The Devils: Analysis of Major Characters
"The Devils: Analysis of Major Characters" explores the intricate dynamics of key figures in a story set in 17th-century Loudun, France, centered around the vicar Urbain Grandier. Grandier is portrayed as a complex character, embodying both intellectual superiority and sensuality, which ultimately leads to his downfall as he faces accusations of witchcraft. His relationships with others, such as the malcontented Sewerman, serve as a foil to his philosophical aspirations, while Sister Jeanne of the Angels emerges as a tragic figure driven by her longings and grievances toward him. The narrative also delves into the motivations of secondary characters, including Cardinal Richelieu, who represents political oppression against Grandier, and the middle-class figures like Mannoury and Adam, whose envy contributes to the atmosphere of malice surrounding Grandier’s trial. Other notable characters include Phillipe Trincant, whose secret marriage to Grandier complicates societal and familial tensions, and various nuns who engage in theatrics of demonic possession, reflecting the broader themes of hysteria and societal control. Through these characters, the text highlights the intersections of personal desire, societal expectations, and the consequences of rebellion against established norms.
The Devils: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: John Whiting
First published: 1961
Genre: Play
Locale: France
Plot: Tragedy
Time: The seventeenth century
Urbain Grandier (ur-BAYN grahn-DYAY), the vicar of St. Peter's Church in Loudun, France. Grandier is a brilliant, proud, and sensuous man who is obviously superior, intellectually and emotionally, to most of his parishioners, yet he is a persistently religious person as well. He struggles with his libertine impulses and passionate appreciation of physical beauty, which threaten to deify flesh over spirit. He makes powerful enemies in a deliberate attempt to bring about his own destruction, to test his capacity for suffering and as a way of doing penance to God for his rebellious spirit. Women are drawn to him, a fact of which he often takes advantage but that ultimately destroys him. When he is accused of witchcraft, he receives the excruciating trial he sought, enduring torture and painful death with a fortitude and grace equal to his former arrogance and sensuality.
Sewerman, a workman with whom Grandier often converses in the street. He is a foil for Grandier's philosophic meditations on the nature of humanity, casting doubt on Grandier's aspirations and comparing human beings to walking sewer systems. His is a materialistic and skeptical but honest voice that Grandier respects.
Sister Jeanne of the Angels (zhahn), the prioress of St. Ursula's Convent, the ultimate weapon for Grandier's destruction, though one he did not choose. He never meets the pathetic, hunchbacked mother superior, except to decline an invitation to be her father confessor. She has observed him longingly, however, from the grating of her barren room. His crime against her is the culmination of a more pervasive one to which she is particularly vulnerable—part of the cultural crime of keeping beauty and tender passion forever beyond her reach. She joins her special agony to the ugliness and ferocity of the rest of the world to blot out his careless affront to mediocrity and inferiority. Her claim that he possessed her sexually as a devil has elements of both hysteria and deliberate role-playing.
Mannoury (mah-new-REE), a surgeon, and Adam, a chemist, who demonstrate the malice, envy, and small-mindedness of some middle-class persons who resent Grandier, as well as the gross sadism that permeates the examination of the nuns at Loudun for evidence of demoniac possession. Grandier is contemptuous of their pretensions to knowledge and importance.
Phillipe Trincant (fee-LEEP trahn-KAN), a young girl, the daughter of the public prosecutor. Grandier marries her in a secret ceremony, an action that he explains to the Sewerman as an attempt to find a way to salvation through commitment to another person. When Phillipe becomes pregnant, however, Grandier recommends to her father that he marry her off to an old man.
Louis Trincant (lwee), the public prosecutor, an enemy of Grandier because of his treatment of Phillipe.
Cardinal Richelieu (reesh-LYOO), a far more formidable enemy. Grandier opposes Richelieu's project of tearing down the fortifications of Loudun as part of a campaign to reduce local sovereignty and unify France with a strong central government. This political motivation for the government's part in Grandier's conviction is further enhanced by an old insult Richelieu suffered at the hands of the insolent Grandier before Richelieu became virtually the ruler of France.
De la Rochepozay (rohsh-poh-ZAY), the bishop of Poitiers, an ascetic who despises the senses and condemns all self-assertion.
Jean D'Armagnac (zhahn dahr-mah-NYAHK), the governor of Loudun, who, like Grandier, would like to preserve the independence of the city.
Prince Henri de Condé (an-REE deh kohn-DAY), a decadent nobleman described as an “exquisite and handsome sodomite.” He comes, leaning on painted boys, to observe the nuns pretending demoniac possession. He is nobody's fool and devises a clever test that reveals their fraud. He tells the commissioner to destroy Grandier for his opposition and his strength, not on such flimsy grounds as demoniac possession, of which he is innocent.
Sister Claire, Sister Gabrielle, and Sister Louise,whojoin Sister Jeanne in an obscene display of possession for the delectation of a prurient audience of townspeople.
The Demons, imaginary beings who obtain an almost existential reality as the projection of pain, malice, and lust in an atmosphere of hysteria. They speak through the women, and their laughter is heard in other volatile situations. Their “reality” is balanced by Grandier's transcendent religious experience, after which he says he has “created God.”