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Paper short abstract

This paper brings together disability studies and ecocriticism to illuminate how Sébastien Laudenbach’s 2016 filmic adaptation of the Grimms’ “Maiden without Hands” engages us to think about disability and the environment in ways that empower the heroine.

Paper long abstract

In 2016 the animator Sébastien Laudenbach produced an exquisite film adaptation of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimms’ “The Maiden withouth Hands,” in which a father is tricked by the devil into having to amputate his daughter’s hands. Laudenbach’s animation style complements his depiction of the handless maiden who is always already complete and empowered, and whose prosthetic hands—gifted to her at a princely court—only impede her ability to survive in nature. In a Télérama interview, Laudenbach discussed his desire to empower his heroine, able to “cultiver son propre jardin” or “cultivate her own garden,” quoting from Voltaire. “Garden” takes on both literal (she cultivates the garden to sustain herself and her child) and figurative meaning in the film. For Helena Federer, Voltaire’s expression has been understood as “a positive call for community action despite uncertainty or evil” (31-32). This paper will explore the implications of Laudenbach’s representations of nature and cultivating one’s garden in the film as it relates to the ways in which the disabled heroine is able to negotiate between, in Matthew Cella’s words, “a ‘habitable body’ and ‘habitable world’” (575). It brings together disability studies and ecocriticism to illuminate the ways in which Laudenbach’s film engages audiences to rethink disability and the environment.