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Le Grand Meaulnes
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Le Grand Meaulnes (known in English as The Lost Domain, The Wanderer, and by other titles) is the only completed novel written by French author Alain-Fournier (pen name of Henri-Alban Fournier, 1886-1914).Advertisement:propertag.cmd.push(function() { proper_display('tvtropes_mobile_ad_1'); })The story is told in the first person by François Seurel, recalling his adolescence in the 1890s in the small town of Sainte-Agathe in the Sologne region of central France. At the age of 15, his mundane life as the son of the local schoolteachers becomes more exciting when his family takes in a boarder, 17-year-old Augustin Meaulnes. The son of a moderately wealthy widow who has sent him to attend the superior course for future teachers taught by François' father, M. Seurel, Augustin is very independent and is not afraid to do things without asking adults for permission. He is tall and of rather rustic appearance, and quickly acquires the moniker "le grand Meaulnes" (big or tall Meaulnes) among the boys. Meaulnes treats François as a brother and close friend.The main plot begins shortly before Christmas, when M. Seurel picks one of their classmates to go with François to pick up the latter's grandparents from a remote train station. Meaulnes, however, decides to bring them himself, leaves school without permission, and borrows a horse and carriage. He ends up getting lost, though, and comes back a few days later having had an amazing adventure. He attended a colorful wedding party held on a wealthy estate for the son of the family. This event started off as a wonderful experience with lavish entertainments at which people of all ages were invited, but it was the child guests who ran the show. However, it ended dramatically, with Meaulnes meeting the groom's sister, Yvonne de Galais, and falling head over heels in love with her, and with the groom himself, Frantz de Galais, attempting to kill himself. Namely, the much-anticipated arrival of his bride, Valentine Blondeau, did not happen, as she had left him, not believing in the brilliant future offered by him. Frantz was last seen being taken away by one of the entertainers.Advertisement:propertag.cmd.push(function() { proper_display('tvtropes_mobile_ad_2'); })Now determined to find his way back to the marvelous estate and get reunited with the girl of his dreams, Meaulnes eventually shares his adventure with François, who has guessed from his secretive behavior that Augustin is in love. The problem is that when he was given a lift home from the party, Meaulnes had fallen asleep in the carriage and is now trying to reconstruct the itinerary to the de Galais' estate. The quest is eventually complicated by the arrival in town of a traveling circus. One evening some of the new arrivals, assisted by some local boys, accost Meaulnes and François and in the process, Meaulnes gets caught, his pockets are searched, and his map is removed. Shortly after, one of the circus performers starts attending their course at school. This eccentric classmate, whose head is wrapped in a bandage, soon becomes very popular. Eventually, he gives Meaulnes back his map with part of the trail to the lost estate marked on it, reveals himself as Frantz de Galais, and before leaving gives Meaulnes an address of a house in Paris where his sister sometimes stays. Frantz leaves with the circus and some time after, on failing to find the way to the estate, Meaulnes decides to complete his education in Paris and to look for Yvonne there. When he gets there, however, he is disappointed when her room at the address given by Frantz appears to be unoccupied and he is (wrongly) told by a young woman there that its sometime occupant has gotten married. What follows will change the lives of the five young people concerned forever.Advertisement:propertag.cmd.push(function() { proper_display('tvtropes_mobile_ad_3'); })This novel, one of the most beloved in the French literary canon, is impressionist in its nature, a curious mixture of realism and romanticism. A tribute to the Belle Époque in France, it offers an iconic treatment of the theme of growing up and wanting to cling on to the ideals of one's formative years.The story has been filmed twice, in 1967 (a faithful adaptation directed by Jean-Gabriel Albicocco) and 2006 (a looser adaptation directed by Jean-Daniel Verhaeghe). | |
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The Runaway | |
| Le Grand Meaulnes / int_15177ded | comment |
The Runaway: After failing to commit suicide, Frantz de Galais runs off with the circus performer Ganache, who has saved him, and lives a life of fun on the road in an attempt to put his being abandoned by his fiancee Valentine behind him. When he comes to François' and Meaulnes' school, he is wearing a bandage around his head while his self-inflicted bullet wound heals. However, he keeps the bandage on longer than necessary in order that Meaulnes not recognize him, out of fear that he (evidently still being a minor) be compelled to return to his father. Only once he has gained Meaulnes and François' trust does he take off the bandage and thus disclose his identity before he leaves again with the circus. | |
