Can Melusine be freed with a kiss?

As everyone knows, Princess Fiona in Shrek was cursed to be transformed into an ogre every night, and only at the end of the movie with Shrek's kiss is she freed from the curse, to be her true self. Long before Shrek, there was the Roman de Mélusine back in medieval times, where Melusine is cursed to be transformed every Saturday into a snake-like creature below the waist. Opinions differ on why she was cursed, but all agree there wasn't a happy ending. No kiss. (The male equivalent story has the prince transformed into some sort of animal, where he is under a curse, like in Beauty and the Beast.)

What dark subterranean fears are these? Are they to do with fear of marriage? I imagine most newly wed couples today experience anxious moments in the first year or two: is she really all she seems, is he really a beast? What if she wants to kill me? It must have been even more intense among royals and aristocrats when marriages were arranged, often via long distance, when a prince wouldn't meet his princess until they married. It was easy to imagine the worst, especially if the prince or princess was insecure and this was essentially a real estate transaction. Arranged marriages persist today, all around the world.

In the most well known version (by Jean d'Arras), Melusine's husband is made to swear never to look at her in her bath on Saturday, but of course he does, or we wouldn't have a story. Melusine has been promised she will become a normal Christian woman if her husband obeys her wishes, but he suspects she is unfaithful to him and so he breaks his promise. The curse descends: she sprouts wings and becomes a dragon, flying away never to be seen again. Below she can be seen flying over Château de Lusignan in the 1400's.

I think it's understandable that husbands and wives might think of each other in terms of hybrid creatures and shapeshifting, since it's something that appears in all mythologies around the world, old and new. Partly it was a way to explain why some children were born with what we would now call disabilities... Melusine's mother was a fairy, maybe a dragon demon, and while the couple had 10 sons before the husband peeked, each son had some sort of monstrous trait.

But, the catastrophe that inevitably results in this story place it in an explicitly Christian paternal and moral context, in warnings by Catholic clergy about marrying outside your own kind, and the wiles of Eve, who may be in league with the Serpent. It's Lamia and the Sirens and mermaids and la Llorona... Here is poor Melusine on the dungeon wall in Niort, France. Blame the woman. Drive her off like the Beast!

Or drive in... Nowadays, Melusine appears on Starbucks' logo. It's often asked: did the company know the origin of the logo design they went with? Either way, good choice!

In France today, there are a number of châteaux and towers that Melusine is said to have built with her dragon skills. Melusine pastries can be found in Lusignan and throughout the Vienne département - in Châtellerault, for example, this is Chocolaterie Mélusine's logo:

Related links:
Artemis bathing here