ABSTRACT
Contemporary French playwriting is currently marked by a profound engagement in writing about women’s sexuality from a feminist point of view, specifically examining the prevalent theme of patriarchal sexual violence. Within this discourse, female characters are frequently depicted as victims of non-consensual acts or subjected to the desires of men. Yet, an essential question arises: What about women’s desires and the complex realm of their sexuality? This chapter explores the representation of women’s desires in contemporary French feminist drama. Specifically, it delves into two recent works: La dernière battue by Magali Mougel and Monstres d’amour by Rebecca Chaillon, which center around the exploration of queer women’s desires. Doing so, these pieces unveil the inherent complexities of the constitution of women’s desire within patriarchal, lesbophobic and colonial oppressive norms. This chapter examines the poetics of feminine desire in these texts, their dialog with representations shaping our imagination, and their questioning of women’s sexual agency. Each of these texts, however differently, seeks to write a female characterized by her intensity, her agency but also her ambivalences and multiplicities, reinterpreting the ‘monstrous feminine.’ Therefore, each text offers a unique perspective on the definition of desire itself, trying to compose a form that will make it sensory.
