This thesis seeks to examine the various ways sexual violence has been placed into discourse within French literature through an examination of transgression fiction spanning from the 18th to 21st centuries, specifically through their constructions of a female subjectivity. Beginning with an analysis of two historical texts, the Marquis de Sade’s Juliette and Georges Bataille’s L’histoire de l’œil, I trace the history of transgressive literature in France, demonstrating how these authors contributed to the discourse on sexual violence, while also examining the limitations of these works as it pertains to the possibility of a feminist discourse on sexual violence. Departing from the historical, I then move to a contemporary work, Virginie Despentes’s Baise-moi, to explore the significance of feminine writing on sexual violence, illustrating the need for this discourse to go beyond a consideration of the content of transgression towards an acknowledgement of the role of the female subject in constructing a truly feminist discourse on sexual violence.
