It is a well-known fact that fairy-tale princes and princesses will brave any obstacle in the name of love before getting married and living happily ever after. To a modern readership heavily influenced by Disney's reworking of well-known stories, idealized love is at the core of the fairy tale genre. In Love, Power, and Gender in Seventeenth-Century France, however, Bronwyn Reddan questions the monolithic representation of fairy-tale love, especially in the works of seventeenth-century women writers, or conteuses. She argues that conteuses use “their tales (to) develop a nuanced and complex theory of love that critiques the gender politics of courtship and marriage in seventeenth-century France” (4).
Rejecting “ahistorical definitions of fairy-tale love as a timeless or universal emotion” (12), Reddan develops a history of emotions methodology based on the work of Barbara Rosenwein and Monique Scheer to locate practices of love in their sociohistorical contexts. Across the two parts of her monograph, she shows that the diverse expressions of fairy-tale love found in the conteuses’ writings are emotion scripts reflecting “the norms of emotional expression learned by members of an emotional community” (16).
The first part of Love, Power, and Gender in Seventeenth-Century France, entitled “Formation of a Literary Emotional Community,” applies this definition to the conteuses. Showcasing their real-life bonds, but also textual strategies of solidarity and the identification of an ideal audience through framing texts, Reddan follows Allison Stedman in arguing that conteuses reimagined earlier salon sociability as a literary practice shared by an emotional community of writers and readers. “A Shared Vocabulary of Love,” the second chapter of part 1, turns to the specific language used by conteuses to write about love and its inscription in the seventeenth-century debate on emotions and passions. Comparisons with male conteurs and close readings of tales suggest that conteuses were far more influenced by their salon predecessor Madeleine de Scudéry's “Carte de Tendre” (1654), which presented a nuanced reading of love's possible outcomes, than by philosopher René Descartes's Passions of the Soul (1649).
The second part of the book, “Conversations About Love,” uses a series of close readings to examine the conteuses' application of this shared vocabulary of love to depict courtship, marriages, and endings. In “Courtship, Consent and Declarations of Love” (chapter 3), Reddan concludes that although conteuses actively promote the freedom for women to choose a partner and identify love as a prerequisite for marriage, declarations of love are still influenced by socioeconomic factors, gender politics and parental approval. Chapter 4 compares Charles Perrault's version of Riquet à la Houppe with Catherine Bernard's to emphasize the coercive nature of courtship and gift-giving for early modern women, whether love is in the balance or not. The last chapter, “Love After Marriage,” delineates the conteuses’ ambiguous positions regarding love through a study of framing texts, verse morals and unhappy endings. Love, in this chapter, appears at its worst: temporary or prompt to turn to obsession or hatred, it reflects the conteuses’ pessimism towards the limits on female agency and the patriarchal legal structure of marriage in seventeenth-century France.
As Reddan notes in her introduction, fairy-tale love has been largely ignored by literary criticism. In combining an history of emotions methodology and rich close readings of conteurs’ and conteuses’ tales, her book provides crucial insights into the conteuses’ contributions to the debate on marriage, love, and women's rights in the seventeenth-century. Precise and abundant citations, as well as first-person responses to them, also allow Reddan to clearly articulate the importance of her study to the community of fairy tale and early modern France scholars. This book will very fruitfully add to studies by Lewis Seifert, Allison Stedman, Sophie Raynard, and Charlotte Trinquet du Lys. It will also be of particular interest to scholars specializing in women writing and the history of emotions and will meaningfully enrich our collective historical knowledge of love.
