Learning English

There are numerous similarities also between d’Aulnoy’s and Lhéritier’s versions, but they concern mostly the psychological aspect of the story. In both women’s tales of this Cinderella theme, the preoccupation with the motifs of poverty and hunger is replaced by the references to the French court society with the obsession for riches and spectacular settings, more proper to the aristocratic experience of the salonnières. In their tales we are given three biological sisters (and not stepsisters as in Perrault), opposed to one another. Both conteuses provide a deeper insight to individual sisters’ heroines. The common characteristic is also that the sisters reveal to be collaborative when trying to save themselves and survive. Both women writers underline the importance of intelligence and esprit of their main characters, who are definitely more active than Perrault’s heroine: in fact Finettes from both versions don’t dream about the passive rescue by Prince Charming, even if they both finish to marry him.

The character of Mme d’Aulnoy’s Finette, read in juxtaposition with Perrault and Lhéritier, is transformed however from being unconventionally active in the first half of the tale into the passive one later through the narration. This closure represses the active woman, disempowers her to make her the hero’s sexual object, ultimately attesting the writers’ identification with interests of patriarchal power (footnote no.1). Patricia Hannon in her recent thought-provoking study of the contes de fées, in which she finds that the treatment of women is fraught with ambiguity, considers that d’Aulnoy’s tale marriage closure reflects the restrictions on women’s legal rights that accompanied the strengthening of the absolutism. Although she notes that Finette, is at once passive and active (because her character is partially imprinted by that of the Perrault’s Petit Poucet), she finally asserts, regarding to the tale’s closure, that “having been metamorphosed into a precious gem, the ornamented female body [of Finette] is posed to become an object of pleasurable consumption”. According to Hannon, “the chimerical idea of the dazzling “corps diamant” can represent not only arrested mobility, but arrested development as well” (footnote no.2).

The other thing which is remarkable regarding the d’Aulnoy’s, Perrault’s and Lhéritier’s tales’ closures, is that, whereas in Lhéritier’s L’Adroite Princesse the bad sisters are punished (“Reçurent, pour le prix de leurs lâches faiblesses, / Un prompt et juste châtiment”, 114 (footnote no.3), in the Perrault’s Cendrillon the evil is rewarded: “Cendrillon, qui était aussi bonne que belle, fit loger ses deux soeurs au Palais, et les maria dès le jour même à deux grands Seigneurs de la Cour”. In the d’Aulnoy’s tale Finette first avenges on her hateful sisters by splashing their garments with mud and shouting them “Altesses, Cendrillon vous méprise autant que vous le méritez” (455) while she is going with her magical horse to the Prince Charming palace to try the slipper. But afterwards “[…] elle les fit entrer, et au lieu de leur faire mauvais visage et de les punir comme elles le méritaient, elle se leva, et fut au-devant d’elles les embrasser tendrement, puis elle les présenta à la reine, lui disant: «Madame, ce sont mes sœurs qui sont fort aimables, je vous prie de les aimer»” (456). Apparently, Mme d’Aulnoy’s Finette Cendron ends in a quite similar way to the Perrault’s version: “[…] Le père et la mère de Finette revinrent dans leurs États, et ses sœurs furent reines aussi bien qu’elle” (457). Finette’s actions, like those of Cendrillon, establish the implicit and explicit moral message of the tale formerly developed then the moralité that shifts from abstract world of the fairy tale into the practical (objective, concrete??) world of the readers. But, contrary to the Perrault’s narrative and quite unexpectedly for the late twentieth-century reader, the d’Aulnoy’s fourteen verses of the moral do focus on the theme of vengeance which is best achieved through a magnanimous attitude:

Pour tirer d’un ingrat une noble vengeance,
De la jeune Finette imite la prudence,
Ne cesse point sur lui de verser des bienfaits;
Tous tes présents et tes services
Sont autant de vengeurs secrets,
Qui de son cœur troublé préparent des supplices.
Belle de Nuit et Fleur d’Amour,
Sont plus cruellement punies,
Quand Finette leur fait des grâces infinies,
Que si l’ogre cruel leur ravissait le jour;
Suis donc en tout temps sa maxime,
Et songe en ton ressentiment,
Que jamais un cœur magnanime,
Ne saurait se venger plus généreusement.

There is here an apparent ambiguity, regarding to the description of the sororal relationship, between the way the heroine’s behaviour is represented in the fairy tale’s closure (“au lieu de leur faire mauvais visage et de les punir comme elles le méritaient […]”, 457), namely her noble and generous conduct, and the author’s own consideration of Finette’s actions as vengeance (“pour tirer d’un ingrat une noble vengeance”) in the moralité. At first it seems that d’Aulnoy is judging what Finette did to her sisters as “présents”, “service” and “bienfaits”, but later in the moral this beneficence reveals to be the most cruel torture and punishment (“sont plus cruellement punies”).

Such a strange and explicit celebration of the vengeance, contradicting to the Christian ethics of forgiveness and reconciling relationships, could be explained by the fact that the d’Aulnoy’s and her conteuses fellows’ fairy tales were part of divertissement and fashionable salon pastime, and thus were not written with precise moralistic aims, unlike the male-authored tales (footnote no. 4). On the other hand, what seems striking is that the protagonist’s secret vengeance (“vengeurs secrets”) is considered to be a prudent behaviour which should be imitated by d’Aulnoy’s devote readers (“De la jeune Finette imite la prudence”). Since the prudence is classically conceived to be one of the four cardinal virtues, the authorial equation of the vengeance with a virtue is here moreover astonishing.

By introduction of the vengeance motif in the final moralité, d’Aulnoy shows a strong interest, shared by many of her contemporaries, in the psychological effects of malicious and unjustified injuries upon their victims. Revenge and vengeance are omnipresent particularly in the literary works of the XVII century . They are objects of anxieties of a great number of writers of the ancien régime, and are placed at the heart of numerous debates on justice, moral, love, and laws of civility. For this reason, an examination of how d’Aulnoy thematizes this ambiguous and contradictory passion and the study of the historical context can help to spotlight the rules, the practices and the dominant values which dictated the social behaviour of the century.

I will argue that the motif of the vengeance in the moralité, a structural element that allows the extension of the narrative action beyond the body of the tale (footnote no.5), permits the d’Aulnoy’s heroine to overcome the apparent passiveness and the disempowerment of patriarchal system. At the same point this motif reflects some important concepts of seventeenth-century aristocratic identity and shows how Mme td’Aulnoy reshapes her fairy tale with an eye towards their emancipatory potential. Furthermore, the displays of emotion to which the heroine is subjected bring her closer to the novelistic portrayal of characters as totally given over to passion.

Footnotes:
1. See, for example, Hannon (1998) 141 sgg; Seifert (1990) 21: ivi, 21: “[…] many of the conteuses’ active heroines uphold the domination of their gender and, ultimately, attest to women writers’ identification with interest of patriarchal power – their blind submission to/because of its control”.
2. Hannon (1998) 144.
3. Subsequent citations of Lhériter are by page number in the text edition of Robert (2005), d’Aulnoy’s citation are by page number in the edition of Jasmin (2003).
4. Mainil (2001); see also Jones (2003) 58 sgg. on the frivolity as the aesthetic principal of the conteuses’ writing in opposition to the didactic poetics.
5. Vengeance has long fascinated Western European literature: from XVI to XVIII centuries it seems to be omnipresent in tragedies, gallant, comic or libertine novel, and moral tracts on the passions which flourished particularly in XVII century. For a useful survey of the problem, see Keyishian (1995), Méchoulan (2000) 97; Roy (2007) on the vengeance in the French novelle.