3

In a century when the development of science and medicine altered the practice and the conception of childbirth, Balzac’s L’Enfant maudit and Barbey d’Aurevilly’s Une histoire sans nom both put the emphasis on this theme in order to open it up to a broader set of considerations—initially psychological and ultimately supernatural. Similar in many ways (through elements of sexual violence, Gothic motifs, births resulting in death, and the importance of the unconscious), these novels’ birthing scenes offer an insight into the authors’ underlying theories of the body. They also invite the reader to embrace a metaphysical interpretation of the world, where the life of the soul and the workings of kinship resist all attempts at a rational explanation.