Radclyffe Hall: de l'engagement à une ouverture éthique dans The Sixth Beatitude

Radclyffe Hall: de

l’engagement à une

ouverture éthique

dans The Sixth

Beatitude

Tina Terradillos

EMMA. Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier

Congrès de la SAES, atelier de la SEAC

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Since the 1970s, the memory of Radclyffe Hall has depended

for the most part upon one novel and its place in her work as

an activist on behalf of the social rights of women with sexual

and emotional ties to other women. The effects of near

exclusive focus on The Well of Loneliness (1928) and related

court cases has been to impose upon Hall a biographical

trajectory in which the single overriding feature of her life is

her emergence as an early leader in the struggle for gay and

lesbian rights.

Dellamora, Richard. Radclyffe Hall. A Life in the Writing. Philadelphia : PENN,

2011, i.

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La littérature, dans le sens hérité de ce mot, est

une idéologie. La littérature entretient les

relations les plus intimes avec la question du

pouvoir social.

Eagleton, Terry. Critique et théorie littéraires : une

introduction. Paris : PUF, 1994, 22.

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1. Entre engagement et autonomie :

la négociation de la pauvreté

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… the Lane that never put its nose to church, and

whose language at times could be past belief, and

whose Saturday nights at the Ropemaker’s Arms

had become the despair of all high-minded

people.

The Sixth Beatitude 182

5

HANNAH BULLEN stood staring seaward. Romney Marsh

stretched out between her and the sea, more than two miles of

greyish-green marsh with cattle upon it, sheep and strong

steers – for a long time ago the sea had left Rother. Hannah

stood staring as her forebears had done when they kept their

watch for enemy ships; a habit this, handed down from the

past. In Rother people would pause at their work, shading their

eyes and staring at nothing but the Marsh and those excellent

sheep and steers, and, when it was not too misty, the horizon.

The Sixth Beatitude 7

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Jumping-Jimmie made an effort to scratch his

shoulder; he pushed his hand under his threadbare

coat and his fingers closed over something that

moved: ‘Got you!’ he said on a note of triumph.

‘Got you this time, you product of hell!’

The Sixth Beatitude 30-1

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But his hand twitched away at the critical

moment. It was often like that when he tried to

kill lice, very often – St Vitus appeared to protect

them.

The Sixth Beatitude 31

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2. Engagement et agentivité

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L’engagement est […] à la fois rétrospectif (il

prend acte du passé) et prospectif (il regarde vers

l’avenir).

Makowiak, 22. Bouju, Emmanuel. L’engagement littéraire.

Rennes : PUR, 2005.

10

L’engagement est étroitement lié à l’action, mais

aussi à la parole : l’engagement se dit, et c’est en

se disant qu’il existe.

Makowiak, 24. Bouju, Emmanuel. L’engagement littéraire. Rennes :

PUR, 2005.

11

‘Three more ’spectors today,’ remarked Mother one evening,

‘and this time, if yer please, they was sent by London. They

been all over our ’ouse, if yer please, and passed the most

insultin’ remarks, same as they done at Mrs Butler’s. Went

into every ’ouse in the Lane –Mrs Roach she threatened to

bang their ’eads. Course, we all of us wants to be decently

’oused, still they’s no call to go burstin’ into our bedroom

and openin’ our cupboards the way they done. Father ’e

thinks as we’re all condemned, from what ’e ’eard one of

them fellers say’.

The Sixth Beatitude 157

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‘Do please go away, I want to be alone - I want to be

alone with my friend’ he told them. ‘You see, I was

very attached to my friend and this place was our home

for a great many years. I feel sure that you will not

want to intrude…’

‘Pore old chap – ’e ’s clean out of ’is wits’, murmured

Hannah.

The Sixth Beatitude 51

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3. De la transgression à une ouverture éthique

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Thus it was that Watercrease-Bill and his

friend passed their days in an almost complete

isolation, and this seemed to content them both

well enough, for apparently they much preferred

each other to anyone else, which perhaps was

lucky.

The Sixth Beatitude 29

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For years Watercrease-Bill and Jumping-Jimmie had been

carefully shunned by all their neighbours, had indeed

been considered a blot on the Lane. […] But now that

they were dead they belonged to the Lane as they never

had belonged to it during their lifetimes. The Lane was

now claiming them as its own […] so that what was done

to poor Jimmie’s remains was done to them all, by

implication.

The Sixth Beatitude 56

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Yet now that the law of the land had stepped in,

striking ruthlessly at the heart of the Lane, not one

of its inmates but felt regret, not one that was

really ready to leave it.

The Sixth Beatitude 162

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Radclyffe Hall: de l’engagement à une ouverture

éthique dans The Sixth Beatitude

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