The central theme in Delphine and Corinne, two novels by Madame de Stael, is that of the tragic and suffering heroine. The heroines die for ideals: those of freedom and the right to live their lives according to moral principles of the highest order. For Madame de Stael, the Parisian society she lives in, allows women no real freedom and therefore, there is no sense of morals where they are concerned. In Delphine, she draws a series of portraits of unhappy and psychologically scarred women, and she shows how prejudice and social convention brought this about. In Corinne, Madame de Stael's imagination explodes into her vision of the performing heroine who dazzles not only her fellow fiction characters but contemporary literary women. In both novels, the hero abandons the heroine and she dies. The theme of the tragic hero inspires early romantic literature. Madame de Stael introduces the essential characteristics of romanticism to the French in From Germany. The heroine's drama is her own. This thesis studies the guiding influences, the sources and the inspiration of Madame de Stael's ideas which led her to state that moral principles did not exist for women in the society of her day.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.60090 |
| Date | January 1990 |
| Creators | Slosmanis, Bernadette |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Arts (Département de langue et littérature françaises.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001237372, proquestno: AAIMM67829, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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