Marguerite Duras: La Vie tranquille (1944; repr. 1977)

Marguerite Duras's second novel, published in 1944 and revised in 1972, so – unike Les Impudents a few years earlier – accepted by the author. Many familiar themes are already in place here: the family unit, alienation, mourning, suggestions of incest, suicide, love, desire, absence, the inability to or reluctance to commmunicate, etc.

Again, we are in Le Périgord, a young agricultural worker woman (Francine) narrating. There will be three deaths – one murder and two suicides – all of which are in some (even if indirect) way related to Francine. First there's the fight between Francine's brother Nicholas and her wastrel uncle Jérôme, who's been responsible for the family leaving Belgium after the embezzlement of the mairie funds: Francine feels she pushed her brother into the murder. Then Nicholas lies across the railway lines and allows a train to run over him: Francine feels guilty that her beloved brother is dead.

In fact she feels so bad about her loss that a few weeks after his death her lover Tiène gives her money to go away to the sea for two weeks, and there – right in the middle of the book – the language briefly falls apart in sympathy with the nervous breakdown which seems to be taking hold of her. In her room in the boarding house the first person slips into the third person as the reification process tried to instate itself:

'There, in my bedroom, is me. You'd think that she no longer knows who it is. She sees herself in the wardrobe mirror [...] she pulls three shirts from the small suitcase so as to appear natural before the woman who's looking at her. At the same time as she avoids seeing herself, she sees herself in the wardrobe mirror'.

The presence of the mirror creates a double, splits her in two, as if she has two personalities. The verb used is 'see' not 'look at', passive not active, as though she has lost her will to act, is a mere object. She is in a swamp of ennui.

Later there's an episode which resembles Meusault in Camus's L'Étranger, in which she's in the sun and watches an unnamed man die. She doesn't kill him, just watches him swim out to sea and not return. For this, the boarding house guests criticise her for not shouting to the man – but like Meursault, she doesn't lie. And they seem to be acccusing her of being responsible for the man's death and the landlady says she has to leave.

And so she goes home to marry Tiène, whom she's not even asked but who falls in line, and I'm left thinking what a very strange novel this is, although it's probably nothing like as stange as some of Duras's books.

My Marguerite Duras posts:
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Marguerite Duras: La Pute de la côte normande
Marguerite Duras: L'Homme assis dans le couloir
Marguerite Duras: Agatha
Marguerite Duras: Emily L.
Marguerite Duras: Les Yeux bleus cheveux noirs
Marguerite Duras: L'Amant | The Lover
Marguerite Duras: Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein
Marguerite Duras: L'Amante anglaise
Laure Adler: Marguerite Duras
Marguerite Duras: Cimetière du Montparnasse
Marguerite Duras: Un barrage contre le Pacifique
Marguerite Duras: L'Après-midi de Monsieur Andesmas
Marguerite Duras: Les Petits Chevaux de Tarquinia
Marguerite Duras: Le Marin de Gibraltar | The Sailor from Gibraltar
Marguerite Duras: La Douleur | The War: A Memoir
Yann Andréa: Cet amour-là
Marguerite Duras and Xavière Gauthier: Les Parleuses
Marguerite Duras: Savannah Bay
Marguerite Duras: Détruire, dit-elle | Destroy, She Said
Marguerite Duras: L'Amour
Marguerite Duras: Dix heures et demie du soir en été
Marguerite Duras: Le Square | The Square
Marguerite Duras: Les Impudents
Marguerite Duras: Le Shaga
Marguerite Duras: Oui, peut-être
Marguerite Duras: Des journées entières dans les arbres
Marguerite Duras: Suzanna Andler
Marguerite Duras: Le Vice-Consul | The Vice Consul
Marguerite Duras: Moderato cantabile
Marguerite Duras: La Vie matérielle
Marguerite Duras: La Vie tranquille
Marguerite Duras: La Pluie d'été