1. Reading (for) the feminine: For a restricted thematics: writing, speech, and difference in Madame Bovary -- Smiles of the Sphinx: Zola and the riddle of femininity -- Une vie or the name of the mother -- L'Ensorcelée: the scandalized woman -- Eugénie Grandet: mirrors and melancholia -- 2. Breaking the chain: Salammbô bound -- Naturalizing woman: Germinie Lacerteux -- Unwriting Lamiel -- 3. Theory's body: Female paranoia: the case for feminist psychoanalytic criticism.