#‘is this why there are fewer female giants in literature than male giants because society does not allow women to be gross’

[thestuffedalligator]

Gargantua is a giant of classic French literature, and the impression I had when I first read the book was that Rabelais made him a giant because that made him a size where impolite functions of the body, things that weren’t discussed in polite society, were simply unavoidable.

And this is important for the text because. Well because Rabelais wanted to write a filthy comedy and have a great time, but it’s also an element in the text’s satire on polite society. You cannot ignore the fact that Gargantua pisses. Everyone else in 16th century French polite society could pretend that they didn’t piss, or at least could avoid talking about the fact that they had to piss, so Rabelais made Gargantua a character where society couldn’t ignore the fact that he pisses, because when he pisses he drowns people.

And this sort of scatalogical humour is a recurring theme with giants in literature. Brobdingnagian noblewomen in Gulliver’s Travels piss. Gulliver, a giant in Lilliput, poops. The BFG farts. There’s a crude reality of the body that society pretends to not exist, but cannot be ignored when you’re 40 feet tall because frankly the piss has gotta go somewhere.