Writings of La Belle Et La Bête
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by DCU Online Research Access Service WEAVING WORDS A Diachronic Analysis of the Representation of Gender, Sexuality and Otherness in Women’s (Re)Writings of La Belle et la Bête Thesis submitted for the award of PhD By Dearbhla McGrath School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies Dublin City University 2013 Supervisors: Dr Brigitte Le Juez and Mr Jean-Philippe Imbert, Dublin City University Internal Examiner: Dr Áine McGillicuddy, Dublin City University External Examiner: Dr Maureen O’Connor, University College Cork I hereby certify that this material, which I now submit for assessment on the programme of study leading to the award of PhD is entirely my own work, and that I have exercised reasonable care to ensure that the work is original, and does not to the best of my knowledge breach any law of copyright, and has not been taken from the work of others save and to the extent that such work has been cited and acknowledged within the text of my work. Signed:_________________ ID No.:______________ Date:_____________ 2 Weaving Words: A Diachronic Analysis of the Representation of Gender, Sexuality and Otherness in Women’s (Re)Writings of La Belle et la Bête Dearbhla McGrath Abstract This thesis endeavours to conduct a comparative analysis between two corpora of fairy tales. The first group of tales dates from approximately 1696 to 1756 and originated from the two French vogues of literary fairy tales from this era. The second group comprises contemporary Anglophone rewritings dating from 1979 to 1999. The purpose of this comparison is to investigate the lineage of similar tales by women writers and the representations of gender roles, sexuality and otherness in the tales, in light of the authors’ social contexts. The aim of this comparison is to uncover a common subversive message in both groups of tales that is specific to women authors in particular. The theoretical framework of the thesis is based on an interdisciplinary, comparative approach incorporating feminist criticism, intertextuality, reception theory and reader response theory. The tale type to be examined is the animal-bridegroom tale, more commonly known as La Belle et la Bête or ‘Beauty and the Beast’. In order to provide a context with which to compare the modern versions of the tale, Apuleius’ myth, ‘Cupid and Psyche’, is examined alongside tales by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French authors, namely Mme d’Aulnoy, Catherine Bernard, Charles Perrault, Mme Leprince de Beaumont and Mme de Villeneuve. Subsequently, these are compared with contemporary rewritings by Angela Carter, Robin McKinley, Emma Donoghue, Tanith Lee and Wendy Wheeler. Both corpora are analysed and compared in order to uncover a dialogic relationship that exists within women’s fairy tales throughout history. 3 Acknowledgements Thanks, firstly, must go to my supervisors, Brigitte Le Juez and Jean-Philippe Imbert for their constant support and suggestions. It is rare to find mentors who are as kind and generous with their time. This project would never have even started without their encouragement and it is greatly appreciated. Thank you, as well, to everyone in the School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies in DCU who helped me with their suggestions and support.Thanks also must go to Emma Donoghue and Wendy Wheeler who kindly gave up their time to answer my questions and for providing such honest and thoughtful responses. I am very grateful for their input. Thanks are also owed to my parents, Mary and Colm, who are always a constant source of love and support. Thank you for keeping a roof over my head when I should have been old enough and ugly enough to look after myself. Thank you, as well, to my sister, Aideen, for her kind words and for giving up her time to proofread for me and for her helpful suggestions. A mention must also go to my grandmother, Mary McGrath, who instilled in me a love of reading stories and to my Nana, Kathleen Finucane, a woman who told many a tall tale. Thank you to my friends who are an extremely supportive bunch, especially David Griffiths for his help in computer-related emergencies and Stephen Dunne, whose copy of Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber I borrowed about six years ago and have never returned. Sorry Stephen! Lastly, thank you to Ken, who has supported me in every way imaginable and who has had to witness the blood, sweat and tears (literally) that have gone into writing this thesis. In so many ways, I would not have accomplished this without you. I promise I will stop talking about fairy tales…for a while anyway! 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................. 8 CHAPTER 1 CRITICAL REVIEW ................................................................... 13 1 Critical Review ............................................................................... 14 1.1 Part I Fairy Tales in Context: Women Telling Tales.................. 14 1.1.1 Subversion and Women Tale Tellers ............................................... 23 1.1.2 The Fairy Tale as a Meme? .............................................................. 25 1.2 Part II Disrupting Borders and Binaries ..................................... 31 1.2.1 Fin de Siècle Thinking and Fairy Tales ........................................... 43 1.3 Part III Sexuality and the Beastly Body ....................................... 47 1.4 Part IV Analysing Beastliness ....................................................... 54 1.4.1 The Lineage of Mother Goose ......................................................... 60 1.4.2 Psychoanalysis of Beauty and the Beast .......................................... 63 1.4.3 Rewritings of Beauty and the Beast ................................................. 67 CHAPTER 2 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK: WEAVING WORDS .................. 70 2 Theoretical Framework .................................................................. 71 2.1 Part 1 Reception Theory ................................................................. 71 2.1.1 Hans Robert Jauss ............................................................................ 71 2.1.2 Wolfgang Iser ................................................................................... 75 2.1.3 Issues arising from Reception Theory .............................................. 79 2.2 Part II Intertextuality and Tale Telling ........................................ 82 2.2.1 The Resurrected Author ................................................................... 83 2.2.2 An(Other) Tradition? ....................................................................... 84 2.3 Part III Mythic Tale Tellers: Arachne and Philomela ................ 87 2.3.1 Arachne ............................................................................................ 87 2.3.2 Philomela .......................................................................................... 88 2.4 Part IV Reader Response Theory ................................................. 93 2.4.1 Interpretive Communities: A Fishy Question? ................................. 93 2.4.2 The Fear of Interpretive Anarchy ..................................................... 96 2.5 A Feminist Theory of Reading ......................................................... 98 5 CHAPTER 3 ORIGINS OF BEASTLY TALES ................................................. 103 3 Coupling in the Dark.................................................................... 104 3.1 Transforming Tales ....................................................................... 106 3.1.1 Lucius Apuleius (c125 – c180) ..................................................... 106 3.1.2 ‘Cupid and Psyche’ (Second century AD) ..................................... 106 3.1.3 Vilification and Vindication ........................................................... 107 3.1.4 Rereading and Rewriting the Myth ................................................ 117 3.1.5 Mme Marie Catherine d’Aulnoy (c. 1650-1705) ........................ 118 3.1.6 Serpentin Vert (The Green Serpent) (1698) ................................... 119 3.1.7 Mme d’Aulnoy – Questioning the Myth’s Morality ...................... 121 3.1.8 From Mythology to Social Commentary ....................................... 135 3.2 One Tale, Two Messages .............................................................. 138 3.2.1 Mlle Catherine Bernard (1662 – 1712) ....................................... 138 3.2.2 Riquet à la Houppe (Riquet with the Tuft) (1696) ......................... 138 3.2.3 Reversal of the Animal-Bridegroom Tale ...................................... 140 3.2.4 Vindication of Female Sexuality .................................................... 147 3.2.5 Charles Perrault (1628 – 1703) ................................................... 148 3.2.6 Riquet à la Houppe (Riquet with the Tuft) (1697) ......................... 150 3.2.7 Reinforcing Stereotypes ................................................................. 151 3.2.8 A Moral Contradiction? ................................................................. 158 3.3 Two Versions of La Belle et la Bête ............................................. 161 3.3.1 Mme de Villeneuve (c.1685 – 1755) ............................................. 161 3.3.2 La Belle et la Bête (Beauty and the Beast) (1740) ......................... 161 3.3.3 Further Reinforcement of Stereotypes ........................................... 162