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Unreliable Narrator | |
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Unreliable Narrator: Early in the novel, François admits himself that his memory of his family’s arrival to Sainte-Agathe may not be clearly recalled: “At least that is how I imagine our arrival today. Because as soon as I want to rediscover the distant memory of that first evening of waiting in our courtyard in Sainte-Agathe, I already remember other times of waiting;…All this peaceful landscape...is forever, in my memory, agitated, transformed by the presence of the one who upset all our adolescence and whose very flight left us without rest.” Thus, his memory of some of the main events of the story may also perhaps be fuzzy or embellished with the passage of time. | |
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Byronic Hero | |
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Byronic Hero: Meaulnes. He is bold and adventurous, but also displays a self-centered streak in his behavior toward women. This quality of his manifests itself especially once he starts carrying around the guilt from inadvertently starting a relationship with Valentine, Frantz de Galais' runaway fiancee, during his interlude in Paris. His guilt is directed toward Frantz, whereas by abandoning Valentine, he left her out in the cold after having had her abandon her profession of seamstress in order to be with him. | |
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Bully Turned Buddy | |
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Bully Turned Buddy: Jasmin Delouche, a short but assertive student and the cock of the walk at school, is jealous of Meaulnes, who replaces him as the alpha male among the students. Shortly after Meaulnes returns from his escapade, Jasmin accosts him with a group of other boys; Meaulnes, however, easily manhandles Jasmin. Later, Jasmin learns about his and Francois' quest to find the de Galais estate and Yvonne. He develops an interest in this and ends up becoming good friends with François. On the other hand Meaulnes continues not to have a high opinion of him, though in the end, he accepts to act friendly toward him at Yvonne's urging. | |
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Runaway Bride | |
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Runaway Bride: Valentine, coming from a poor background, does not trust her fiance Frantz' claims about the wonderful life he has in store for her on the family estate. Shortly before they are to be married, she leaves him a note stating that she is a seamstress and not a princess, escapes dressed in mens' clothes, gets picked up by François' aunt and uncle in their carriage, and works as their housekeeper before deciding to go to Paris. She ends up starting a relationship with Meaulnes, who met her while both of them were lurking outside a house where she and Frantz would sometimes stay in Paris. They almost get married, but when Meaulnes finds out that she is Frantz' ex-fiancee, he breaks off the engagement, returns to his mother, and eventually reunites Frantz, who has been looking for Valentine, with the latter. | |
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Bittersweet Ending | |
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Bittersweet Ending: Meaulnes has managed to reunite Frantz de Galais with his fiancee Valentine and settle them in Frantz' house on the family estate. However, Meaulnes comes back to the estate to find that Yvonne, with whom he had enjoyed only one day of married life before going in search of Frantz and Valentine, has died following childbirth. He does have a baby daughter, though. François has had to witness all this. He has lost a dear friend in Yvonne; on the other hand, he will probably always be welcome at – and perhaps even continue to live at the de Galais estate. His friend Meaulnes may not be around much, as he is indicated to be about to take off again with his daughter on another journey. | |
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Someone to Remember Him By | |
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Someone to Remember Her By: At the end of the book, Meaulnes comes home having completed his quest of reuniting Frantz and Valentine. Unfortunately, he finds out that his beloved Yvonne, with whom he had shared only one night of married life, has died in childbirth. She has, however, left behind a baby daughter, who will be his reminder of Yvonne and his companion in whatever adventure he chooses to go on next. | |
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Death by Adaptation | |
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Death by Adaptation: In the 2006 film, in which the plot is moved forward to 1910, Meaulnes ends up getting killed in World War I. This was a deliberate nod to the fact that the author was killed in action in the first year of the war. | |
