Hooked On Literature - Part 9

 Having won them over with my lectures on Racine, reading with them the first great novel of French literature, La Princesse de Clèves by Mme de La Fayette, was a very non-confrontational experience. It was necessary first of all, however, to address several objections they made.  The first had to do with what they considered the author’s pernicious use of hyperbole to describe the French court. Why is it, they asked, that every aristocrat is supremely handsome or beautiful? Why is the court of King Henri II viewed as the most glitteringly attractive?

The second objection bore upon the many secondary narratives that, according to my students, did absolutely nothing to advance the main story. Why didn’t the novelist simply do away with them? That way, the tragedy involving the three principal characters would have been much tighter and moved along much more swiftly. My reaction to their first criticism was to agree in part with them.

Certainly, Mme de La Fayette is indulging in gross exaggeration; certainly, the court of Louis XIV that she transposed onto that of Henri II a century earlier was never as uniformly dazzling as she asserted. But her purpose was to stress the fact that these noblemen, like the heroes of Racine’s plays, were liberated from the material contingencies in which ordinary mortals get bogged down, and so could concentrate exclusively on their two vital interests: love and power, the two often inseparably linked.

As for the secondary stories, granted, they do nothing to advance the main one, but in their various ways, they adumbrate the terrible emotional conflicts that will rend the hearts of the three principal characters. They all orchestrate on different registers the very same theme of the suffering passion inflicts on its victims. And once the principal story acquires its momentum, the secondary ones just fall by the wayside.For those who have never read La Princesse de Clèves or who have only vague recollections of the novel, a résumé will be useful to better understand the very animated discussions I had with my students.

The heroine, a 17 years old girl of noble blood, is the most dazzlingly beautiful creature in the whole French court. The Prince of Clèves, every bit her aristocratic equal, falls madly in love with her. The young lady is touched by his ardent passion without feeling any excitement herself when she finds herself in his presence. Indeed, she seems to be totally insensitive to passion and, consequently, sincerely believes she is incapable of experiencing it. Their marriage is for her an affectionate friendship; for her husband it becomes a source of frustration since she appears incapable of returning the burning love he feels for her.