Reconstructing Woman: From Fiction to Reality in the Nineteenth-Century French Novel
()
About this ebook
Reconstructing Woman explores a scenario common to the works of four major French novelists of the nineteenth century: Balzac, Flaubert, Zola, and Villiers. In the texts of each author, a “new Pygmalion” (as Balzac calls one of his characters) turns away from a real woman he has loved or desired and prefers instead his artificial re-creation of her. All four authors also portray the possibility that this simulacrum, which replaces the woman, could become real. The central chapters examine this plot and its meanings in multiple texts of each author (with the exception of the chapter on Villiers, in which only “L’Eve future” is considered).
The premise is that this shared scenario stems from the discovery in the nineteenth century that humans are transformable. Because scientific innovations play a major part in this discovery, Dorothy Kelly reviews some of the contributing trends that attracted one or more of the authors: mesmerism, dissection, transformism, and evolution, new understandings of human reproduction, spontaneous generation, puericulture, the experimental method. These ideas and practices provided the novelists with a scientific context in which controlling, changing, and creating human bodies became imaginable.
At the same time, these authors explore the ways in which not only bodies but also identity can be made. In close readings, Kelly shows how these narratives reveal that linguistic and coded social structures shape human identity. Furthermore, through the representation of the power of language to do that shaping, the authors envision that their own texts would perform that function. The symbol of the reconstruction of woman thus embodies the fantasy and desire that their novels could create or transform both reality and their readers in quite literal ways. Through literary analyses, we can deduce from the texts just why this artificial creation is a woman.
Dorothy Kelly
Dorothy Kelly has been working with the tarot and teaching others for more than two decades. This book is the result of her frustration over the lack of books available to her beginning students that deal with the cards in combination. She lives in Australia.
Read more from Dorothy Kelly
Tarot Card Combinations Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Related to Reconstructing Woman
Titles in the series (4)
Love Cures: Healing and Love Magic in Old French Romance Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsReconstructing Woman: From Fiction to Reality in the Nineteenth-Century French Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRewriting Womanhood: Feminism, Subjectivity, and the Angel of the House in the Latin American Novel, 1887–1903 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWeaving Narrative: Clothing in Twelfth-Century French Romance Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related ebooks
How Novels Think: The Limits of Individualism from 1719-1900 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWomen, Compulsion, Modernity: The Moment of American Naturalism Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Naked Text: Chaucer's Legend of Good Women Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRenaissance Minds and Their Fictions: Cusanus, Sidney, Shakespeare Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Implied Spider Updated with a New Preface Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsInternational Journal on Multicultural Literature (IJML): Vol. 6, No. 2 (July 2016) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCaught in the Act: Theatricality in the Nineteenth-Century English Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fictions of John Fowles: Power, Creativity, Femininity Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsI Could Talk Old-Story Good: Creativity in Bahamian Folklore Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMemoirs of the Life of Henriette-Sylvie de Moliere: A Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNatural Space In Literature: Imagination and Environment in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Fiction and Poetry Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Rest Is Silence: Death as Annihilation in the English Renaissance Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Rule for Children and Other Writings Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Metamorphoses of Apuleius: On Making an Ass of Oneself Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLovecraft: Disturbing the Universe Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Making Men: Sophists and Self-Presentation in Ancient Rome Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Blue Studios: Poetry and Its Cultural Work Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Persistence of Memory: Organism, Myth, Text Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Future Indicative: Literary Theory and Canadian Literature Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEchoing Silence: Essays on Arctic Narrative Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Social Patterns in Australian Literature Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Language of Grace: Flannery O' Connor, Walker Percy, and Iris Murdoch - Seabury Classics Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGiving the Devil His Due: Demonic Authority in the Fiction of Flannery O’Connor and Fyodor Dostoevsky Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVictorian Relativity: Radical Thought and Scientific Discovery Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEmpty Houses: Theatrical Failure and the Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsScience Fiction and the Mass Cultural Genre System Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRecognizing Persius Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Dawning of Twilight: The Rise of the Female Protagonist Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Science of Sacrifice: American Literature and Modern Social Theory Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Girls with Kaleidoscope Eyes Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Gender Studies For You
Period Power: Harness Your Hormones and Get Your Cycle Working For You Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5All About Love: New Visions Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Boys & Sex: Young Men on Hookups, Love, Porn, Consent, and Navigating the New Masculinity Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lost in Trans Nation: A Child Psychiatrist's Guide Out of the Madness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Cunnilinguist: How To Give And Receive Great Oral Sex Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5The End of Gender: Debunking the Myths about Sex and Identity in Our Society Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Communion: The Female Search for Love Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Women Who Kill Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Queer Theory, Gender Theory Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Relationship Anarchy: Occupy Intimacy! Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIn the Next Room (or the vibrator play) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Trans Life Survivors Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future---Updated With a New Epilogue Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Women Don't Owe You Pretty Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Appealing Because He Is Appalling: Black Masculinities, Colonialism, and Erotic Racism Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Man Enough: Undefining My Masculinity Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBoys Will Be Boys: Power, Patriarchy and Toxic Masculinity Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Vagina: A re-education Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The War Against Boys: How Misguided Policies are Harming Our Young Men Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theory Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Letter to a Bigot: Dead But Not Forgotten Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5When Women Kill Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for Reconstructing Woman
0 ratings0 reviews