This research is a study on the subjectivity and the existence of women in the contemporary society, and its presentation by J.-MG Le Clézio in his short story entitled “Histoire du pied” (2011) through the strategic rewriting of Andersen's two tales ...
This research is a study on the subjectivity and the existence of women in the contemporary society, and its presentation by J.-MG Le Clézio in his short story entitled “Histoire du pied” (2011) through the strategic rewriting of Andersen's two tales “The Little Mermaid” (1837) and “The Red Shoes” (1845). Among several clues to intertextuality, we will look in particular at the images of the feet and the shoes of the three heroines: at times these images resemble each other, but they also vary in accordance with author’s intentions.
First, the feet of the three girls identically symbolize their lower social status; Karen's bare feet, wearing only big hooves in winter; the little mermaid's tail, deprived of human feet and legs; and Ujine's flat feet. All these images represent poverty, unprotected minority, the outsider, and objectified -even oppressed- body of which differences are disrespected.
Each of the three heroines has, respectively, a desire related to her feet or shoes, that can be understood around access to higher social rank. In the case of Karen, she desires the red shoes, to which she is not allowed. The Little Mermaid begs the witch to let her have the legs, so that she can stand next to the handsome prince. Ujine feels herself being more important whenever wearing her beloved high heels, and she adores her boyfriend's feet while she hates her own. These desires can be understood, according to Freud's psychoanalysis, like those of girls who, deprived of the penis, are seeking its substitutes.
In these two tales of Andersen, the heroines' attempts are unsuccessful. These attempts themselves are of sin and thus subjects of punishment in the vertical world of the author. His world presupposes three scales: the sky (god) - the earth (human) - and the underground (sea, mermaid, witch). Ujine is going through ordeals which are similar to Andersen’s heroines. The stiletto walk torments her feet with a sharp pain that the Little Mermaid felt. After falling in love with a pretentious man, she lets herself be dragged by his feet, which eventually lead her to the edge of a rooftop of a building. In addition, Ujine gets more and more used to being silent in front of her boyfriend, reminding the Little Mermaid who lose her voice to the witch in exchange for the legs. All three heroines alike, loss of voice suggests their subordinate status, according to C. G. Spivak a being who can neither speak nor hear themselves.
However, Ujine manages to escape her passivity and submissive state. Unlike Karen who asked to cut her feet in red shoes, or the Little Mermaid who chose to commit suicide instead of killing her love, the heroine of Le Clézio takes comfortable shoes, lives her life moving on from her past love and thus saves herself as well as the baby in her womb. In addition to this shift to feminism, we also discover the eco-feminist imagination in Le Clézio where bare feet are given the role of Ujine’s savior by directly touching the ground, a space full of vitality.
In contrast to Andersen’s vertical world, the world of Le Clézio can be defined as horizontal, by the inexistence of after life or impossibility of supernatural intervention. But a woman walking on high heels in this world lacks freedom, because these shoes, a symbol of the oppression imposed on women, force her to remain in submission - in other words in the “striated space”, according to Deleuze and Guattari notion. The city only turns into a “smooth space” when Ujine decides to live her life true to her own desire and takes off her stiletto heels. In this open world without limits, Ujine no longer lives as a “woman”, but practices her “becoming-woman,” according to the expression of the two philosophers.
The last question remains: what discoveries does the intertextuality of the two writers bring us? First, it reveals that two centuries from the days of Andersen were not enough for today’s young women as the minority to free themselves from an oppressive sexist world. On the other hand, Ujine, disillusions herself, and succeeds in breaking taboos and regaining her subjectivity and her rights equal to those of men: an achievement that was not allowed to our heroines in the 19th century. Ujine's victory does not, of course, mean that the equality between men and women is achieved today. But Le Clézio takes an optimist vision and says that it is a foreseen future of humanity that will brought up by women’s struggle