"The novel outruns des Grieux," I said. That's something we can see as readers.
Part of it requires us realizing that our vantage point is in some ways superior to
that of the protagonist, him or herself. This is one of the privileges that we
have as readers, it's not at all clear that we have that privilege about
ourselves. We can't see ourselves in the round, that
it- every time you try on clothes it takes a special mirror to show you what
your butt looks like with the clothes that you're trying on.
We can't see even our face without a mirror. But novels themselves have this
kind of, sort of multiple images to them that we begin, get a kind of 360 degree
view, or look at the central characters.
I'm going to be making this claim for almost every book in this course, that
the novel outruns the protagonist, which means attend to the language of the
novel, attend to its metaphors, its figures.
It- this is not simply a form of of sort of literary gamesmanship.
This is rather, adding to our perspective, getting a more rounded sense of what's
actually happening in these stories. And with that in mind, I want to approach
another arena, where in some ways the language of the novel says things to us
about important matters that the protagonists, both protagonists, Manon and
des Grieux, would be incapable of saying. Which leads me to a question, an issue
that everybody I think will understand at once.
Which is what are the reasons that couples are couples?
What is the glue, what's the, the sort of fuel that, that makes coupling what it
is? And I use that form intentionally,
coupling, and of course, one of the answers is sex.
And this novel, published in 1731, is not pornographic, there were books that were
pornographic then, it's not. And yet, it manages, I think, to convey
to us that part, a big part, of the sort of, substance of the relationship between
this young man and this young woman is their life in bed, their sexuality.
After all, if the plot is the two of them constantly being separated, hence their
stratagems for coming back together, we can say the plot is an effort to maintain
their union. Or, we could add, an adjective to
maintain their sexual union also. Early in the book Manon tells him that he
must realize, that I quote, "I was the only one," that she was the first to admit
to, "with whom she could taste the full pleasure of love," and the French gets
that across, it's the subjunctive:
"Le seul avec qui elle peut goûter toute les plaisirs- tous les plaisirs de l'amour."
I think that's orgasm. I think that that's what, that's not the
term that, that Prévost's going to use, but that the two of them are right together,
they know that, and it gives, eh, the reason that I am
pushing this, is that, if this young man is at war with his society, and his is
offering a picture of love, a new picture, as a ethos, human feeling as a
new value, that trumps other values, including religion,
then it would seem to me that the warfare is also going to show the way in which
the society fights back. I've already alluded to one way, which is
that he is persistently imprisoned, either prison, either figuratively or in
reality. But that's not the only way.
This business that I call separation. The young man and his woman.
that is important it seems to me. That they are separated, pulled apart
from each other. And I'm going to want to look at some of
the passages where we see their separation,
but before even doing that, I'm going to offer you a phrase that seems to me to,
to, sort of, get at some of this. "Is des Grieux's gun loaded?"
And I want you to hear the phallic dimensions of that.
It's not, at all, a kind of inappropriate metaphor for this text that in one of the
key sequences, when des Grieux is trying to burst his way out of this religious
confinement where he has worked on played up to the man who was the superior at the
institution, whom he calls father. You can't help but see a kind of shadow
version of the Oedipal conflict here. What he has managed to do is to sneak in
a gun into this place, that's Brother Lesgeaut who has given it to him.
Lesgeaut says should it be loaded? And he says no it doesn't make any
difference, just give me the gun.
And as they're making their way out as he's trying to get out of this place,
he's making the Father Superior open the door for him.
"Simply open that door and I shall be your best friend."
And the door is being opened and all of a sudden one of the servants comes.
"Des Grieux. I did not stop to argue with him, but
fired point-blank into his chest." He hadn't even known whether the gun was
loaded. "There, that's your doing father."
And when he sees Lescaut, Lescaut wants to know what happened, if he'd heard a
pistol shot. "Yes, it's your fault.
What did you bring me a loaded pistol for?"
But of course, he wouldn't have gotten out
without it. Well, in that sequence we see that the
pistol was loaded, there's a lot to be said about that sequence.
It's the moment of murder in this text, which is never ever taken seriously,
within this text. Because it's after all, some person of
the people, a prison guard, and des Grieux comes from a noble background, not a
problem if he murders him. However, the imagery itself matters to
me. Is his gun loaded?
It was in the sequence that I just referred to.
Well what about other sequences? And I want you now, to hear some of the
language about trying to get Manon and him separated, which is one of the book's
projects. It's as if the plot said, our job is to
separate these two. Here's the early sequence, when the two
of them are in a domestic intimate scene. This is when he's going to be kidnapped
by his father's servants. "Somebody tapped softly on the door.
