Du miroir au corps-miroir dans les romans d'Amélie Nothomb
From mirror to body-mirror in Amélie Nothomb novels

Summary/Abstract: Amélie Nothomb, Belgian writer of French expression, considers that true beauty is the subjective, and differs from the one imposed by society’s standards, and well represented in universes such as fashion and modelling. With her acute taste for contrasts, she presents in her novels, beautiful feminine characters, with angelic and pale faces, pitched against monstrous masculine characters. The characters are not satisfied with the reflection that the mirror offers them, precisely because this reflection is associated with the image they see projected in society’s larger mirror. For many people, beauty is reduced to physical appearance. Society is, in the nothombian novels, a fake body-mirror. For the extremely ugly characters, who inspire fear and aversion, the true body-mirror, where they can contemplate their essence, is represented by feminine characters, extremely beautiful, associated with angels, who are messengers of the faith in God, or, in this particular case, of the faith in subjective beauty.

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