An Erotic Classic?
Like much of Leduc’s writing, Th érèse and Isabelle is autobiographical. While attending the Collège de Douai girl’s boarding school, Leduc had affairs with a fellow student and a teacher. Her novella is narrated by seventeen-year-old Th érèse, who embarks on a sexual relationship with her eighteen-year-old fellow boarder Isabelle. In the book Leduc uses high-blown literary language in an attempt to recapture both the physical and emotional sensations she experienced during her first affair. Both what is described and the subsequent censorship of the text make Th érèse and Isabelle a valuable social and historical document, regardless of whether it has any artistic merit.
Stewart Home reviews Violette Leduc‘s Th érèse and Isabelle.