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Access Type
WSU Access
Date of Award
January 2024
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Department
Classical and Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
First Advisor
Anne E. Duggan
Abstract
ABSTRACT
In this dissertation, I analyze three early modern fairy tales: “Riquet à la Houppe” (1697) by Charles Perrault and two versions of “La Belle et la Bête” by Gabrielle-Suzanne Villeneuve (1740) and Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont (1756) within the context of women used as forms of exchange. I explore the process through which the female characters in these stories come to accept being used as currency. I ask whether the female characters develop love as a form of emotional self-defense, and I propose that the character of Beauty in the Villeneuve and Leprince de Beaumont versions go through a “learning period,” where, as captives, they learn to love the Beast. Using the work of early modern historians, fairy-tale scholars, and psychological and sociological researchers, I situate the concept of love, its development, the agency of a female character, and the concept of woman as a means of exchange for forming a “willing” alliance or agreement. I place this process in sociohistorical context using the work of historians; together with considerations of Bronwyn Reddan’s vocabulary of love in the seventeenth century and using the influence of such contemporary texts such as Madeleine de Scudéry’s La Carte de Tendre. I propose that, although they are presented as love stories by the authors of the tales, and although they may be perceived as such in popular culture, instead the two Beauty and the Beast tales portray a process undergone by the female character that more closely resembles Stockholm Syndrome, where a woman falls in love with her captor. This observation has previously been made in many articles in the popular press upon the 2017 cinematic release and is shared by Jennifer Tamas regarding four modern films. I explore whether the female characters have true agency, grounding this analysis in conceptions of love in the early modern period. Placing it into a social and historical context, I investigate whether these texts show situations where the female character is pressured and manipulated, and whether the feelings she develops show agency. I explore how the three female characters, who in the two Beauty and the Beast tales have been paid as a price in exchange for the life of the father, and in the Riquet a la Houppe tale has been paid as an exchange for wit, ultimately come to accept their destiny and develop love as the only solution. Like Tatiana Korneeva before me, I use the work of Luce Irigaray and Claude Levi-Strauss, albeit from some different angles. I also use Ruth Bottigheimer’s concept of a commercial marriage and Korneeva’s reference to the character of Beauty as part of a homosocial exchange, to elucidate the question of women-as-currency. I use Michel Foucault’s work in forms of control to analyze Villeneuve’s tale. I also use the work of Althusser in my analysis of Leprince de Beaumont’s tale, and I build upon Jack Zipes’ insight in using Norbert Elias’ work, which Zipes used to understand Perrault, in order to myself analyze Leprince de Beaumont’s tale. I frame my discussion on the theoretical work of feminist writers like Kate Manne, Manon Garcia, and Luce Irigaray; and use domestic violence materials as well as clinical psychology studies by Baldwin et al. and the work Moore et al. in the experiences of sex-trafficked minors to shed light on the methods used by some characters in Villeneuve’s text. I also situate Leprince de Beaumont’s character situation within education for girls in the eighteenth century and their economic situation in a changing cultural perception of marriage.
Recommended Citation
Lara, B. E., "Stockholm Syndrome Or Love Story? A Socio-Historical Analysis Of Three Animal Bridegroom Tales In Early Modern France" (2024). Wayne State University Dissertations. 4043.
https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/oa_dissertations/4043
