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The Immoralist
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The Immoralist by Gide - June BOTM
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Diane
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1. What is the role of Menalque?
2. What parts in The Immoralist are morality and immorality mentioned in the same text?
3. What examples could you offer to explain how Michel's behavior and attitudes appear to threaten bourgeois society?
4. A blurb on the back of a copy of André Gide's The Immoralist describes the book as an "ardent defense of homosexuality". Is this description accurate?
5. Towards the end of the reading, Michel likens himself to a palimpsest. In what way or ways do you think the palimpsest is a productive metaphor for Michel's relationship to and understanding of himself?
1. Michel is blinkered at first, seeing no possibilities other than the normal bourgeois way of existence, or complete ruin. Menalque shows him that one could have a life in society without conforming to all of its norms.2. Don't know - I didn't read these questions before reading the book and I don't want to go through it page by page again.
3. I think this is clearest in his treatment of his estates. He undermines the status quo by conspiring with poachers to trick his own agent/gamekeeper, just because he is attracted to them. A prime rule of European class divisions was that the upper classes must keep their place and not try to play with the lower classes. Michel broke this rule again and again.
4. It doesn't seem that way to me today. I hesitate to classify others, but Michel seems bisexual - but narcissistic and not attuned to the needs of others, whether female or male.
5. I read Michel as a narcissist, so I don't have much hope of him relating to or understanding himself ;)
I enjoyed this book, although it was not what I was expecting. I felt Marceline was too idealised, a Dickensian-style "little woman" sacrificing herself for her husband with no thought for herself. That made me angry, but I decided this was a portrait of Michel, who cannot see his wife as an independent entity. As such, it was interesting and engaging, as narcissists often are.
1. What is the role of Menalque? Menalque is the catalyst for allowing Michel the liberty to pursue the sensations and life that has attracted him. He is someone outside polite society, but he offers Michel what he wants to hear. He also represents a serious break with the influence of Marceline, from the time Michel spends the night with Menalque, Marceline’s illness and her decline begins.
2. What parts in The Immoralist are morality and immorality mentioned in the same text?
I also didn’t read theses questions before starting, so haven’t identified any specific passages to answer this. However, I did notice how Michel decides that rejecting the moral code of antiquity is part of his awakening - he refuses to go to Agrigentum or Paestum and becomes obsessed with the debauched life of Athalaric. He also rejects the Protestant moral code he was brought up with.
3. What examples could you offer to explain how Michel's behavior and attitudes appear to threaten bourgeois society?
His lectures are an attempt to explain and justify his philosophy to others, and these meet with widespread rejection. Eventually he abandons this employment. His behaviour at the family estate undermines the social norms - first he allows Charles to overturn his father’s way of dealing with the tenant farmers, then he gossips with Bute, and then he conspires with the poachers - all these are driven by his erotic fixation on the men involved and his attraction towards ‘unaccaptable’ behaviour
4. A blurb on the back of a copy of André Gide's The Immoralist describes the book as an "ardent defense of homosexuality". Is this description accurate?
Perhaps initially as Michel awakens to his true desires and how he has suppressed these through his arranged marriage and his cloistered scholarship. However, as his self-indulgence and narcissism takes over, Michel for me ceases to be a suitable defender of any way of life,
5. Towards the end of the reading, Michel likens himself to a palimpsest. In what way or ways do you think the palimpsest is a productive metaphor for Michel's relationship to and understanding of himself?
I think the palimpsest is a good metaphor - because it ties in with his work as an ancient historian and this then reflects the way he casts his own history and memory aside to ‘rediscover’ his older and purer existence before “the accumulate layers of disguise” obscured his true self. Ultimately though he cannot cancel out the past, Marceline’s life and fate are not his to erase - and I am not convinced he understands himself, he just seeks to justify his actions.
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2. What parts in The Immoralist are morality and immorality mentioned in the same text? I didn’t know I needed to pay attention to this so I didn’t make any notes on it.n
3. What examples could you offer to explain how Michel's behavior and attitudes appear to threaten bourgeois society?
Behaviors that threaten the norms of society are always experienced as a threat.
