SOURCE: Conley, Katharine. “Writing the Virgin's Body: Breton and Eluard's Immaculée Conception.” French Review 67, no. 4 (March, 1994): 600-08.

In the following essay, Conley discusses the representation of women in L'Immaculée conception, a book of surrealist poetry co-written by Eluard and André Breton.

For Andre Breton, Francis Picabia's work merited acclaim as both modern and surreal because, for Breton, Picabia: “demeure le maître de la surprise. … La surprise commande, en effet, toute la notion du ‘moderne’ au seul sens acceptable de préhension, de happement du futur dans le présent” (“Surréalisme” 221). “Le maître de la surprise”—the “master of surprise”—is an interestingly problematic designation, and no figure better embodies this surrealist paradox than Woman, because of the way the Surrealists continuously tried to “master” her by writing about her as an object of desire at once fearsome and alluring.

Surprise is characteristic of...