Anna Kaczmarek‐Wiśniewska
Cahiers ERTA, Numéro 35, 2023, pp. 45-60
https://doi.org/10.4467/23538953CE.23.023.18473It would be difficult to imagine a Realistic or Naturalistic novel without the character of a servant, the most frequently a female one. Actually, in the 19th century, the servant becomes much more visible and important, raising sometimes into the position of the main character. The Goncourt’s Herminie Lacerteux, Zola’s The Kill and Maupassants’s A Woman’s Life depict three servants whose destiny is strictly connected to their mistress’ life ; they all have a huge influence on what becomes of the three ladies. The paper aims to examine the three models of interaction of servants and their mistresses so as to prove the importance of the servant in the « human document » created by the writers.
Anna Kaczmarek‐Wiśniewska
Cahiers ERTA, Numéro 15 La (r)évolution, 2018, pp. 75-91
https://doi.org/10.4467/23538953CE.18.015.9130In “classical” gothic stories, following the patierns established by E. T. A. Hoffmann or E. A. Poe, death is the starting point of the storyline which is imagined in relation to a central extraordinary event, like the appearance of a ghost, a phantom or any other supernatural being. In the 19th century, the fascination with achievements of human mind is completed by the study of mental diseases. Hence, the central event of most of the gothic stories of this time is the imaginary appearance of a double, an invisible persecutor or any other manifestation of the ideas hidden in a sick brain. Zola and Maupassant have created a number of stories following this pattern, where death is no more a starting point, but the last stage of a long process leading a man to madness. Thus, the dialectic of life and death is completely inversed.