We all know it, this collection “Women who…”, launched by Laure Adler and her various collaborators. I remember the liberating joy caused by the mere mention of the titles, as if they alone revived this little something vital in us, still too little named at the time, this knowledge that we all carried and which consisted to enclose the girls that we were, those who stray a little from the traced path, in a narrative made up of a thousand dangers, for themselves and for others. Whether they read, whether they write, whether they are musicians or artists, the women highlighted in the collection made it possible for us to fold down the large sections of this very small box in which we try to keep women, so that they evolve without disturbing the world, its smooth running, its satisfactory continuation for the human half of humanity.
In 2024, it already seems far away to me that time when it was revolutionary to simply name these things, in titles that said it all.
Now, for a host of reasons, it is this title and its variations that haunted me throughout this post-Oscar week where we, let’s say it gently, preferred to reward a film that tells the story sadly true of a band of men dedicated to the destruction of the world than a film telling the still too imaginary story of a woman who gives birth to herself, freeing herself from all the men who want her to possess, while remaining profoundly free and, above all, led by this magnificent human disposition: curiosity.
Indeed, it is the primary disposition of which little girls, in their development, can find themselves deprived when they face desires which are not theirs, but which concern them. The psychologist that I am, having worked so much with women victims of abuse and various sexual violence, can only find resonance in this fable, in which the girl child placed in a woman’s body must face a thousand attempts to possession, various imprisonments.
And that’s where the strength of this film lies, in my opinion. Even more than in its magnificent settings or the madness both sweet and ecstatic in which it is draped, the power of this film lies, in my opinion, in the propensity it has to place in our collective imaginations the story of a woman who retains her curiosity, through what can be compared to the “normal” development of so many girls/women. In doing so, she leaves it to the men she leaves to face their own madness.
It is Little Red Riding Hood’s curiosity that brings her face to face with the danger of the wolf. If she had not left this path laid out before her, if she had not wanted to discover the forest, she would not have put herself in danger! It is also the curiosity of his wives that pushes Bluebeard to execute them. How far away is the germ of this prohibition, in the stories we tell our girls and boys.
However, this is what places the magnificent character of Bella Baxter in an approach as close as possible to what constitutes a form of embodied empiricism of which girls are too often deprived in their lives. Bella experiences the world, starting from her intimate access to things, passing it through her own sensations, letting the imprints of knowledge left on her gradually build her universe of meaning. Bella is first and foremost the daughter of “God” (her father, Dr. Godwin, a magnificent nod to both patriarchy and institutionalized religion, both of which rely on a narrative in which girls are at both their creature and their experimental grounds). Then, she becomes a daughter of herself (I salute here my friend Gabrielle Boulianne-Tremblay, who, as a trans woman, knows something of the long road which consists of giving birth to oneself, as a female).
Sunday evening, Emma Stone won the best actress statuette, fortunately. In her speech, after having been bothered by her broken dress, openly vulnerable by speaking of these panics which often overwhelm her, she delivered a speech consistent with one of the major principles of femininity: she effaced herself, to to honor “the whole”, remembering that the most magnificent thing in creation is to work to put the individual intelligence of each person at the service of a work which always ends up surpassing us.
Building together, rather than destroying alone, is indeed a disposition of the feminine, which, as thought by Jung, does not belong only to the feminine gender, but which would have an interest in spreading into our individual and collective psyches through the times that are running.
I often remember the last sentence of the film Polytechnic de Villeneuve, the one where the character of Karine Vanasse, learning that she is carrying a child, says something like: “If I have a daughter, I will teach her that the world belongs to her. If it’s a boy, I will teach him love. »
I am the mother of two children, one born a boy, the other born a girl, and I try to teach them both. To my daughter, I prefer to tell the version of Bluebeard where it is the curiosity of the last wife that saves her, while she does not respect the injunction which forbids her to open THE door of the castle behind which she will discover the bodies of those who preceded her. In doing so, she will be able to shed her illusion projected onto the strong and handsome Bluebeard and see him as he is.
Of course, I dream of a world where I can tell her that she doesn’t have to protect herself from wolves, because I would much rather teach her to never trade her curiosity for safety. However, I still have to remind him that if grandma has big ears and big teeth, it is because it is not grandma, but the wolf.
Today, there will also be Bella Baxter, in the collection of characters about whom I will be able to speak to her, but also to all those women who have still too often been deprived of their curiosity.