25 pages • 50 minutes read
Jeanette WintersonThe Passion
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1987A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1 Summary: Pages 1-15
The beginning of The Passion is entitled “The Emperor.” It introduces the reader to Henri, a young soldier in Napoleon Bonaparte’s army in the early 1800s. Though he had wished to be a drummer, Henri ends up a cook instead. He does not mind since he gets to personally prepare Napoleon’s chicken. In this early sequence we are introduced to Henri’s current situation as well as his background. He comes from a small, quiet village. “We’re a lukewarm people,” Henri informs the reader, “Not much touches us, but we long to be touched” (11). He describes the annual bonfire the village holds. We learn of Henri’s parents: his mother Georgette’s unfulfilled desire to become a nun, and his father Claude’s unrequited love for Georgette. When Georgette’s father threatened to marry her off, Georgette begged Claude for shelter, reluctantly married him, and bore his child.
Henri maintains that he cannot be a priest because while he has faith, like his mother, he does not have religious passion: “I have shouted at God and the Virgin, but they have not shouted back and I’m not interested in the still small voice. Surely a god can meet passion with passion?” (15). Since Georgette ran away without her parents’ permission, Henri has never met his grandparents. But he claims he does not mind, as he doesn’t have to deal with familial complications. Instead, he spends time with the gambling with village priest.
Part 1 Summary: Pages 16-32
While camped at Boulogne, Henri meets and befriends Domino, a horse keeper, and Patrick, a defrocked priest who was recruited into the French army. Henri also visits his first brothel with the army’s cook. Henri expects the place to be decked out in red velvet but instead he finds a cold stone room with pallet beds. “[T]here was no softness here,” Henri notes, “nothing to disguise our business” (16). After attempting to attack a prostitute, the cook is hit by another woman, and the group of army men return to their camp. Napoleon arrives unexpectedly the next day. As the cook is passed out drunk, a general instructs Henri to cook Napoleon’s chicken. Napoleon walks in on Henri and Domino attempting to hoist the cook up with an oar, calls them ingenious, and demands that Henri wait on him exclusively. The cook threatens Henri before he leaves.
On July 20, 1804, Henri and his fellow soldiers are poised for a parade led by Napoleon. Napoleon seeks to launch 25,000 soldiers in 15 minutes. Despite the poor weather, Napoleon insists that the soldiers launch, and 2,000 men die. Henri is shaken, and his support of Napoleon momentarily wavers. He begins writing a diary.
Henri briefly visits home during Napoleon’s coronation and notices the rising tide of nationalism in his village. Henri then travels to Paris with Napoleon to continue cooking for him. He meets Napoleon’s wife Josephine for the first time. However, Henri’s stint in Paris is short-lived as Napoleon sends him back to the Boulogne camp to learn how to fight. Napoleon reasons that Henri would serve him better if he “could handle a musket as well as a carving knife” (24).
Part 1 Summary: Pages 33-45
Back at Boulogne, Henri trains 10 hours a day. The camps swells to 100,000 soldiers by Christmas. To boost morale, Napoleon orders prostitutes, or vivandiéres, to the soldier camps. The vivandiéres are destitute women—runaways or servant girls—who cannot work anywhere else. Henri describes their poor conditions and pay.
Upon Patrick’s insistence, Henri accompanies Patrick to a New Year’s Eve church service in 1804. While at church, Henri experiences a wave of guilt for surviving while 2,000 men died. Afterward, Henri praises forgetting. He argues, “We cannot keep in mind too many things. There is only the present and nothing to remember” (30). As 1805 approaches, Henri notes that he is now 20 years old.
Part 1 Analysis
Several themes and motifs emerge in The Passion’s first section. Though ostensibly pious, many characters engage in blasphemous behavior. Despite his hyper-religious upbringing, Henri attempts to have premarital sex and struggles with his faith in God due to the lack of passion in religious rhetoric. Henri’s childhood priest gambles and drinks. Defrocked priest Patrick is removed from the church for ogling young girls. Despite Patrick’s lack of allegiance to religious behavior, he still displays a strong belief in God and in the customs of faith. For instance, he insists that Henri attend a New Year’s Eve service with him.
“The Emperor” develops the theme of nationalism within The Passion. Henri documents Napoleon’s rise, from his humble beginnings in Corica to his emergence as a world leader, against the timeline of Henri’s own life. Henri grew up with Napoleon as an icon, stating, “We called him emperor long before he had taken that title himself” (28). Henri describes how the French Revolution divided his village into those who still supported the monarchy and those who wanted change. He then hints at the futility of this division due to class distinction, clarifying, “We were always helpless, whoever was in power” (27). Later, Henri points to the dangers of nationalism, writing, “Now we wanted a ruler and we wanted him to rule the world. We are not an unusual people” (28). He walks the reader through France’s national fascination and love for Napoleon, especially among the poor. He highlights the desperation for recognition and sense of purpose—and how romantic conquest can sound to people who have never experienced power. Henri notes of Napoleon, “He […] made England sound as though she already belonged to us” (17).
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