Abbé Prévost (1697–1763)

Is this about a capricious libertine taking advantage of the naivety of a dumb young man completely clueless when it comes to love? Yes, to a certain extent. But it would be oversimplifying to just reduce it all to that only...

Far from being a cheesy and black-and-white type of plot where everything is two dimensional, Antoine Prévost gives us to see here not only human passions in all their complexity, but also the difficulties of handling feelings and their ambiguous consequences upon our show more actions. Des Grieux may be of a baffling innocence, yet it takes a noble heart to be so forgiving, abandoning all in the name of love. Who are we to judge him? As for Manon, young, bratty, irresponsible, she nevertheless has ambition, and fight as much for her lover (whom she genuinely loves, despite everything) as for her brother. Do we know about her social origins, her past, her background? Who are we, then, here again, to blame her for thinking about comfort and the future of her couple, in a society denying her even the right to love above her condition? As circumstances will lead them both to their ruin, it's obviously easier to mock, demean, judge and condemn than actually trying to understand the deep motivations of each, overseeing thus that, behind supposed vice and quest for luxury lies, also, a certain sentimental nobility.

Strangely for an 18th century novel, the violence of the emotions involved reminds of works more associated with the Romantic era... Here's a rich and complex story, then. In any case, it's a great read! show less

Remembering how intense my last Coursera experience was, what with needing to read a novel a week and do plenty of other related work I decided to give myself a head start on the Fiction of Relationships curriculum. Manon Lescaut will be the first novel we'll be covering and I'm glad I wasn't restricted in time when I read it. No, it's not long and it doesn't place any serious demands on the reader's faculties, but it does tax one's patience. At least it did that to mine.
It took me a while show more to get into the story because it is told in a very old-fashioned way, it begins at the end, then jumps to the beginning and works its way to the end again; it is also the perfect example of the author telling much more than showing. I did my best to remember that if this book is on the curriculum of a Brown University course there must be value in it, so I read closely in an effort to not miss this value among all the exceedingly flowery phrases and moralizing debates on the subjects of love and virtue. See, I read so closely that the floweriness has seeped into my brain! But I digress. I kept thinking that if nothing else this book provides an excellent example of how literature has changed since the 1700s and how I needed to pay attention to the relationships described in the novel since that will be the focus of the course. And then something curious happened: as irritated as I was by Manon's flightiness and Grieux's lack if backbone, as well as the archaic language, I soon found that the characters weren't entirely unsympathetic and began reflecting on all the reckless and crazy things people do in the name of love. Somehow this novel broke through the frustration and touched me.
This realization alone surprised me to no end and I continued reading with a certain degree of enjoyment. Imagine my surprise when I finished the book, looked it up online, and found that Manon Lescaut isn't as obscure as I imagined. Authors of novels hailed as classics referenced it in their work, it continues to inspire composers and dramatists, it is the subject of quite a few academic papers and it's still being published with the latest edition released in 2005! (Don't you just love Wikipedia?)
In the end although I wouldn't recommend this novel to a friend in search of an engaging and fun read I'm glad I read it, if purely because it's widened my literary horizons and showed that love has always been blind and young people have always been capable of highly imprudent behavior. It's human nature, after all! show less

