The Princess of Clèves

Studied this in university back when I hadn't figured out I was asexual so had a tricky time explaining to my boyfriend that the reason I loved it so much was that the girl decided not to get with the guy (whom a friend and I had dubbed the Jerk de Nemours). Lol, good times.

Still remember all the literary discussion about the significance of watching/seeing, and all that guff; and still love it. The Jerk de Nemours strikes me even more now as a creepy stalker dudebro. Her husband also comes across as more controlling and sulky. Retiring to a Pyrenean convent remains the best possible solution.

La Princesse de Clèves is remarkable as one of the first real psychological novels to delve into the emotions, thoughts and interior life of its characters in great depth - in that aspect it feels ahead of its time in so many ways, as it does also in its moral ambiguity and the dilemma at its core over which debate raged (and to a lesser extent still does). Clèves predates Les Liaisons dangereuses by a century in its depiction of a fiercely regulated aristocratic society and order where the smallest indiscretions face ruthless punishment and shame even as the proper veneer disguises a seedy and illicit underbelly; the Princess' reactions to this and to the adulterous temptations she is drawn toward through the love of the Duke of show more Nemours are hard to discern the core root of, whether they be born out of genuine belief and martyrdom for a notion of purity or a more pragmatic withdrawal from the hothouse environment of the French court - she might appear a tragic victim of such a society even in the former instance, and the quasi-medieval view of passion and marriage as so in conflict gives this a pessimistic air to this day, but there's much in here to chew over and it's probably Mme. de la Fayette's finest accomplishment having previously read her shorter pieces.

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As I commonly found with her works, the actual French vocabulary used is quite intuitive and easy to pick up; I had trouble at first because the first part of this novel is made up of one of the world's worst exposition dumps but it picks up greatly from there onward and also became a much easier read such that even though I was going from my Kindle I barely used the dictionary even if I sometimes had to struggle to piece together the older literary structure. Some wonderful literary French expressions and turns of phrase I learnt from this also. show less

Short but for me a slow read. The story itself is a sort of Mean Girls high school relationships situation (does he/she really "like" me?), and I was cheering when the Princesse finally blew off Nemours. (My sense was that Nemours does not know himself while the Princesse knows herself profoundly) What demands attention is the extreme inwardness of the narrative, mostly focusing on moral scruples associated with the disclosure of feeling, so different from the courtly love/allegory model from which it descends. To the point of claustrophobia, at times. Although the moral framework differs radically, the inwardness reminded me a bit of Virginia Woolf.

Read: October 2022
Rating: 3.5/ 5 stars

The plot: Mademoiselle de Chartres is young woman in the sixteenth century, who comes to the French court with her mother to find a suitable marriage. She eventually marries the Prince of Cleves but does not love him. Instead, she is drawn to the Duke de Nemours, who has also fallen in love with her.

While I enjoyed the plot, I found it dragged in places. There were a lot of unnecessary character introductions and deviations from the main story that detracted from the pace. I liked the character of the princess and the good relationship she had with her mother. I thought she was well-written as a sixteen-year-old trying to figure out her place in court as an adult and a married woman. I did not like show more the Duke de Nemours, who didn't care about ruining the princess' reputation or marriage. He also seemed to fall in love with her entirely on her good looks rather than knowing anything about her character. What was striking to me, was how innocent the 'affair' was between the two of them, yet it was enough to cause so angst for the princess as well as her husband.

I don't think this is a book I'll ever re-read, but I am glad I have read it, especially given its importance in the history of literature. show less

I liked it more than when I read it in my early twenties. Unrequited love, jealousy, discovering love and finding that you prefer to not to give in because a perfect love never lasts, especially in marriage. This was written during the time of Louis XIV and is set in the court of Henry II. Madame de La Fayette succeeds in showing characters caught in a prison of their own making with tragic consequences.

It's manipulative, it's moral submission, it's trying to keep your place in a world where just moving an inch from the norm is suspicious and might cost you your standing at court, ultimately your life. Set in the middle of court intrigues, the unrequited, unfulfilled love between Monsieur de Clèves, his wife, the Princess de Clèves show more and Monsieur le Duc de Nemours, is a tale worth discovering. show less

The nice thing about reading early specimens of what later become modes or genres is watching the problems that people will keep dealing with come up and be solved with elegant simplicity. So here, Lafayette wants to distance her stories from the romance tradition, without getting rid of all the fun stuff about the romance tradition (e.g., the idea of chivalric love and the turmoil it causes). She does it very easily, by turning to history. Her characters are for the most part historical figures who played very important roles in sixteenth century geopolitics, which leads to bizarre moments in which some guy falls in love with some woman but needs to be removed from her immediate vicinity for plot reasons... so he gets sent to Spain to show more negotiate for the King. The romantic plot intersects with the historical plot in such a way that you can get all the frisson of a soap opera, while being constantly reminded that the crazy things people are driven to do by 'love' often have massive, world wide repercussions: a marriage to a Queen has to be put off because the suitor falls for another woman; this causes diplomatic strain, which leads back to war.

So Lafayette avoids the big problem of the twentieth century novel (the domestic novel is opium for the masses; political novels are often very dull) by writing quite stylishly about high political figures and their love affairs. The same solution isn't open to writers today, of course, since we (sadly?) no longer have courtly centers of power.

On the other hand, Lafayette solves a number of other problems with equal elegance. Her characters tell a number of stories that either explicitly or implicitly comment on the main narrative strand, so she can have variety without disunity.

And she writes about the sixteenth century court from the perspective of the seventeenth century court, and so she can use each time period to comment on the other (e.g., using seventeenth century forms of speech), while also positing a higher ideal that neither court ever approached. (Plot Spoiler:) That is, if you accept that an intelligent woman realizing she doesn't need a man to live out her life in pleasure and peace is an ideal. Some, I imagine, more turbulently inclined than I am, would wish to see her ignore duty and tranquility for the sake of some super hot bonking with the dashing, if flighty, M. de Nemours. show less