Chapter Four - Minds, bodies and the new unanimism

Summary

When it comes to discussing the nature of the novel and fictional form, Nathalie Sarraute seems to have two major tenets: the first is that psychology constitutes the essential subject matter of fiction; and the second, related, point is that character can no longer be the vehicle for portraying this psychology. These two assumptions constitute the cornerstone of the essays in L'Ère du soupçon; and they are endlessly repeated within the novels themselves, as their protagonists come up against the reality of the tropism, and yet also find themselves involved in the business of characterisation through their dealings with others. Character in the conventional sense of the word is no longer treated as the means whereby human truths may be revealed to readers, but instead becomes part of the armoury deployed in intersubjective relations. The concept of ‘character’ is used as both weapon and defensive strategy in the dramas that take place between the protagonists in Sarraute's fiction. For her largely anonymous subjects (or characters with a small ‘c’) regularly engage in mutual attack and retaliation in terms that are borrowed from an anachronistic characterological repertoire of personality traits. Thus father and daughter in Portrait d'un inconnu deploy the masks of the miser and the crank in their struggles with each other; and Alain summarily despatches his mother-in-law by describing her as an authoritarian personality.