Rival Sisters and Vengeance Motifs in the contes de fées of d'Aulnoy, Lhéritier and Perrault

The literary fairy tale, from its birth in the French salons of the seventeenth century, affirms itself in a privileged position for critical reflection on the constructedness of the cultural categories of gender and identity. This essay investigates the narrative strategies through which women fairy-tale writers Mme d’Aulnoy and Mlle Lhérititer contested the binary oppositions of fixed gender identity. More specifically, the analysis of the motifs of vengeance and rivalry in their versions of the Cinderella theme (Finette Cendron and L’Adroite Princesse ou Les Aventures de Finette) reveals how the early modern French women authors created a new type of heroine who redefined the notions of feminine and brought under scrutiny the masculine conceptions of gender difference and social roles.