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Skipping School | |
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Skipping School: First, shortly before Christmas, Meaulnes does this when he decides to take it upon himself to go and pick up François' grandparents from the train station, and his getting lost starts the whole adventure. Later, on a fine spring day, nearly all the boys in their class decide to play hooky; Meaulnes uses this as an opportunity to go on foot to look for the lost estate; only François, being the teacher's son, stays behind. But then, M. Seurel comes back and goes in search of them, and François joins the search. He ends up doing a bit of exploring of his own. Meaulnes does not succeed in finding the estate on foot. This is the last straw and he decides to continue his studies in Paris, in order to look for Yvonne there at the address given to him by her brother Frantz. | |
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Time-Passage Beard | |
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Time-Passage Beard: When he comes to stay with the Seurels, 17-year-old Augustin Meaulnes only has fuzz on his upper lip. When, roughly three years later, François meets him for the first time after his Paris anabasis, an "unkempt mustache" has started growing on his face. Another year and a half or so later, when Meaulnes returns to the Sablonnières estate after looking for Frantz and Valentine, he has a full beard, and François does not recognize him at first. | |
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Author Avatar | |
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Author Avatar: François. The way his parents and his childhood home are depicted closely mirror Alain-Fournier's and the story is a sentimental tribute to these and to an unrequited love of his student years. | |
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Schoolmarm | |
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Schoolmarm: François' parents run the provincial school that he and Meaulnes attend, with his mother in charge of the younger pupils and his father of the older ones. François follows in his parents' footsteps and becomes a teacher in a country school at a young age. When he meets Meaulnes' chosen one, Yvonne de Galais, she mentions to him that she also likes the thought of becoming a teacher. | |
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Missing Mom | |
| Le Grand Meaulnes / int_66dfe36a | comment |
Missing Mom: Mme de Galais, Yvonne and Frantz' mother, died shortly after Frantz disappeared from the estate and Yvonne was left there with just M. de Galais, her father. | |
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Meaningful Name | |
| Le Grand Meaulnes / int_6bda9a30 | comment |
Meaningful Name: Augustin Meaulnes' closest friends are called François and Frantz – variations on the same name. As François means "Frenchman" and the novel is set in France, giving it to the narrator can be seen as bestowing upon him the quality of an "everyman" observer of the plot. | |
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Bungled Suicide | |
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Bungled Suicide: When Frantz de Galais' bride Valentine breaks off their engagement, he shoots himself in the head in desperation. He survives, however. Ganache, one of the entertainers at his wedding party, carries Frantz away; the wound is treated, and Frantz goes travelling with the former’s circus. | |
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Impoverished Patrician | |
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Impoverished Patrician: The de Galais family. Frantz, M. de Galais' son and Yvonne de Galais' brother, had incurred considerable debts and when he went on the road with Ganache, his creditors went after his family. They had to sell off some of their luxuries and some old buildings on the estate were torn down and converted into a terrain for hunters. | |
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No Communities Were Harmed | |
| Le Grand Meaulnes / int_87629455 | comment |
No Communities Were Harmed: The setting is the Sologne region in central France, in which the author spent his childhood. Sainte-Agathe, where the Seurel family and Meaulnes live at the beginning of the story, is inspired by Épineuil-le-Fleuriel, where Alain-Fournier lived as a boy. "La Ferté-d'Angillon", where Meaulnes lives when with his mother, is named after La Chapelle-d'Angillon, the author's birthplace and the estate of Sablonnières would be named after a hamlet located at the Northern exit of that village. | |
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Tuckerization | |
