HERCULINE BARBIN: Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a Nineteenth-Century French Hermaphrodite

by Michel--Ed. Foucault ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 23, 1980

Herculine Barbin was a hermaphrodite born in 1838, raised in the purely feminine environment of convents and normal schools, who at the age of 22 was declared a male and at the age of 30 committed suicide in a dismal Paris room. To Foucault (History of Sexuality), Barbin symbolizes the 19th-century fascination with the hermaphrodite--for, by then, the individual's freedom to decide his/ her sex had given way to reliance on medico-legal opinion for discerning the ""true sex."" But Foucault lacks the full documentation here, that enabled I, Pierre Riviere to stand for 19th-century attitudes toward madness, so ultimately Barbin appears simply as a curiosity. But on that score she is fascinating, particularly as she describes the state of being an unsuspected male in a cloistered female world. ""Falsely naive girls, old teachers who thought they were shrewd,"" all were ""blind as characters in a Greek fable when, uncomprehendingly, they saw this puny Achilles hidden in their boarding school."" The discovery is made only after Herculine has graduated from normal school and been teaching for some two years in a private girls school, all the while secretly sharing the bed of the other young teacher. Herculine's report of ""troubling sensations"" leads to a doctor's examination which leads to the obvious--discovery of a combination of male and female genitals that renders the propriety of her teaching position, not to mention her passionate friendship, highly suspect. Despite the advice of a bishop that she enter a nunnery and keep mum, Herculine allows her status to be legally changed. Then she is off to Paris and a job on the railroad--""like Achilles. . . armed with my weakness alone and my deep inexperience of men and things""--where, at 30, she comes to her tragic end. Coupled with the memoirs is an anti-clerical novella, ""A Scandal at the Convent,"" inspired by the case. The novella and a few attached documents (press notices, legal and medical opinions) add little, however, so ultimately we come back to Herculine: a gentle wolf in sheep's clothing, a former lady's maid who post-change applies for a position as valet. Curious indeed, and affecting.

Pub Date: June 23, 1980

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Pantheon

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1980

Categories: NONFICTION