The Beauties and Beasts of Nineteenth-century French fiction

For a number of years prior to commencing the research for this dissertation, the author of this study worked with ethnographic appropriations of popular motifs from fairy tales and myths. It was here that she first discovered the unique renderings of certain themes from one generation to the other and from one century into another. The investigation described in the pages that follow are but one facet of the author's interest in textual poachings, reader response, and horizons of expectation in literature, film, theater, and the fine arts applied to certain works of nineteenth-century French fiction.In this study of "The Beauties and the Beasts of Nineteenth-CenturyFrench Fiction," she has applied ethnographic research methodology to ascertain how the patriarchy reappropriated the Beauty and the Beast motif after theFrench Revolution as a tool of subversion and introspection. The techniques used by ethnography have been applied to those works of Victor Hugo, Jules Barbeyd'Aurevilly, Prosper Merimee, Henri de Regnier, Edmond Rostand, and GastonLeroux that used the theme to suggest alternative visions of the dominant ideology of the century and to portray plausible solutions to the problems inherent in a bourgeois society that embraced conformism and materialism over individualism and natural selection. Of particular interest to the researcher have been the artistic renderings of the authors' popular visions of the Beauties and the Beasts of the nineteenth century and their continued reappropriation during the twentieth century. These cultural artifacts represent the critical space between text and the enframing media of expression, permitting the researcher to explore the reception of greater and lesser works that used the Beauty and the Beast motif.