Hooked On Literature - Part 11

Another episode intrigued them. It was the intense jealousy that overpowers the heroine when she gets hold of a letter written by a jilted mistress to her lover and is persuaded that the lover in question is the duc de Nemours. Here they could admire the way the novelist depicts the conflict between the heart and the mind. Mme de Clèves always intended to remain faithful to her husband.

She always considered him to be morally superior to the man for whom she feels a violent passion. Why, then, should the heroine be disturbed by a letter supposedly written to the duc de Nemours by a former mistress? Why should it matter to her in the least? Since she is committed to her marriage with the Prince de Clèves, what happens or does not happen in the duc de Nemours’ love life should leave her completely indifferent. The problem the heroine faces—and my students could zero in on it quickly—is that her heart functions as though principles and reason didn’t exist. It maintains its own bizarre autonomy regardless of what the mind and moral conscience is trying to tell it.

As the class very astutely observed, Mme de Clèves is in a terrible bind. She wants desperately to love her husband but cannot feel for him the overwhelming passion that overcomes her every time she is in the presence of the man who is worth far less than him. She is powerless to synchronize the functioning of her heart and her mind. She cannot make her heart want what her mind judges to be the best for her.

But what about the nature of passion itself as the novelist depicts it?

Being young adults and not devoid of romanticism, my students found Mme de La Fayette’s conception of love almost too pessimistic for their own outlook on life. Being open-minded, however, they could concede that in certain circumstances passion could resemble an irrational fever and, once it ran its course, evaporate like some resplendent mirage. The way the three principal characters conduct themselves corroborates this view. The duc de Nemours is certainly a gallant gentleman and endowed with the most seductive charm. But his love for Mme de Clèves is purely a desire for conquest.

Even when he appears to forget all his former mistresses and neglects a possible marriage with Queen Elizabeth of England, one cannot say that his notion of love has really changed for the better. It has just become purer in the chemical sense of the term. He disdains all other women because none of them are inaccessible like Mme de Clèves. She is the only woman who has ever resisted him, and this is what makes her so irresistible for him.

Mme de Clèves’ husband is indeed a man of great moral stature. But the passion for his wife that consumes him and leads to his tragic death is, also, the result of her inaccessibility. Although she never resists his attempts to make love to her, she never longs for them, either. He possesses her physically but can never turn her on. This serves to intensify his love for her. Had his wife responded to him on the sensual level, his feelings for her would never have acquired the intensity of a fixation.