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Tuckerization: Yvonne de Galais bears the name of Yvonne de Quièvrecourt, Alain-Fournier's unrequited crush. It is worth noting that prior to meeting her, the author had once had a girlfriend who was also named Yvonne, about whom little is known. Also, the narrator's uncle is named Florentin, and was inspired by the author's uncle Florent Raimbault, who was a shopkeeper in Nançay. | |
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Stranger in a Familiar Land | |
| Le Grand Meaulnes / int_9ba53911 | comment |
Stranger in a Familiar Land: The second time Meaulnes comes to the Sablonnières estate, it is to attend the picnic that was specifically organized in order to reunite him with Yvonne de Galais, whom he had met at the estate on his first visit there. In the meantime, Yvonne's family has been impoverished; as a result, the event is not as colorful as the magical wedding party at which Meaulnes had been present when he met her and a lot of things he expected to find there are gone. Yvonne explains this to him, but Meaulnes can't seem to shake his disappointment. An incident where Yvonne's horse gets injured due to being badly tied serves as a pretext for Meaulnes to lose his temper; he loudly demands to know who had had the audacity to saddle a horse of his age, and when Yvonne's father comes forward and tries to explain himself, Meaulnes, rather than apologize, insolently says "well then, I cannot compliment you". The party breaks up and Meaulnes leaves with François and the latter's uncle. It looks like he has spoiled his chances with Yvonne; however, Meaulnes asks to be let out of the carriage and returns to the de Galais estate, where he tearfully asks for Yvonne's hand. In the next chapter, they are married. | |
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Foreshadowing | |
| Le Grand Meaulnes / int_9d12bbc1 | comment |
Foreshadowing: The author hints several times at Yvonne de Galais' eventual death. In the chapter where François meets Yvonne for the first time, he remarks this about her appearance: "I noticed only one flaw in all this beauty: at times of sadness, discouragement or only of deep reflection, a slight red marbling appeared on that face, as it happens in certain patients who are seriously ill without it being known." Shortly thereafter, "When she was about to leave, she held out her hand to me, and there was between us, more clearly than if we had said a lot of words, a secret understanding that death alone was to break and a friendship more pathetic than a great love." | |
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Cool Uncle | |
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Cool Uncle: François' uncle Florentin. His big, bustling family runs a general store stocked with goods. When it transpires that Yvonne de Galais is a regular at his store, Uncle Florentin immediately speaks to her father and they arrange a "pleasure party" on the de Galais' estate in order to give Meaulnes a chance to reunite with her. | |
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Due to the Dead | |
| Le Grand Meaulnes / int_a679184b | comment |
Due to the Dead: When Yvonne dies, it is found that it will not be possible to turn her coffin in the narrow second-floor hallway and it is suggested that it be hoisted by rope, brought into the room through a window and then lowered down. Her old father is aghast at the thought of such an indignity and is prepared to carry her body down himself. Naturally François, who is present at the scene, volunteers to carry her down himself and does so with the help of the doctor and an attending woman. | |
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Love at First Sight | |
| Le Grand Meaulnes / int_a8dcb1d7 | comment |
Love at First Sight: Both Meaulnes and Frantz de Galais. The former when he saw Yvonne de Galais at her brother's wedding party (and who, we learn later, has reciprocated his feelings), the latter when he met the seamstress Valentine in Bourges when she had been thrown out by her poor weaver father and immediately decided to marry her due to her beauty. | |
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Dreaming of Things to Come | |
| Le Grand Meaulnes / int_af7d483f | comment |
Dreaming of Things to Come: A self-fulfilling example. During his stay at the Sablonnières estate, Meaulnes thinks he hears the sound of a piano borne on the wind and his mind goes back to his childhood when he would listen to his mother playing. He later joins a group of children listening to a young woman play the piano and imagines that he is in his own home and that the piano player is his wife. Later, shortly after he marries Yvonne, they are at home at the de Galais estate. He brings up a memory of his mother and starts reminiscing about her piano playing. Yvonne then offers to play for him and proceeds to do so. | |
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Coming of Age Story | |
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Coming of Age Story: The story explores the period between the end of childhood and the onset of adulthood and the contrast between youthful idealism and the realization of real-life realities. | |
