Маргерит Дюрас - The Impudent Ones

In the late 1930s, the future Marguerite Duras was a regular at the Mathurins, the Paris theater directed by Georges and Ludmilla Pitoëff, where she saw Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and Chekhov’s The Seagull . In her novel, Maud is a romantic young woman: “If he [Durieux] loved her, one day he would devote all his moments, his leisure time, to her.” The man she compromises herself with happens to be a gentleman who tells her, “I think it would be more fitting on my part to speak to your mother.” Maud may have loved him at the beginning of their affair, but, like Nora in A Doll’s House or Thérèse Desqueyroux, she ends up locked in a loveless marriage, victim of the social conventions of her milieu. Like Mauriac’s grands bourgeois , her mother puts respectability above everything else. A fille-mère would be an indelible stain on the Grant-Tanerans’ standing in society. It is also worth noting that, as in Mauriac’s Viper’s Tangle , money plays a significant part in The Impudent Ones . Financial needs motivate most of Jacques’s intrigues. Mrs. Grant-Taneran herself displays miserly habits and uses money to keep her favorite son under her power.

The influence of Wuthering Heights , underlined in Marcel Arland’s evaluation of the manuscript, must have seemed self-evident at the time. Emily Brontë’s classic of Victorian literature was popular with French readers—all the more after the release of William Wyler’s movie in Paris in 1939. No less than three new French translations of the novel were published between 1925 and 1937. As an ardent anglophile, Marguerite Duras was familiar with the works of the Brontë Sisters. Les hauts de Hurlevent —the French title most often used—was one of her favorite books. The rivalries between the protagonists, as well as the landscape surrounding their coveted estate—“the rough and unpopulated part of Upper Quercy” in The Impudent Ones; the Yorkshire Moors in Wuthering Heights —invite comparison between the two novels. One can find other similarities: like Catherine Earnshaw, Maud Grant is impulsive and independent. Like her, Maud reconciles herself to marrying a wealthy man she does not love, and like “Cathy,” Maud is the character who keeps the story moving to its conclusion. It is doubtful, however, that Marguerite Duras drew more than remote inspiration from Wuthering Heights . If Jacques Grant shares some of Heathcliff’s innate cruelty, he does not have the dark, romantic stature of Brontë’s hero. The result of Jacques’s intrigues around the family estate pales in comparison to the devastating consequences that Heathcliff’s obsession with revenge brings to everyone around him. The Impudent Ones never rises to the tragic dimension that Wuthering Heights achieves in the end.

While Emily Brontë was defying the literary strictures of her time, Marguerite Duras had more conventional ambitions with her first novel. Looking back on the days she spent in the Lot-et-Garonne as a child, she seems to have hesitated between a rustic roman champêtre and a classic roman psychologique in the vein of Paul Bourget. The pastoral component in The Impudent Ones follows the naturalistic current of nineteenth-century writers such as George Sand ( The Devil’s Pool, The Country Waif ), Emile Zola ( La terre ), or the lesser-known but immensely popular René Bazin, whose novels La terre qui meurt ( The Dying Earth ) and Le blé qui lève ( The Coming Harvest ) were still must-reads for generations of French high school students. In The Impudent Ones , the sections concerning the trees, meadows, fields, and rivers surrounding the family estate of Uderan bear a striking resemblance to similar descriptions of the countryside found in Bazin’s hymns to nature. The careful attention paid to class structure in The Impudent Ones owes a debt to the theories of André Thérive, one of the three gentlemen whose approval of her manuscript Marguerite Donnadieu put forth in her letter to Gallimard. Thérive, a critic for Le Temps , was co-founder of the École populiste , a literary movement advocating a return to class portraiture and the study of sociological issues. As evidenced by her novel, the class-conscious author of The Impudent Ones was ready to follow Thérive’s precepts.

A Manuscript in Search of a Publisher

Arland’s reader’s report indicates that the manuscript of La famille Taneran was given to him by Gallimard at the beginning of March 1941. The author’s request for a quick decision was not obliged, however, as Gaston Gallimard was still reeling from attempts by the occupying authorities to take control of his company. That same month, Marguerite Donnadieu’s father-in-law died of a heart attack, prompting her mother-in-law to leave occupied Paris and join relatives in Corsica, then still in the “Free Zone.” Her daughter-in-law may have planned to accompany her on the trip to the island, as her letter to Gallimard, dated March 31, would suggest:

Sir,

About a month-and-a-half ago, I sent you the manuscript of a novel with the working title La famille Taneran or Maud . I am still in the dark not knowing what you thought of it. I would be most obliged if you would let me know what you have decided, as I will probably leave Paris for a while and would like very much to be informed of your decision before I go. I apologize for rushing you in this way.

When the author did not receive a reply, she turned to the ever-obliging Pierre Lafue, who agreed to write a letter of support, which he sent on May 8. Opining that any shortcomings in the composition of the novel were mere “youthful flaws,” easily corrected, he argued: “One could not expect Madame Donnadieu to have already achieved the full mastery of her art…. I believe it would be a pity to deprive oneself of a book revealing rather rare qualities.”

Gallimard replied to Lafue in a polite letter that the manuscript was not publishable as it was, Madame Donnadieu’s writing being “awkward” and “clumsy” in too many places. But he added that La famille Taneran was “a very interesting work” nevertheless, which allowed “something” to be expected from its author. {10} 10 Gallimard archives. On May 16, the writer Raymond Queneau—also a member of Gallimard’s reading committee—delivered the verdict directly to Marguerite Duras: “Madame, we have taken a very keen interest in reading your manuscript. It is not possible for us at the moment to undertake its publication, but I would be very happy to be able to talk to you about it if it were possible for you to call at rue Sébastien-Bottin one of these days.” {11} 11 Gallimard archives.

It would take two more years for the novel to find a publisher. In the spring of 1942, despondent over the loss of her first child (a son who died during childbirth), Marguerite Duras felt the need to look for work. Through her husband’s connections, she was hired by a new governmental office established at the request of German authorities, in charge of allotting the diminishing stocks of printing paper (which was a clever way for the occupying forces to exercise full censorship over what could be published or reissued since the lists of books had to be approved by the Propaganda Staffel and the German embassy). After starting as an assistant, “Madame Antelme” shortly became the commission’s executive secretary. Although she did not have the power to decide who would be on the lists, her position put her in contact with all the publishing houses still operating in occupied Paris.