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Robert Laffont
EAN : 9782221264751
Shaping : BROCHE
Pages : 392
Size : 135 x 215 mm
The metamorphosis of the young girl

Release date : 13/04/2023
This essay is an analysis of the different iterations of the Young Girl, as a
fictional character and a product of literature. Pierre Péju makes an
important distinction between the Young Girl, who is a construction and
an idealized figure, and the real young girls of our world, who are forced
to conform to...
This essay is an analysis of the different iterations of the Young Girl, as a
fictional character and a product of literature. Pierre Péju makes an
important distinction between the Young Girl, who is a construction and
an idealized figure, and the real young girls of our world, who are forced
to conform to this ideal.
He thus confronts the different images of the Young Girl in literature,
showing how this figure is the product of a patriarchal system that
imposes a normalised narrow frame of reference on young girls. The latter
are subject to expectations and requirements: they must be beautiful
and seductive in order to become wives and then mothers. They exist for
the sole purpose of meeting their Prince Charming.
However, Péju contrasts this figure of the Young Girl, the product of a
socio-political-cultural system, with stories of ‘escapees and escape
routes’, in which the girls manage to escape the fate towards which, inexorably,
they are being directed. He bases this argument in particular on
Ovid’s Metamorphoses: on several occasions, young girls shapeshift to
escape those who pursue them, to escape their own beauty. They refuse
the destiny imposed on them.
Péju shows us here the richness and multiplicity of possible escapes and
destinies, through various classical and traditional texts.
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EAN : 9782221264751
Shaping : BROCHE
Pages : 392
Size : 135 x 215 mm
Robert Laffont