La Prostitution ou cette triste réalité du corps dans La Cousine Bette

The choice of prostitution as a subject of lack or privation seems to be a paradox. Displaying an apparent liberty of corporal expression, prostitution involves more complex problems. This freedom is an illusion because, in reality, the prostitute can be defined according to male parameters only, where she is reduced to an abstraction. Anxious to revalorize her "inert" body, the prostitute tries to break the male mold that imprisons her. La Cousine Bette offers the image of the devouring mother. Not only does Valérie Marneffe devour money, but, and more important, she is presented as a man-eater. The principle of consumption becomes the leitmotiv of the text. However, consumption involves certain regressive factors. This rapport between money and sexuality, as an effort to valorize the body, only serves to reinforce the idea of the non-viable nature of the body that needs the rehabilitating value of money to assert itself. The prostitute's body becomes aphasic because it is in constant need of metaphors and substitutes to find its specificity. Moreover, we will see how the prostitute, at the end of the novel, becomes a victim of her own consumption. All efforts to be independent, in the case of Valérie Marneffe, are thwarted by an infection caused by the oral injection of a serum that consumes her mind and body. (BJM)