Manon Lescaut is a deceptive novel in multiple ways.
It could be easily labeled as a classic, picturesque short tale of a doomed love affair between a noble young man, Chevalier des Grieux, and a beautiful maiden from a lower breed, set in the Paris of The Régence, a convulsive era where class structures and ancient regime ruled the world.
Told from the male lover point of view in a fast-paced, flowing narrative, the reader is presented with the irrevocable passion, almost obsession des show more Grieux is consumed with when he first sets his eyes on Manon, a fatal moment which will make his inner peace crumble down and bring him to perform all sort of dubious acts, even to commit murder, to keep his beloved with him.
Des Grieux constructs his own story in retrospection, using a nameless narrator who crosses paths with him almost at the end of his misadventures, giving this way a foreboding tone to the story.
"Love has made me too soft, too passionate, too faithful and perhaps over-indulgent of the desires of a most charming woman; and that is the sum of my crimes" says des Grieux, talking about his beloved Manon, the temptress, and the one to blame for his forthcoming misdeeds.
The fact that we only get to hear Manon’s voice throughout des Grieux’s account leaves the reader completely blind about her character, devoid of her motivations or her true feelings. Des Grieux describes her as a fickle, capricious creature prone to take other lovers in order to live lavishly. So Manon appears as a cold, calculating character, becoming a sort of desirable object to possess, an object des Grieux rightfully believes to belong to him. But still, in the rare passages where Manon can voice her quiescent values, we can envisage a strong spirit who keeps defying des Grieux’s views with her struggles to remain her own mistress. Couldn’t it be that in challenging him to broaden his conservative views about relationships, Manon would also be challenging the imposed gender politics of the time?
In any case, the driven plot of the story takes sweet revenge separating the lovers again and again in myriad forms: family, legal authority and the gulf between social classes keep preventing them from being together until they receive the ultimate punishment in being exiled to the colonies in New Orleans, where against all odds and once set free of the French, rotten social pressures, the idea of a simple, bare existence in a new world impregnates them with a wish to live at peace with rekindled values of virtue and morality, flirting even with an improbable happy ending, which makes the final twist in the story even more brusque and cruel than expected.

As I stated at the beginning of this rambling review, this self-righteous account, this seemingly lineal plot and simple, direct style can be misleading.
My first instinctive reaction to the story was to doubt the veracity of des Grieux’s biased tale for he is a flawed hero and unreliable narrator. His constant search for self-excuse, his vain urge in blaming others for his own acts, his theatrical, almost parodic explosion of emotive outbursts and his unremorseful confession of using them to take advantage of others made it very difficult to empathize with him.

But what most struck me when trying to add perspective into the story was the shameful realization that my dislike for des Grieux came from recognition, as his futile attempts at trying to hold on to Manon revealed the universal impossibility of a mutual understanding, the hopelessness of a complete possession of the other.
No simple tale then, but a novel which oozes with the complexity of human relationships and the tragic consequences of trying to cross the barrier of subjectivity in appealing to raw emotions, as one can’t disengage from individual consciousness , however much we try.
"What fatal power had dragged me down to crime? How came it that love, an innocent passion, had turned for me into the source of all misery and vice" wonders a despairing des Grieux.
Exalted existential questions about the tragic consequences of being in love, as being infected by an incurable disease, which robs us of our former selves, blinding us with passion, making it difficult to find our place in a material world where authority and order prevail over emotions.
And in this sense, I’d say that Manon Lescaut is a disruptive novel because in giving free expression to des Grieux’s feelings, even if charged with subjectivity, Prévost is encouraging us to reach our own truths through language, although he also whispers a warning, reminding us that our own reached reality might be easily misunderstood by those we love the most and by the world we live in. show less

This is one of the few books where I wanted to strangle the main character.

Chevalier de Grieux is so madly in love with the lower-class beauty Manon Lescaut that he's willing to forsake his education, his family and friends for her. On first read, it's easy to write off de Grieux as a silly boy blinded by love since he's willing to follow Manon to the 'New World' and put up with her schemes to extort money with her beauty, which lands the lovers in jail more than once.

This books is more show more than just simple story of boy-meets-girl. Abbe Prevost writes a magnificent tale of lovers told from the point of view of Chevalier de Grieux. Modern readers will want to shake de Grieux for throwing away his upper-class life for a girl who appears indifferent to his passion. However, Prevost creates a France divided by the class characters are born into and wealth. With the two lovers being born in to different societies, readers start to pity de Grieux and Manon's relationship and question if their love is doomed because of fate or poor decisions. show less