Conclusion: Mélusine's European Dimensions

Summary

It may seem odd to have opened this book with the deceptively simple question of ‘what was she, the Fairy Melusine?’, since I have argued from the start that Mélusine is a highly ambiguous character, and that this research is not intended as a neat overview of the evolution of the Mélusine figure in the period 1400 to 1600. Instead of giving an – inevitably rather artificial – grand narrative on the nature and meaning of the Mélusine figure, this study has offered a detailed look at several localized versions of a shared romance, created at a time when that romance was at the height of its popularity. In other words, rather than answering the question of who or what Mélusine is, this study has shown how the people who played a crucial role in the story's transformation into one of Europe's most popular romances – the French authors and the various translators, but also the scribes, printers, illuminators, and woodcutters – attempted to define Mélusine's ambiguous, multifaceted character as they reinterpreted and reshaped the narrative.

In chapter 1 we saw that Mélusine already undergoes several significant mutations within a French-language context alone. Both Jean d’Arras's HM and Coudrette's RP present her as a complex and ambiguous mixture of fairy, human, animal, virtuous Christian, and the mother of part-monstrous sons. They also agree that she is a positive figure: though her hybrid body challenges the conventional norms of chivalric romance, Mélusine is a marvel of God – not a demonic serpent woman – who guides Raymondin and helps her sons become paragons of chivalry. Yet there are important differences: the HM underscores Mélusine's fairy nature from the start and shapes the reader's expectations through various analogous stories of unions between humans and fairies, whilst in the RP Mélusine's fairy origins, the details of her curse, and her eventual fate unfold much more gradually. Coudrette also devotes more space to highlighting Mélusine's Christian nature.

Crucially, it is the ending where the two French versions differ most. In the HM, Mélusine remains a problematic hybrid figure even after her transformation since, though her body mutates into a serpent, she is still human inside her scaly skin.