Love, Power, and Gender in Seventeenth-Century French Fairy Tales
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A01=Bronwyn Reddan
Author_Bronwyn Reddan
Category=DS
Category=FN
Category=JBSF1
Class
Contemporary Film
Conteuses
Courtship
Dichotomy
Disney
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
European History
Feminism
Feminist
Feminist Critique
Folklore
French History
French Literature
French Studies
Gender Studies
Happy Ending
Heroine
History
Hollywood
Literary Emotional Community
Literary Romance
Literature
Marriage
Social Status
Women's Studies
Women’s Studies
Product details
- ISBN 9781496216151
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 01 Dec 2020
- Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Love is a key ingredient in the stereotypical fairy-tale ending in which everyone lives happily ever after. This romantic formula continues to influence contemporary ideas about love and marriage, but it ignores the history of love as an emotion that shapes and is shaped by hierarchies of power including gender, class, education, and social status. This interdisciplinary study questions the idealization of love as the ultimate happy ending by showing how the conteuses, the women writers who dominated the first French fairy-tale vogue in the 1690s, used the fairy-tale genre to critique the power dynamics of courtship and marriage. Their tales do not sit comfortably in the fairy-tale canon as they explore the good, the bad, and the ugly effects of love and marriage on the lives of their heroines.
Bronwyn Reddan argues that the conteuses’ scripts for love emphasize the importance of gender in determining the “right” way to love in seventeenth-century France. Their version of fairy-tale love is historical and contingent rather than universal and timeless. This conversation about love compels revision of the happily-ever-after narrative and offers incisive commentary on the gendered scripts for the performance of love in courtship and marriage in seventeenth-century France.
Bronwyn Reddan argues that the conteuses’ scripts for love emphasize the importance of gender in determining the “right” way to love in seventeenth-century France. Their version of fairy-tale love is historical and contingent rather than universal and timeless. This conversation about love compels revision of the happily-ever-after narrative and offers incisive commentary on the gendered scripts for the performance of love in courtship and marriage in seventeenth-century France.
Bronwyn Reddan is an honorary fellow in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne.
