Question: Le Grand Meaulnes
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||RESPONSE||"Why did Meaulnes reunite Valentine with Frantz?"
Augustin leaves Yvonne, the woman whom he had once loved so passionately, less than a day after being married in order to follow her brother's wanderings. He hears the "Hou-ou" and strides out the next morning. I've been trying to imagine what was going through his mind on that interim night, wondering which of arguments would have most convincing to him. Augustin Meaulnes might not love Yvonne anymore. As was suggested in class, he could have just married her because she fulfilled his old dream. Neve rtheless, he did in fact wed, bed, then fled from Yvonne de Galais. I thought this was pretty low behavior.
I also saw it as possible that he went after Frantz because if Frantz married Valentine then she wouldn't have to work as a streetwalker. This explanation allowed me to think rather kindly of le Grand Meaulnes once more, for I like for my heroes to stay true to their loves and it seemed to me that Valentine had taken his heart. Yet I have a few problems with this explanation also. If worry for Valentine was at the heart of his abandonment, why did he bother to return to Yvonne at all? It would be dis honorable in the eyes of society to remain with Valentine, but I think that he had already taken several steps in that direction and so he might as well stay with the woman whom he really feels akin to.
The closer that I look at what might have motivated Meaulnes to leave, the more I question his character. However, I also wonder if he just felt trapped, like a man trying to bail out a boat with a tablespoon. Perhaps Meaulnes isn't really thinking too hard about his plans, he is just trying to do damage control. He was gone for a whole year though,and I am pretty sure that somewhere along the way he must have had time to reconsider these things. And at that point I think he should have thought about whether or not Valentine and Frantz would still want to be together.
By that time Valentine would already have had to make her living by selling her body and Frantz would have become even more of "a youth already showing signs of age ... [who had] made such a botch of his life" (166). How likely is it that they both still wanted the person who stood opposite them, rather than the nostalgic fantasy of what the other person represented? Valentine says that she sort of loves the youth of her letters, but the old Frantz probably never had to steal chickens in order to surviv e. Frankly, I imagine that it took so long for Meaulnes to return with the couple because, after the relatively easy task of locating them, he had to work to convince Frantz and Valentine to finally go ahead with their nuptials.
Perhaps I second-guessed him too much, but I know that I came to doubt how Grand Meaulnes was after a while. Maybe he was trying too hard to be the strong one who rights all wrongs and so he overlooked the fact that as a human he also commits some wrongs. Do you have any suggestions as to what would have motivated him to leave Yvonne as he did, whether or not Frantz and Valentine should have married after all of the changes which had occurred during their separation?
Response
I received a wide variety of responses to this question. As Deliana says, I asked a lot of questions, and upon rereading the essay I realize that it was not written as clearly as I would have liked it to be. But I think that the divergence in all of our thinking must be due to more than our technical difficulties (ie: which question to answer? and, what exactly is the question?); each of us got different things out of this novel and so our opinions about Meaulnes' behavior were sharply divided.I don't understand why it is that people feel it so necessary to believe that Meaulnes loved Yvonne. Arne gives me a lecture about how Yvonne is only one part of Meaulnes' quest and so his leaving her is not a sign that he didn't really value her. Delia na didn't actually say that he had to love Yvonne, but her declaration that marriage should be "a commitment, promise, oath of some sort" reminded me of Yvain and his Lady. Yvain's second quest establishes that he does know how to keep an oath and thus h e once again becomes worthy of his lady. Yet because I doubt Meaulnes' love for his wife I have a really hard time extending that premise to him. I think that Meaulnes is disappointed with how The Lost Domain totally changed and so he reunites the couple as a way of restoring at least one aspect of his childhood fairy tale.
I think that I have the desire to see all of my characters happily paired off and so I gravitated towards thinking that if he did not love Yvonne at the end it must be because his heart was engaged elsewhere. Perhaps I am so generally disapproving of h is character because he does not meet this expectation of mine. Still, for whatever reason, I feel that he should not have just left his responsibilites behind in order to reunite Frantz and Valentine. I think it was done for selfish reasons but, even i f he was truly being nobler than I am able to give him credit for, the other people in my group pointed out that he could have maintained contact with Yvonne while continuing on his quest. His decision not to makes me feel even more so that he did not kn ow if he wanted to continue their relationship and so he was using the quest for Frantz and Valentine as a way of covering up his true quest - figuring out whether he wanted to return home and fulfill his commitments.
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Last revised May 1, 1996
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