4. A blurb on the back of a copy of André Gide's The Immoralist describes the book as an "ardent defense of homosexuality". Is this description accurate? I don’t think it was a defense but it was more of an exploration of and it also was more than homosexuality. It was also pederast. So you could also say that it was a defense of pederasty.
5. Towards the end of the reading, Michel likens himself to a palimpsest. In what way or ways do you think the palimpsest is a productive metaphor for Michel's relationship to and understanding of himself?
We do learn new things about ourselves and that new information is added to the original.
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What parts in The Immoralist are morality and immorality mentioned in the same text?
“…holding her down with his enormous hands; meanwhile the second boy, on the floor above, continued tenderly reciting his prayers…”
“How can you expect us to protect your interests if you undermine them yourself? You can’t defend both the poacher and the game keeper.”
“You love the inhuman, Marceline said.”
1. What is the role of Menalque?
As everyone else has said he gives Michel license to do what he wants.
2. What parts in The Immoralist are morality and immorality mentioned in the same text?
Diane I love your quotes well spotted.
3. What examples could you offer to explain how Michel's behavior and attitudes appear to threaten bourgeois society?
The fact that it is heavily hinted that he is gay and interested in young boys is a threat to society and as Kristel says anything outside the norm is a threat.
4. A blurb on the back of a copy of André Gide's The Immoralist describes the book as an "ardent defense of homosexuality". Is this description accurate?
No there is nothing ardent in this book everything is subtly hinted at there is no direct reference to sexuality as such although the reader understands that Michel is gay and possibly a paedophile. I also didn't see it as a defence as Kristel says this explored the idea rather than endorsed it.
5. Towards the end of the reading, Michel likens himself to a palimpsest. In what way or ways do you think the palimpsest is a productive metaphor for Michel's relationship to and understanding of himself?
This is a good metaphor Michel is replacing the man he was before husband, potential father, carer with what he becomes a man only interested in himself.
As everyone else has said he gives Michel license to do what he wants.
2. What parts in The Immoralist are morality and immorality mentioned in the same text?
Diane I love your quotes well spotted.
3. What examples could you offer to explain how Michel's behavior and attitudes appear to threaten bourgeois society?
The fact that it is heavily hinted that he is gay and interested in young boys is a threat to society and as Kristel says anything outside the norm is a threat.
4. A blurb on the back of a copy of André Gide's The Immoralist describes the book as an "ardent defense of homosexuality". Is this description accurate?
No there is nothing ardent in this book everything is subtly hinted at there is no direct reference to sexuality as such although the reader understands that Michel is gay and possibly a paedophile. I also didn't see it as a defence as Kristel says this explored the idea rather than endorsed it.
5. Towards the end of the reading, Michel likens himself to a palimpsest. In what way or ways do you think the palimpsest is a productive metaphor for Michel's relationship to and understanding of himself?
This is a good metaphor Michel is replacing the man he was before husband, potential father, carer with what he becomes a man only interested in himself.
1. He is a precursor of what Michel could become. Society has turned their back on him and blackened his name due to an "absurd, shameful" lawsuit. He gives encouragement to Michel's love of pleasure and desire to please himself.3. He becomes unable to compromise and everything becomes about himself and his desires. Society cannot handle so much self-emphasis. And many of his choices are made based on a homosexual nature that was itself a challenge to society.
4. I agree with other comments. This is an exploration but not an ardent defence. And his desires seem inclined towards pederasty which is not the same thing at all. The further the story progresses the less it can be called defence.
As others have said, Menalque encouraged Michel to follow his desires.Thanks, Diane, for great quotes. I suspect there were many others in the text.
The way he undermined the role of the overlord on his property is the prime example.
It may have been at the time, because he didn't act on his desires in the way that charicatures of homosexuality may have done.
This is an intriguing proposition. He writes over his previous life to fulfil his desires
