Marguerite Duras' Autobiographical Novel: Social Rule Transgressions in Amorous Encounter

Extract

[...] The transgression is also verified through the author's own writing, which employs terms of great banality, as we have said above, constantly switching from the point of view of one character to that of another, and using a fragmented writing style that allows us to follow the interiority of each character. This writing is surprising, the sentences are short, chopped, and we see that Marguerite Duras breaks with the codes of the writing in use and fully inscribes herself in the current of the Nouveau Roman. [...]

[...] But this gaze of the young woman shows just as much that the author wants to emphasize, in addition to this inversion of roles, the transgressive character of the social rules and the freedom of the young woman. We can speak of social rule transgressions through several elements present in this text and which show the young woman's freedom in relation to certain social conventions of her time. Already, the young woman shows a certain audacity in looking freely at 'the elegant man' as he gets out of the limousine. [...]

[...] The three dots of suspension well testify to the surprise that this young man may have had in the face of this woman who wears such a hat, but also to his admiration and attraction for the young woman. The young woman also finds herself on a ferry where she shouldn't necessarily be, especially being alone, dressed as she is, and at such an hour, so close to dawn. What's also surprising is that the young woman took a 'native car,' which demonstrates her free-spirited nature in relation to all the social rules, of race, of gender, that she should be bound by. [...]

[...] The young woman finds the man 'elegant.' As for the young man, he finds the young woman beautiful, 'she is so pretty'; he even tells her 'that he thinks he's dreaming' beforehand. This passage makes us think of the topos of the amorous encounter in fairy tales. The 'golden shoes' worn by the young woman and quickly noticed by the young man in his vision of the young woman can also fit into this framework. It is only from this perspective that we can say that Marguerite Duras tries to approach the usual topos of the amorous encounter. [...]

[...] In this excerpt we can ask ourselves how Marguerite Duras renews the topos of the amorous encounter? In the first part, we will see how the author relates this encounter and what constitutes the originality of this scene, and in the second part, we will examine how through her writing and within the framework of this encounter, the novelist expresses a transgression of social rules and thereby a certain transgression in writing. We can witness through this scene an inversion of the usual roles of the characters that we usually find in novels, particularly in the context of first love encounters. [...]