Pedestal o fango

Abstract

The notion of “woman” has been determined by male thinking throughout history. If in the ancient Greece Aristotle assigned her the role of “slave”, in the Middle Ages a woman was Eve and Mary, the harlot of Babylon, “vessel of sin”, and “the wife clothed with the sun” (Ryabov, 1999: 18). The female image in culture is extremely contradictory: it embodies sin or purity. Pedestal or mire, this antithesis has haunted women for centuries in French literature in the pen of Molière, an image severely scrutinised by Rousseau, ironized by Beaumarchais, idealised by Hugo and Musset, defended by Stendhal and Rosny.Our study analyses the evolution of the representation of gender in French literature in the 18th and 19th centuries, which allows us to establish an undeniable connection with the feminist movement of that period and the creation of the idea of “femme nouvelle”.