Medicine and mythology in Émile Zola’s La Curée (1872)

This article argues that Zola’s use of Ovid and the Phaedra myth in La Curée (1872) illustrates medical attitudes to the female body in nineteenth-century France through his protagonist Renée. As medical authorities supported the early Third Republic (1870–1940) to repopulate the country, women’s bodies came under intense scrutiny. The professionalization of medicine from the mid-century medicalized the ‘ideal’ woman’s body, and any deviation led to charges of pathology or degeneration. The references to Ovid’s Metamorphoses , with their constantly transforming bodies, provide a direct challenge to the ideal fixedness of the nineteenth-century female anatomy. The Phaedra myth materializes patriarchal law, so that, in combination with the meningitis, hysteria, and degeneration symptoms throughout the novel, the action of patriarchy becomes visible through Renée’s body. By juxtaposing the medical with the mythological in his novel, Zola outlines the politics and limitations to which the feminine body is subject.