La mythologie féminine dans <i>Les fées ont soif</i> : un exorcisme par le langage

Authors

  • Anne Mireille Stock

Keywords:

feminist theory, feminist theatre, Quebec, Denise Boucher, Les fées ont soif,

Abstract

In Denise Boucher's 1978 play Les fées ont soif, (or The Fairies are Thirsty), we see the bringing to life of three incarnations of the woman: the mother, the prostitute and the Virgin. The author, in an attempt to illustrate the precise condition of women in Québec society, presents us with these iconic forms created and represented by a patriarchal discourse. The characters of this all-female work find themselves, as the curtain opens, isolated in their respective prisons: Marie in her home; Madeleine on the street; and the Virgin, encased in a plaster shell. But each of the three members of this "Holy Trinity" gradually realize the presence of the women who surround her as their discourse slowly transforms from monologue into dialogue. By engaging themselves in a double process of rupture and entry, that is to say the separation from their physical and emotional constraints and the entry into a new, feminist discourse, these former icons of femininity create for themselves new discursive possibilities which we will examine with the aid of the theories of Hélène Cixous, France Théoret and others.

Author Biography

Anne Mireille Stock

I am currently a second-year PhD student in French literature at the University of Western Ontario. While I have a considerable interest in Québec literature of the twentieth century, my main area of study is women's epistolary writing in eighteenth-century France, particularly those writers of the latter part of the century who were affected, both negatively and positively, by the works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his ambiguous position with regards to women and writing. As a theoretical base, my interest lies mainly in theories of gender including women's studies, theories of masculinity and Queer Theory and more specifically the transgression of gender laws and roles in writing. In my research, I am committed to the study of those "écrivaines" whose epistolary writings, both fictional and authentic, have either been overlooked or forgotten by the literary institution over the course of the past centuries and, as part of my commitment to this personal and academic project, I have been an active participant in various organizations and events which promote and support such interests.

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Issue

volume 1 issue 1 (July 2001)

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Articles

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