Melodramatic Modernism: A Reading of Marie. A Novel about the Life of Madame Tussaud by Dorrit Willumsen.

Abstract

The historical novel Marie gave the Danish author Dorrit Willumsen her breakthrough towards a broader audience. By studying the literary strategies of the novel, this article suggests that Marie possesses a broad common appeal as well as being a challenge for literary scholars. The interpretation of the novel demonstrates that Dorrit Willumsen couples the historical novel with the melodramatic mode by organizing the narrative in a modernistic way. Thus the novel transgresses the limits between high and low culture. It establishes a pattern of reading which forces the well-made story of life upon the reader by using the melodramatic attitude as a way of orientation, at the same time as it involves him or her in the uncertainties that go with the interpretation of a life. The novel requires an unconditional surrender to the seduction of the melodramatic as well as the reader’s active participation in the act of interpretation.

Key words: Modernism, melodrama, historical novel, narrative, gender