Adolphe (Romance)

Main characters

Adolphe

Adolphe is 22 years old when the account begins. He is, seems he, intelligent and suited to work. The young man is however rather solitary and takes refuge in humor not to have to say too much of itself of it. Cowardice is an essential component of its personality: it is unable to be firm but honest with Ellénore, of fear of making it suffer. All these elements gathered would make of him a rather fragile character if one did not mention also the pride which lives it and pushes it to allure Ellénore. From this point of view, one can the rappocher of the Julien Sorel of Stendhal in the Red and the Black which is fixed like objective to conquer Mrs. de Rênal; with this close Sorel falls quite in love with it. In a general way, Adolphe is not impassioned. He appears even enough calculator in his manner of alluring Elléonore or of asking Mr. of T *** to grant a time to him to break with his mistress. What makes the characteristic of this character, it is its capacity car-to be analyzed permanently, having always retreat compared to the situation which he saw and thus not allowing him to live it fully. Whereas the typical romantic hero is whole, Adolphe is divided. He is lucid as for his situation but does not manage to extirpate itself some.

In addition, Adolphe is also the narrator of the novel, imposing all his subjectivity on work. all that we know of him, it is itself which says it. The same applies to its point of view on the other characters.

Ellénore

Ellénore is in love the with Adolphe. It is sensitive and dies of sorrow of love. One can see in it the romantic character of a victim of passion. One can make another interpretation and look at it of it as one of the allegories of the fate which weighs on Adolphe. Admittedly, heroin is itself victim of fate (fate of passion, social fate, fate of the circumstances) but it seems much more one “elected of the destiny” to carry misfortune to Adolphe. In this respect, a feature striking at heroin is its evolution. “It was soft, it becomes pressing and violent. ” Indeed, of victim of the company, it becomes geôlière of its lover and will exert on him a violent tyranny. A significant example of this authority is in chapter IV, when she announces in Adolphe her intention to break with the count of P ***:

(...) if I break with the count, will you refuse to see me? Will you refuse it? It began again by seizing my arm with a violence which made me quiver. (…)

And when the young man tries to emit an objection:

All is considered, stopped it. () You Withdraw now, do not return here.

In truth, Ellénore does not need to be so pressing. Adolphe is an young man without experiment which does not know what it awaits from an inconsistently conquered amante. He did not imagine it greed of this thirty year old woman who sees her last chance to know passion. Ellénore saw well that his/her lover could not support to see it suffering. It draws from its protests of pain all the empire which it exerts on him. Here an example of the effect produced on Adolphe by this spectacle of the pain of Ellénore:

While thus speaking, I live his face covered suddenly of tears: I stopped, I reconsidered my steps, I repudiated, I explained.

One can miss noting only the externalization of this pain (dyed pale, face which is demolished, tears) returns like a leitmotiv in the novel. Lastly, the death even of heroin is tyrannical: it leaves in Adolphe all the bitterness of the culpability. It removes its last chance to him to find a dignity in the rupture to which it had been finally solved. One cannot make the lawsuit of a dead. Adolphe thus finds himself overpowered of all the reproaches. He does not have any more but to wander without goal. Ellénore did not only tyrannize his/her lover in the life. It eternally stuck it in death.

Subtly implied by a focused narration, this interpretation of the character of Ellénore is prepared in order to contribute to the strategy of autodisculpation of the hero-narrator.

Mr. of T ***

Mr. of T *** is a supporting character but we allow ourselves to very briefly study it for the decisive role which it has in the intrigue. One does not know, indeed, large thing of him, as well on the physical level as psychic. It is a man of morals and as a friend of the father of Adolphe, it is charged to reorientate the son on the good way. It intervenes at the end of the account like only element making it possible to lead the intrigue to evolve/move. Its presence proves that the two characters of Adolphe and Ellénore were locked up in a situation concerning only them and that it is not that while introducing into this door-close an external element which one could untie the intrigue.

Topics

Adolphe proposes the study of the responsibility for an human being. The form adopted by work makes us wonder whether it is about a fiction or if the autobiographical share appears more than in a usual novel. The presence of “I” narrative leads us to the second track if one connects it to the subtitle of Adolphe: “Anecdote found in papers of an unknown” and with the many similarities which one finds between Adolphe and the life of Constant. This last is however defended vigorously, in its various forewords, vis-a-vis this assumption.

The novel also brings a critical glance on the company of its time. It is seen there how the fashionable life gives an opinion on all, and how the life of each one is found exposed with the eyes of all. Thus the statute of mistress it is highly disputed for example. The faintness-even which the character of Adolphe tests in this medium is perhaps a hardness number of the company. Even the relation between the father and his son of distorted something because it does not rest on a real affection of a father for his son but on the respect of a man for qualities in which another man appeared qualified.

Space-time framework

The action of Adolphe seems to occur to Germany since it is question in the first chapter of the town of Gottingen but it is then in the town of “D ***” that the character continues his studies. One includes/understands immediately, here, who even if the book comprises several indications of place, the action remains all the same difficult to locate in a precise way. The two characters of Adolphe and Ellénore settle in “Caden” in Bohemia then leave for Poland. In addition, if the time of Adolphe is guessed overall, of share the statute of the woman which east depicts there or by the lifestyle suitable for the 18th century, no precise temporal information is given.

One can see the desire of the author there to leave in the blur the space-time elements so that one does not make a bringing together with his private life. One can also think that this general absence of precise details approaches a confusion close to that which reigns in the spirit. The account being written with the first nobody and in the form of a constant analysis of oneself, the absence of clear data is interfered with the life a spirit; what imports above all in Adolphe , it is not where one is nor when but why such character acts thus. One focuses oneself thus more easily on this introspection of the narrator by itself, without external data.

Has T perhaps there it also in the book a desire of universalization of the human being in general, through this character of Adolphe, coward and incompetent to make a choice.

Kind of work

Adolphe is a social novel , of analysis . Indeed, the intrigue is not very original in its operation but it is the way in which the character-narrator analyzes himself, is criticized, is judged which gives its tonality to the account. The brevity of this last could push us besides to question us on the type-even of work: one cannot completely say that it is about a news but the intrigue is very concentrated in this novel. The subtitle of work informs us a little more on the kind of Adolphe ; it is about a Anecdote . Indeed, the account is with the first nobody and thus makes accept a kind of diary. It is not a question that use of the first nobody but at the same time owing to the fact that it I who tells the history is also the main actor and thus transforms the account for it into his account.

The register of work is very serious, energy of par with a rigorous and severe analysis sometimes. The outcome-even of the history is tragic but what dominates work, it is rather the concept of tension in the direction where the hero is pulled about between the desire for leaving Elléonore and impossibility of doing it.

Key sequences and quotations

The novel being very short, the key sequences are followed quickly in the account. One will note the moment first of all when Adolphe allures Ellénore then the sequence where it does not support any more the choking relation that it saw. The key sequence which follows is that where Ellénore leaves the count of P *** then that where after being obliged to follow Ellénore to Poland, Adolphe meets Mr. of T *** which wants to help it to put an end to its relation. Lastly, the last key sequence is that of died of Ellénore.

“Misfortune with the man who, in the first moments of a connection of love, does not believe that this connection must be eternal. ” (chap. III )
“There are things which one is a long time without saying oneself, but when once they are said, one never ceases repeating them. ” (chap. IV )
“We spoke about love of fear of speaking to us about another thing. ” (chap. V )
“It is a dreadful misfortune not to be not liked when one likes; but it is a larger good to be liked with passion when one likes more. ” (chap. V )

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