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My Beloved Smother | |
| Le Grand Meaulnes / int_b58c51d8 | comment |
My Beloved Smother: Millie is a devoted mother but seems to have been quite overprotective, if not possesive of François at one point (this may have been a reaction to his having an ailment in one leg). At the beginning of the novel the narrator, talking about the time before Meaulnes' arrival, states that he was never allowed out and that he remembers how his mother, "who was very proud of me", would bring him home on multiple occasions, accompanied by strong slaps, for having caught him skipping around in the company of village rascals. After the independent Meaulnes comes to their home and essentially takes François under his wing, though, she appears to desist from this behavior – perhaps because François' leg gets better at the same time. Certainly when Meaulnes and François want to go out one evening with François' father and the butcher to investigate some suspicious people, she does not stop them. | |
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Calling Parents by Their Name | |
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Calling Parents by Their Name: François refers to his father, who is also his teacher, as "M. Seurel". He refers to his mother as "Millie", which could be a nickname. | |
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Supporting Protagonist | |
| Le Grand Meaulnes / int_c960826 | comment |
Supporting Protagonist: At first, François Seurel appears as the narrator and as a mostly passive participant in the story of Augustin Meaulnes, the title character. As Meaulnes absents himself from his life, François takes on a more active role, being instrumental in finding Yvonne de Galais and her family's estate, which Meaulnes had failed to do. When Meaulnes absents himself again in order to look for Valentine and reunite her with Frantz, the story shifts its focus to François, who has recently become a teacher. He develops a strong bond with Meaulnes' now-wife Yvonne, and when Yvonne, and then her father M. de Galais, die, François is appointed by the latter as his interim heir pending Meaulnes' arrival. He also takes care of Meaulnes' baby daughter while waiting for her father to return. | |
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Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane | |
| Le Grand Meaulnes / int_cb70651c | comment |
Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: There are those who see in the novel an element of Magical Realism, specifically in the dream-like scene when Augustin ends up at the de Galais estate and attends the marvellous wedding party. It's subtle, but there are many unusual things that take place there and while there, Meaulnes appears to have second sight imputing in him a feeling of contentment and seeming to hint that he will find satisfaction in love if he pursues the young lady of the house, who he hasn't met yet. However, one should take into account that the narrator is telling us about Meaulnes' experiences on the estate after the passage of a lot of time and that, by his own admission, he pieced together the adventure from multiple recountings by Meaulnes. Therefore, the story as told may not be objective and could involve sentimental embellishment by both the narrator and Meaulnes. | |
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Spoiled Brat | |
| Le Grand Meaulnes / int_cfc52d52 | comment |
Spoiled Brat: Frantz de Galais. Since childhood, his kindly father and sister have always fulfilled his every wish. When he disappears following his fiancee Valentine's leaving him, his family has to pay off the debts that he had incurred prior to this, resulting in their being reduced to humble means. Moreover, Frantz comes back just when his sister is about to get married to Meaulnes, adamant that the latter should help him find Valentine. He first meets François, who admonishes him to put away his childish behavior, and not ruin the happiness of others, but Frantz insists that he is unhappy and that only Meaulnes can help him. François finally tells Frantz to come back in a year and that he will then find Valentine there, intending to ask his aunt Moinel for Valentine's coordinates rather than to bother Meaulnes and Yvonne with Frantz' request. In the end, though, Meaulnes does leave his newly-impregnated wife the very day after the wedding in order to find Valentine and reunite her with Frantz, and succeeds in his mission, while Yvonne gives birth to a daughter but unfortunately dies shortly after. Let us hope that Frantz appreciates the sacrifices that everyone has made for the sake of his happiness. | |
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Death by Childbirth | |
| Le Grand Meaulnes / int_d29a6629 | comment |
Death by Childbirth: After giving birth to her and Meaulnes' child, Yvonne dies of an affliction to her lungs. The relevant scene is rather graphic. Doubles as an example of Kill the Cutie. When Meaulnes finds out on returning from his latest quest, he breaks down and cries. | |
