Corporalités et identités monstrueuses : comment les femmes utilisent-elles la monstruosité pour réécrire les normes ?

Details

Supervisors

Sábado Novau, Marta

Faculty

Faculté de philosophie, arts et lettres

Degree label

Master [120] en langues et lettres modernes, orientation générale, à finalité approfondie

Abstract

enThis thesis aims to identify how women use monstrosity as a literary means to question societal norms. The research focuses on the study of three novels from different periods in English and French literature: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818), Pig Tales by Marie Darrieussecq (1996) and Frankissstein by Jeanette Winterson (2019). Their comparison shows that, through different forms of monstrosity including scientific manipulation or metamorphosis, the writers develop a similar dynamic of opposition to the norms of their time. Monsters are defined as figures that only exist outside normative categories which they thus criticize and, considered in parallel to the marginal position given to women in literature and in societies, they are shown to be an ideal literary means for women to express the possibility of individuality in otherness. Focusing on the themes of corporality and identity in the three novels, this thesis consequently depicts how the abnormal appearance and the plural identities of their monsters allow women writers to develop new understandings of individual realities outside of normative binaries.