Bonjour Tristesse: Analysis of Major Characters
"Bonjour Tristesse" is a novel that explores complex relationships through the lens of its major characters during a summer in the south of France. The story is narrated by Cécile, a seventeen-year-old girl who grapples with her recent academic failure and the emotional dynamics in her life. Her father, Raymond, is a charming yet manipulative widower whose pursuit of beauty and validation influences those around him, including Cécile. Cécile's interactions with Raymond's mistress, Elsa Mackenbourg, reveal a contrasting character; Elsa embodies physical beauty but lacks the intellectual depth of others, placing her in a morally ambiguous position. The arrival of Anne Larsen, a close friend of Cécile's late mother, further complicates the narrative, as she represents sophistication and stability, having cared for Cécile in her early years. Additionally, Cécile engages in a tumultuous romance with Cyril, a law student who, despite being older, finds himself emotionally outmatched by her cunning and intelligence. Collectively, these characters highlight themes of manipulation, love, and the quest for identity amidst societal expectations. The interplay among them invites readers to reflect on the nuances of human relationships and the influence of beauty and intellect on personal dynamics.
Bonjour Tristesse: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: Françoise Sagan
First published: 1954 (English translation, 1955)
Genre: Novel
Locale: The French Riviera and Paris
Plot: Psychological realism
Time: A summer and early fall in the 1950's
Cécile (say-SEEL), the narrator, a seventeen-year-old girl who is spending the summer in the south of France with her father and his mistress. Just prior to the vacation, she had failed her baccalauréat, the state exam that ends the French secondary school cycle and symbolizes a degree of social as well as academic respectability for the student who passes it.
Raymond, the narrator's father, a seductive, forty-year-old widower whose overwhelming charm appears alternately as a strength and a weakness. Cécile loves her father precisely for those qualities that lead him to manipulate, and be manipulated by, women: his emphasis on physical beauty (his own and other people's) and his constant desire to seek validation in the love and admiration of others.
Elsa Mackenbourg, Raymond's mistress, a pale, red-haired woman who lives off of her beauty. Neither a fashion model nor a prostitute, she occupies a gray area between respectability and disrepute. She clearly is the intellectual inferior of the other characters in the novel, especially Anne Larsen.
Anne Larsen, whose arrival at the summer house at the beginning of the novel sets the plot into motion. When Cécile's mother died fifteen years earlier, her father entrusted her to Anne, who was one of the mother's closest friends. As a result, Anne had an enormous impact on Cécile's early childhood, nurturing in her an admiration for cultural sophistication and understated elegance (she works in the fashion industry). She presents a physical contrast (older, darker) as well as an intellectual and spiritual contrast to Elsa.
Cyril, a twenty-six-year-old law student who initiates an innocent summer romance with Cécile, then falls in love with her. Although he is substantially older than Cécile and seduces her rather forcefully into losing her virginity, there is a strong sense that she is superior to him in many respects: more intelligent, a better strategist, and less sentimental.