ABSTRACT
This chapter brings into dialogue two fairy-tale inflected and shaped works by the French writer Marie Nimier. It explores the ways Nimier uses fairy-tale topoi to represent two women contemplating and/or attempting suicide, and how water and its mythologies influence the women and the forms of their stories. Sirène (1985) is Nimier’s first work blending aspects of mermaid and water mythologies to probe the impact and influence of such stories on young women. La Plage (2016) sees Nimier return to water mythology to create her own, I argue, feminist fairy tale about an unnamed protagonist whose ambiguous conclusion challenges the neat resolutions of traditional heteronormative tales. Water and its mythologies can be seen as the fluid, guiding element leading Nimier to move from transforming fairy tales and myths to creating her own.
