Herculine Barbin: Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a Nineteenth-Century French Hermaphrodite
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Book Overview
With an eye for the sensual bloom of young schoolgirls, and the torrid style of the romantic novels of her day, Herculine Barbin tells the story of her life as a hermaphrodite. Herculine was designated female at birth. A pious girl in a Catholic orphanage, a bewildered adolescent enchanted by the ripening bodies of her classmates, a passionate lover of another schoolmistress, she is suddenly reclassified as a man. Alone and desolate, he commits suicide at the age of thirty in a miserable attic in Paris. Here, in an erotic diary, is one lost voice from our sexual past. Provocative, articulate, eerily prescient as she imagines her corpse under the probing instruments of scientists, Herculine brings a disturbing perspective to our own notions of sexuality. Michel Foucault, who discovered these memoirs in the archives of the French Department of Public Hygiene, presents them with the graphic medical descriptions of Herculine's body before and after her death. In a striking contrast, a painfully confused young person and the doctors who examine her try to sort out the nature of masculine and feminine at the dawn of the age of modern sexuality.
Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:0394738624
ISBN13:9780394738628
Release Date:June 1980
Publisher:Vintage
Length:224 Pages
Weight:0.59 lbs.
Dimensions:0.6" x 5.5" x 8.2"
Related Subjects
Biographical Biographies Biographies & History Biography & History Contemporary Fiction Foreign Language Fiction Health, Fitness & Dieting Health, Fitness & Dieting Historical Internal Medicine Literature & Fiction Medicine Memoirs Psychology Psychology & Counseling Science Science & Math Science & Scientists Science & TechnologyCustomer Reviews
3 ratings
textbook
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 15 years ago
Very pleased with the text i received. The order was fulfilled in a timely manner. no problems with anything.
Wonderfully Catholic
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 21 years ago
I thoroughly enjoyed this memoir of a fascinating but so troubled human being. As a Catholic myself, I am especially impressed by how wonderful the people who surrounded Herculine were. Here these simple people were faced with a most complex and mystifying problem and they treated Herculine with so much kindness. As all were Catholics, I enjoy this memoir as a fine Catholic book.
A very deep and intriguing novel!
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 26 years ago
I had the pleasure of reading this novel for a college class, and I must admit that it was psychologically stimulating in one sense, and poignant in another sense. The fact that the story is actually based on true events makes the novel all the more appealing.
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