Femme fragile

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The term femme fragile (dt. "Fragile woman") is the conceptual counterpart to the self-assured femme fatale .

Mark

This image of women can mainly be found in the period from 1890 to 1905. A femme fragile is similar to the femme fatale in some respects, but the femme fragile implements its plans more in secret, the femme fatale, on the other hand, in public. Outwardly, the femme fragile is "delicately limbed [...], slender, tired [...], almost childlike." Her complexion reveals " morbidity " and features "increased sickness". After all, a femme fragile is also a woman who seems too weak and helpless on her own and therefore needs the protection of a man.

Examples from the literature

Arthur Schnitzler , one of the most important authors of Viennese Modernism , liked to use such female figures in his works. Hugo von Hofmannsthal called this "type of woman a cocotte in minor". In Gerhart Hauptmann's novella “ Bahnwärter Thiel ” the figure of femme fragile is realized in Minna. A characteristic example is also the figure of Claribel in Le Crépuscule des Dieux (1884) by the French Décadence author Élémir Bourges (translation into German 2013 under the title Götterdämmerung ).

literature

  • Ariane Thomalla: "Die femme fragile", Bertelsmann-Universitätsverlag, 1972, ISBN 3-571-09064-0
  • Alexandra Beilharz : The Décadence and Sade. Investigations into narrative texts of the French fin de siècle. (Therein Chapter V.2. 'The femme fragile as decadent Justine'), ISBN 3-476-45161-5

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Emil Brix, Lisa Fischer: The women of Viennese modernism . In: Publications of the Austrian Research Association. Verlag für Geschichte und Politik, Vienna 1997, ISBN 3-486-56290-8 , p. 163 .
  2. ↑ Stephanie Catani: The fictional gender: Femininity in anthropological drafts and literary texts between 1885 and 1925 . In: Würzburg Contributions to German Philology . tape 28 . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2005, ISBN 3-8260-3099-0 , p. 102 ff . ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed January 8, 2017]).
  3. ^ Emil Brix, Lisa Fischer: The women of Viennese modernism . In: Publications of the Austrian Research Association. Verlag für Geschichte und Politik, Vienna 1997, ISBN 3-486-56290-8 , p. 164 .