The distant self: unexpressed homosexuality in Andre Gide's L'immoraliste

The preponderance of literary critics have characterized Andre Gide's protagonist, Michel, in his L'immoraliste as a Nietzschean narcissist and have frequently seen his homosexuality pejoratively, as a function of a putatively immoral ideological persuasion. Such readings evince a certain homophobic reaction to the text on the part of critics, as well as an insensitivity to the real dynamic in the text--Michel's struggle to fight both his conservative Protestant and academic orientations in order to affirm and express his true sexual orientation. Viewed in the latter fashion, the text is seen as a truncated portion of a broader coming out process, one that must necessarily include turmoil, ambivalence and intense introspection. Thus, Michel is seen more as a victim of strict social circumscriptions than as the victimizer critics have traditionally cast him.