Julien Green as Novelist of Love

Abstract

In an early autobiographical work, Julien Green recalls that when critics of his first novel, Mont-Cinère, told him that "since I had left love out of this first novel, it was very obvious that I could not treat the subject adequately," he resolved to answer them by writing a love story.1 In the following year, Green published Adrienne Mesurât, which remains, in our opinion, the best of his many novels. Adrienne was indeed in love, as would be most of Green's later heroes and heroines, and the love intrigue was central to the structure of the novel. Yet we can well ask whether she represented a satisfactory answer to the critics, whether her immature and rather solipsistic notion of love (which applies to the majority of the lovers in Green's later novels as well) is an "adequate" treatment of the subject. At the age of seventeen, Ardienne seems to have been locked into an empty life of unchanging routine by her fanatically conventional father and her dessicated, moribund elder sister. The young girl is hardly aware of her own situation and feelings; it is a mystery to her how and why she has fallen desperately in love with a not particularly attractive middle-aged doctor who lives near by. Adrienne has never actually met this neighbor; she fell in love with him one summer afternoon when he happened to pass by in a carriage as she stood in a field by the road. Her father's unwillingness to receive visitors, and his refusal to recognize the severe illness of his elder daughter preclude any social or professional contact between the Mesurât family and Doctor Maurecourt. Adrienne mast content herself with gazing at the doctor's house from the window of her room, a pastime which becomes so obsessive that she nearly forgets the doctor himself. After the departure of her sister for a sanatorium and the death of her tyrannical father, Adrienne is finally free to meet the man she loves; but strangely, she does nothing but avoid possible encounters with him. Growing increasingly unhappy because (she assumes) of her frustrated passion, Adrienne imagines that she would be free and happy if only she could rid herself of her enslaving love. In a desperate move to escape herself and her solitude, Adrienne flees to a neighboring town, where her anxiety and depression grow worse. Before returning home, she sends an anonymous card to Maurecourt, telling him of her love and suffering. In the meantime, Adrienne's somewhat unsavory next door neighbor and meddling confidante summons the doctor to the Mesurât home so that Adrienne will be able to confront him directly. When the doctor arrives, she does not recognize him at first, and then is so disconcerted that she receives him quite curtly. Maurecourt, who seems to have some notions about