29 pages • 58 minutes read
Madame de La FayetteThe Princesse de Clèves (The Princess of Cleves)
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1678A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
The Princess de Clèves
Mme de Clèves is among the few characters in this novel who are entirely fictional; as such, she may be seen as standing witness for both the reader and the author. Her confusion about the true nature of court mirrors our own, and the path for appropriate behavior set out before her is the narrowest in the book. Certainly, no man is held to the standards she is held to, but neither are many of the women, who have found their place in the court’s pecking order through long experience.
Identifying with the princess is a claustrophobic experience; in addition to the rules set forth for her behavior, her beauty marks her as the object of every eye at court. She is constantly being watched and assessed. As a consequence, her role is almost entirely passive. People force her to react and place her in situations from which she vainly attempts to escape. Among her only proactive behaviors are correctly assessing M. de Nemours’s inconstancy and taking herself to a convent.
The Duc de Nemours
The author describes M. de Nemours as “nature’s masterpiece”—handsome, courteous, and physically adept. Women everywhere notice him, and he even attracts the eyes of the Dauphine and the Queen of England. Though the author treats him with some sympathy, he is also the novel’s closest embodiment of a villain. He takes every opportunity to intrude on Mme de Clèves’s life, even when he’s clearly not wanted. He steals and spies to get closer to her.
Nevertheless, Nemours is among the few characters that the author follows intimately, and while his behavior is bad, it is never spurious nor performed for the sake of mere anarchy or spite. Nemours is motivated by believable goals, goals anyone who’s been in love can understand if not condone.
The Prince de Clèves
The title character’s husband enters their relationship with his eyes open (or rather, with his eyes intentionally shut). Soon before their wedding, he notes a general air of indifference from his wife-to-be, yet there is no question that the wedding will proceed. He represents the machinery and rigorous diplomacy at the heart of courtly nuptials; like Mme de Tournon before him, he becomes its ultimate victim.
It is notable that, among all the characters at court, M. de Clèves is arguably the least rational. He acts on unfounded conclusions and sets logical traps from which his wife cannot possibly extract herself. He establishes rules of honesty and sincerity that he later condemns his wife for following. Patriarchy is traditionally symbolized by the steady authority of kings, but here Lafayette provides an alternate, more critical example of patriarchy using the somewhat hysterical M. de Clèves as a model. In this view, the exercise of patriarchy hurts both the empowered and the constrained.
Madame de Chartres
Though she dies in Book 1, Mme de Chartres casts a long shadow over the novel. It is from her mother that Mme de Clèves first learns about the expectations upon her and the hypocrisies of court. Mme de Chartres also teaches her daughter that she must discern the hypocrisies she is told about from the hypocrisies of the society itself, which the characters fail to recognize. For example, Mme de Chartres scolds the Duchess for her ambition yet establishes a poor match for her daughter because of her own ambition. However, this ambition owes its existence not to a flaw in Mme de Chartres character, but to the nature and expectations of the court.
The Dauphine
The Dauphine (or Mary, Queen of Scots) represents an essential medium through which information—specifically, gossip—is spoken aloud and exchanged. When the two central characters cannot communicate with one another, often they communicate indirectly through the Dauphine, who routinely upsets their attempts at discretion.