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Contrived Coincidence | |
| Le Grand Meaulnes / int_dc579c91 | comment |
Contrived Coincidence: François visits his Aunt Moinel on the way to Meaulnes' home; she tells him a story of how once, coming back from a wedding party, she and her late husband picked up an indigent young woman on the road and took her in as a maid before she left for Paris – and this young woman turns out to have been Frantz de Galais' long-lost love interest Valentine. Other potential examples occur (such as François finding out from his uncle Florentin that Meaulnes' long-lost love interest Yvonne de Galais is a regular customer at his general store), but quite a few of these examples are arguably justified to a greater or lesser extent in that they occur in locations where the characters might naturally find themselves in close proximity to each other. | |
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Manchild | |
| Le Grand Meaulnes / int_e313b4e7 | comment |
Manchild: Frantz de Galais, who, in his late teens when one should be maturing and progressing toward adulthood, is caused by his indulgent upbringing and the disappointment of being left by his fiancee to wander around with the circus, determined to stay alive only for the sake of having fun. Also Jasmin Delouche, up to a point – at 20, he is still trying to pass the Superior Course at school (eventually he gives up and enters his uncle’s masonry firm). Meaulnes' apparent desire to cling to the ideals of his school days is also worth noting. | |
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Very Loosely Based on a True Story | |
| Le Grand Meaulnes / int_e4b69188 | comment |
Very Loosely Based on a True Story: The story was inspired by an unrequited love of the author’s. In 1905, when a student, he once came across a young woman named Yvonne de Quièvrecourt on the street. Finding her very beautiful, he followed her onto a river boat and to the apartment where she was staying with her great-aunt on vacation. He later lurked outside the apartment and managed to meet her when she was on the way to mass. Going up to Yvonne, Fournier told her: “You are beautiful.” She asked him to leave her alone; he went to the mass and attended it separately from her. He approached her again afterward; introductions were made and they conversed for some time, but Yvonne again asked him to leave her alone. In effect, she was already set to be married. Though Fournier had not properly gotten to know Yvonne, he was so blown away by her, that he eventually crafted the novel around his experience with her. The impossibility of their relationship in real life was symbolically represented by the fact that in the novel, even though Meaulnes eventually succeeds in marrying Yvonne de Galais, he leaves on another quest having spent only one night with her and comes home the next year to find that she has died in childbirth. | |
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Platonic Life-Partners | |
| Le Grand Meaulnes / int_f627b434 | comment |
Platonic Life-Partners: When Meaulnes leaves Yvonne, whom he has just married, to look for Frantz and Valentine, François and Yvonne start spending time together and become very close. It is strongly suggested that François starts caring about her to the point of having a platonic love for her. This makes her death following childbirth all the more tragic. | |
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Dark Secret | |
| Le Grand Meaulnes / int_f909b16b | comment |
Dark Secret: When François reunites with Meaulnes following the latter's return from Paris, Meaulnes references a mistake that he has made and that he must put right, but does not disclose its nature to François, only indicating that it has something to do with the promise he made to Frantz. Later, when Meaulnes leaves to correct the mistake, François, while going through Meaulnes' papers, discovers that while in Paris, Meaulnes had begun a relationship with a girl that he had met outside the apartment where he was expecting to find Yvonne de Galais and had nearly married her, but had gotten upset and left her when he discovered that she was in fact Frantz de Galais' ex-fiancee Valentine. | |
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TheGayNineties | |
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The Gay '90s: Augustin arrives at the Seurels' "one Sunday in November 189-". The book very much has an impressionist, Belle Époque feel to it. | |
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Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold | |
| Le Grand Meaulnes / int_ff7e9adf | comment |
Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: The narrator notes Yvonne's mass of blonde hair. During the novel, she is shown to be as kind and sincere as she is beautiful, so she fits this trope. | |
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Le Grand Meaulnes |
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