3 - Adolphe: the narrative and its framework

Summary

Readers opening Adolphe for the first time are impressed by the lucidity and elegance of the narrative and by the steady, almost hypnotic intensity of the narrating voice, that of the older Adolphe: they are drawn to respond to the intelligence and depth of his insights on his past experiences, the extraordinary complexity of his feelings as described in the central chapters and the overwhelming sense of tragedy in the final pages. For anyone familiar with the facts of Constant's life, the events of the novel seem to mirror forty years of dilemmas and inconsistencies in his relationships with his father and with a series of women, years which were to culminate in his marriage to Charlotte von Hardenberg. (One might add parenthetically that this last relationship, not always an untroubled one, may have been in Constant's mind along with the others when he wrote Adolphe: Charlotte's mother's name was Eléonore; the pet names which Constant and Charlotte had for each other – ‘Ouffy’ and ‘Linon’ – sound oddly close to Adolphe and EléSnore; and Charlotte's sheer ‘ordinariness’ of mind was a frequent source of irritation to him.) The novel's intimate connection with Constant the man has never been in doubt. However, such parallels and the fact of Adolphe's first-person narrative have led all too often to its being read as a personal confession, which it is not.