Manon gave me a kiss, wrenched herself out of my arms, ran quickly into the
other room, and shut the door behind her. For a moment I imagined she did not want
the strangers to see the state she was in.
I opened the outer door, scarcely had I done so before I was seized by three men
whom I recognized as my father's lackeys." And they take him away.
A scene of tenderness between the two lovers and then he is taken away.
Here comes another one. "We were still in bed when a police
officer entered." That in itself is fun. "Followed by half a
dozen guards. Their first act was to seize our money, or rather that of M.
de GM, then they hauled us brutally out of bed
and took us outside." Okay, couple being pulled apart while
actually in bed together. Give that a little bit of thought. What,
what is that suggesting to you? Here comes another version of it.
"While we were given up to the raptures of love, the sword was suspended above our
heads by a single thread which was about to snap.
We were just going to get into bed when he," this is the old man, the father of
one of the young lovers. An old man who always wanted to be a
lover of Manon. "When he opened the door, the sight of him
froze my blood. Oh, God, I said to Manon, it's Old GM.
I leaped for my sword, but as ill luck would have it, it was entangled with my
belt." So, three times this couple, in the
passages that I've just quoted, is being separated, pulled apart while in bed
together. I'm going to use a Latin term that I'm
sure most of you can understand, which is [i]coitus interruptus[/i].
That this is interrupted love making. It's as if the plot requires that this
couple be pulled apart while they are making love.
Can you see that figuratively speaking, that is the revenge of the society?
If this man represents a kind of potent love threat to this culture, and says
that his love is a higher value than anything else that his society has to
offer him, it's as if the society said, okay, we're going to come right back at
you. We're not going to let you be a love
apostle. You may be able to talk about it, but
we're not going to let you actualize it. We will pull you apart from your lover.
It really could not be more straightforward. And so we see these
lovers who want nothing more than to be together, maintain their union, as I said,
maintain their sexual union. And we see a plot that equally
systematically pulls them apart even by dent of going into the bedroom and
arresting them. I mean this is like an MRI of the society,
of the culture. This is a way of gauging and then punishing the threat that this
young man and perhaps this young woman, pose to this society.
These are, by the way, some of the things that literature makes visible, which is
one of my theme songs in this course. Moreover, it's even more complicated than
what I have said. Because in addition to sexual prowess,
remember my question: Is his gun loaded?
One grand way of saying that is, is he capable of creating a kind of revolution?
Will he change the corrupt barter, exchange, prostitution ethos of his
society? Will he succeed in making love the kind
of grand value that he thinks it should be?
Or will he fail at it? And I want now to read you some of the
passages that to me are some of the most delicious in this book.
Once again what literature brings to visibility.
This is when they had this very complex design to get Manon out of prison, and
they're going to see her, and they have to open up the prison door
where she is being kept, "and the attendant," I quote, "who took us,
had a gigantic key which opened the door." And again, if I were, had Doctor Freud,
you'd take look at that imagery and judge why, this text doesn't require a gigantic
key. But that's what it gives us.
A gigantic key that goes into the door. Well that looks okay
along sexual grounds. But let's look at the sequence.
That when they actually try to bring Manon out, they do something that is not
uncommon at this moment in French society.
They dress her up as a young man. And the way they do that is to sneak
clothes into the prison for her to put on.
And they have everything that they need, except one thing that they forgot, which
is pants. Now what are you going to do?
You don't have pants for her. I quote, "We might have had a good laugh
at the absence of this vital garment, if it had not put us into so serious a
predicament. As it was I was in despair at our being
held up by such a silly little thing. However, there was only one thing to be
done, and that was for me to leave my own
breeches for Manon and get out somehow without them.
My cloak was very long, and thanks to the help of a pin here and there I was able-
I was fit to pass through the door with the decencies preserved."
He takes off his pants, gives them to her and goes out the door with a cloak that
covers his naked genitals, or at least his underwear.
Freud was to tell us that male anxiety is sometimes, male sexual anxiety can be
expressed in the form of nightmares where you, the male, are walking the streets
exposed in your genitals. This is not Freud.
This is a good bit of time, century and a half before Freud, and yet it offers us
in the figurative language, again, this plot does not require lost pants,
exchanged pants, the woman wearing the pants, the male exposed.
It doesn't require that for any kind of obvious reasons, and yet it's there.
It is a kind of thick discourse and over determined script of sorts,
that conveys to us things well beyond the nitty-gritty of the plot.
It tells us things about anxiety, about libido, about that big question.
Is his gun loaded? Can he carry out the revolution?