L’aveu du corps : la marginalité révélée de la femme tatouée dans trois romans du XIXᵉ siècle

Abstract

During the 19th century, a new topos emerges in French literature: revealing a tattoo on a woman’s body provokes a shift in perspective on her character. This topos is built on the fact that tattooed women are then considered an unusual sight. Hence, it adds a transgressive component to a mark already commonly associated with prostitutes, criminals, and delinquents. In this article, I analyse three revelation scenes in novels that features tattooed women, or women with marks commonly associated with tattoos: Eugène Sue’s Les Mystères de Paris (1843), Alexandre Dumas’ Les Trois Mousquetaires (1844) and Oscar Méténier’s Madame la Boule (1889). Tattoos can be written as the symbol of the reversed norms of a troubling ‘underworld’, as a new kind of prisoner’s brand, or as a type of popular, semi-official marriage contract. But, most importantly, they seem to be the unmistakable sign of a woman’s marginality.

Keywords

• tattooing
• deviance
• literature
• 19th century
• history
• gender