Reconstructing Woman: From Fiction to Reality in the Nineteenth-Century French Novel

by Dorothy Kelly

Book Overview

Reconstructing Woman explores a scenario common to the works of four major French novelists of the nineteenth century: Balzac, Flaubert, Zola, and Villiers. In the texts of each author, a "new Pygmalion" (as Balzac calls one of his characters) turns away from a real woman he has loved or desired and prefers instead his artificial re-creation of her. All four authors also portray the possibility that this simulacrum, which replaces the woman,...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0271032669
• ISBN13: 9780271032665
• Release Date: March 2008
• Publisher: Penn State University Press
• Length: 184 Pages
• Weight: 0.92 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"