Pessimism, Narrative, and Meaning in Henry Céard’s Une belle journée

Abstract

ABSTRACT Henry Céard's Une belle journée, a ‘plotless' novel, illuminates debates about pessimism in late nineteenth-century France by bringing to the fore the imperative to interpretation. The way that the novel's heroine is cast as having resigned herself to lackluster existence presents a contrast with Flaubert's Emma Bovary and ignites debates about whether resignation represents an abdication of happiness or creates its conditions of possibility. Readers' interpretation of Céard’s novel is bound up with their understanding of pessimism; debates about the novel can illuminate and be illuminated by larger debates about pessimism in fiction and non-fiction in the later nineteenth century.