A young female is found living in the woods. She swings from limb to limb and eats frogs raw. She communicates with shrieks. She runs like an antelope, drinks water like a cocker spaniel.
Is she: A. an ordinary abandoned child; B. some missing link between humans and apes; C. an example of what humans would like be if they weren't socialized by society; D. a foreigner?
Just such a specimen turned up in the Champagne region of France in the 1700s, and Europe's intelligentsia never could agree on what to make of her. Even today, the exact origin of the famous "Wild Girl of Champagne" remains a mystery.
But what Julia Douthwaite, Notre Dame associate professor of French, finds equally intriguing is the discussion and speculation that followed her discovery. From it, she says, one can see where 18th century thinkers drew the line between man and beast, civilization and savagery.
In an article published in the journal Eighteenth-Century Studies, Douthwaite explains about the mysterious girl's life as well as the varied meanings that philosophers, naturalists and other writers of the day gleaned from her existence.
The girl -- eventually christened Marie-Angelique Memmie LeBlanc -- was guessed to be anywhere from 10 to 18 years old when she was discovered stealing apples from a tree near Chalons-sur-Marne in 1731. She reportedly had a small black body covered only by rags and animal skins. After her capture she amazed everyone by skinning and eating rabbits and chickens raw -- entrails and all. She had broad thumbs and long, tough fingernails that helped her climb. Washings revealed her skin to be not black but white.
The girl was eventually transferred to a hospital and later to convents. But the sedentary lifestyle and institutional food proved untherapeautic. She soon lost all her teeth, and her previously robust health was permanently damaged.
On the other hand, she did receive many famous visitors, including the Queen of Poland, who later wrote a letter on her behalf to her daughter, the Queen of France.
Douthwaite says the nuns taught Marie-Angelique the French language, manners, how to do domestic work, and Catholic dogma. She eventually became a novitiate at a Parisian convent. Before she could take her vows, however, the powerful French duke who was her protector died, and she was forced to move. She is believed to have lived the balance of her life on a meager pension in poor health and austere solitude in a Parisian garret.
Because Marie-Angelique apparently couldn't remember how she came to be a wild girl, speculation filled the void. A biography published during her later years suggested she had been an Eskimo child kidnapped from Labrador (which explained her apparent imperviousness to cold). The book said she was taken to the French Antilles to be sold as a slave. The ship's captain had painted her skin black in hopes of passing her off as an African.
The scientific community had other ideas about her identity. Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus cited the Wild Girl of Champagne as an example of a sub-species of humankind that he named Puella campanica. Members of this group were distinguished by bestial traits such as muteness, quadruped locomotion and hairiness.
A colorful Scottish judge and anthropologist, James Burnett, known as Lord Monboddo, considered the girl to be proof that humans in their natural state were inarticulate, nomadic creatures preoccupied by physical needs. On the other hand, her "taming" encouraged him and later writers that if wild men and women could be taught language and manners the same might be done for wild animals.
Douthwaite is working on a book about literary and scientific accounts of wild children discovered during the Enlightenment. Such discoveries, she says, were "something of a common occurrence" in 18th century Europe; 12 cases were reported between 1661 and 1797.
She notes that most Europeans viewed Marie's transformation from "avid carnivore and unsociable forest dweller into a toothless, meek novitiate" as a great triumph for civilization over savagery -- despite the unhappy life that resulted.
The scholar's article "Rewriting the Savage: The Extraordinary Fictions of the `Wild Girl of Champagne,'" appeared in the winter 1994-95 issue of Eighteenth Century Studies and won the James. L. Clifford Award from the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies.