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Philosophie amoureuse et destinée de la mal mariée au XIXe siècle

This thesis examines the character of the unhappy bride in three French novels of the 19th century: Le Lys dans la vallee (1836) by Honore de Balzac, Madame Bovary (1857) by Gustave Flaubert and L'Assommoir (1877) by Emile Zola. It compares the heroines' tragic destinies based on the following points: childhood; education; marriage; the philosophy of love and psychology; and escapism and death. We are shown that it is education that leads to the philosophy of love, which is filled with ideas of platonic love, and that unhappy marriages involve compensation. Research by psychoanalyst Karen Horney is applied to the characters found in the novels to explain their deviant behaviour (masochism, bovarism, narcissism, detachment). Each heroine demonstrates a tendency towards the ideal and illusions inherited from romanticism. Their fates are sealed with the failure of their dreams and the victory of reality over fantasy.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.81478
Date January 2004
CreatorsAubry, Sophie
PublisherMcGill University
Source SetsLibrary and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada
LanguageFrench
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation
Formatapplication/pdf
CoverageMaster of Arts (Département de langue et littérature françaises.)
RightsAll items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated.
Relationalephsysno: 002177925, proquestno: AAIMR06495, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest.

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