a loving touch to the reader.

Page 85:Therese and Isabelle was written originally in the 1950's.

Page 86: The novel recounts the sexual initiation of Therese.

The book can be read as a key to reading Leduc and her relationship with the reader.

Page 87: Schools like the one Therese and Isabelle attended were walled in to protect the virginity of the young charges. It formed a cocooned, all-female world.

Page 89: The scene in the toilet stall where Therese and Isabelle meet is a extremely important one.

Page 90: Leduc forces us to confront the fact that we as readers are an audience, in a sense, we are voyeurs. At the same time, however, we are participants.

Page 91: The pleasure that Therese and Isabelle take with each other rejects the traditional gender oles and the power dynamos that accompany them to enjoy pure, unfettered and unapologetic pleasure.

Page 92: Therese gets upset when she thinks someone else is watching her have sex with Isabelle (whether or not there actually is a person watching) and she stops what they are doing to cover Isabelle.

Page 94: When the two are walking in the street of the town Therese was wary of them holding hands in the street. She wanted to protect Isabelle from strangers.

The time the two were in the toilet stall and the time they were in the room in the brothel are similar in that there is the perceived danger of someone interrupting them. (My interruption of what the book is saying on this page.)

Page 96: Therese's pleasure derives, when making love to Isabelle, not from the satisfaction of her lover but from the image of her performance in the mirror and the erotic (voyeuristic) look that is reflected back (from the mirror.)

Page 98: The role of the spectator in the film mirrors that of the reader of the text. They are sanctioned voyeurs in both cases.