Nineteenth-century France, obsessed with personal property, strained under multiple changes in government and the new 1804 Code Napoléon, becomes fascinated with criminal literature. Victor Hugo, Eugène Sue, and Emile Zola span the century with their criminal literature and fascinate their audience. Taking advantage of this nineteenth-century French interest in crime, these popular authors also spread political commentary through their novels. Theft, rape and murder are each treated differently in the nineteenth-century French Penal Code, and I suggest that Hugo, Sue and Zola mirror this inconsistency on the part of the law and its resulting effect on society so well that the out-of-touch law slowly draws nearer to the people it is created to protect. I demonstrate my argument by comparing nineteenth-century French Penal Code articles on theft, rape and murder to Hugos messages in Notre-Dame de Paris (1833) and Les Misérables (1862), Sues messages in Les Mystères de Paris (1840) and Zolas messages in Au Bonheur des Dames (1883) and La Bête Humaine (1889). This comparison shows that some nineteenth-century French Penal Code modifications occur after each of these authors publications, and moreover, these modifications are made in the very areas Hugo, Sue and Zola critique in their crime novels.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LSU/oai:etd.lsu.edu:etd-04162009-224518 |
| Date | 17 April 2009 |
| Creators | Lawrence, Megan |
| Contributors | Kate Jensen, Herve Cassan, Rosemary Peters |
| Publisher | LSU |
| Source Sets | Louisiana State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-04162009-224518/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached herein a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to LSU or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below and in appropriate University policies, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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