The Story of the Marquise-Marquis de Banneville — Charles Perrault

The beautiful Marquise de Banneville meets a handsome marquis, and they fall in love. But the young woman is actually a young man (brought up as a girl and completely in the dark about her�or his�true sex), while the marquis is actually a young woman who likes to cross-dress. Will they live happily ever after?

In the introduction, Joan DeJean presents the fascinating puzzle of authorship of this lighthearted gender-bending tale written in the late seventeenth century in France. Was it Fran�ois-Timol�on de Choisy, an abbot who was happiest in drag? Marie-Jeanne L�H�ritier, an outspoken defender of women�s writing of her day? Or Charles Perrault, L�H�ritier�s uncle and the famous author of such fairy tales as �Sleeping Beauty�? DeJean argues that the tale was a collaboration of all three and discusses the permeable borderline between masculinity and femininity, transvestism, and tolerance�then and now.