Light: Analysis of Major Characters
The analysis of major characters in the context of Claude Monet's life and relationships reveals a rich tapestry of personal dynamics and emotional struggles. Claude Monet is portrayed as a passionate artist, deeply engaged with the essence of light and its transformative qualities, while also embodying the complexities of his personal life. His second wife, Alice, grapples with grief and a sense of spiritual burden following the loss of their daughter, reflecting the shadows of their past that loom over their relationship.
Marthe, Alice's elder daughter, emerges as a stable figure, dutifully managing household responsibilities while yearning for personal fulfillment. In contrast, Germaine, Alice's younger daughter, is caught in the tension of familial expectations and her aspirations for love and independence. Michel Monet, Claude's son, struggles under the weight of his father's artistic legacy, feeling overshadowed and voiceless.
Supporting characters like Octave Mirbeau, the witty yet troubled family friend, and Anatole Toussaint, the priest with doubts, add depth to the exploration of themes surrounding creativity, loss, and the pursuit of meaning. Overall, the character analysis highlights the interplay of art, family, and personal turmoil, inviting readers to consider how these elements shape individual identities and relationships.
Light: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: Eva Figes
First published: 1983
Genre: Novel
Locale: Giverny, France
Plot: Prose poem
Time: A summer day in 1900
Claude Monet (klohd moh-NAY), an Impressionist painter and architect of the gardens at Giverny. Grizzled but vigorous, Claude retains his appetite for life and light. He seduces, tracks, and hunts his quarry of light through the day. A delicate perceiver, Claude believes that sight is born again each day and that people live in a luminous bath of light. The serpents in his lovely gardens of blossom and water are machines, progress, and even war. As creator of his own Eden, Claude rules his gardens and his household, peopled by less powerful beings who are careful to bow to his moods.
Alice Raingo Hoschédé (rayn-GOH oh-shay-DAY), Claude's second wife. Old in spirit and appearance, Alice is oppressed by a sense of sin and punishment. Her life stopped with the death of her daughter Suzanne a year earlier; now she feels that the walls between past and present, visible and invisible, are collapsing. Claude thinks that his second wife has always harbored complex and unhappy feelings, but she finds that some vital link with her husband was never forged. The two are in part divided by shadows from the past—Suzanne; Claude's first wife, Camille; and the memory of Alice's bankrupt first husband. During a year of mourning, much of the management of the domestic household has passed to Alice's daughter Marthe.
Marthe Hoschédé (mahrt), Alice's elder daughter. Like the biblical Martha, Marthe is a solid domestic support in her household. Her virtues are hearth ones: a sense of duty, practicality, dependability, and responsibility. Solid and thick in appearance, Marthe sees herself as a woman who has never come first with another person. Claude relies on her to run the household and stay with her mother, and much of the care of Suzanne's children falls to her as well. Theodore Butler's proposal of marriage allows her a measure of happiness; her sister Suzanne's children will become her own.
Lily Butler, Alice's granddaughter, the daughter of Suzanne and Theodore Butler. In this young child is found the mysterious and marvelous sensibility of the artist. To her, the house is fascinating and old, full of secrets. She wonders at the humblest garden scenes—drops on a spider's web, drifting petals, precious colors in pebbles.
Germaine Hoschédé (zhehr-MEHN), Alice's younger daughter. Germaine spends the day in a flush of anticipation and fear, all of her thoughts absorbed by a suitor's proposal of marriage. Although she asks her mother to intercede with her stepfather, the proposal is dismissed by Claude, who sees neither money nor prospects in this young man who longs to invent machines for the future. By evening, it is the plain stay-at-home elder sister, Marthe, who is to be married. Through her pain, Germaine dimly grasps a subtle shift in family relationships. She will continue as before, a “passenger” on a “ship” under Claude's command.
Michel Monet (mee-SHEHL), the son of Claude and Camille. Withdrawn and quiet, Michel suffers from his father's talent. He has the painter's sensibility but not his ability. Stifled and almost paralyzed by his father's genius, he is unable to speak of his father save in the third person. Gripped by the magic and authority of his father's paintings, Michel is unable to conceive of any other activity in life worth undertaking.
Octave Mirbeau (ohk-TAHV meer-BOH), a writer and friend of the family. The notorious and witty Mirbeau is a mixture of elements, at one moment sardonic and amusing, at another kind and sympathetic. Both political and religious topics unleash his mocking, but behind his lively front lies considerable unhappiness resulting from marital problems. He shares with Claude a passion for gardening.
Anatole Toussaint (ah-nah-TOHL tew-SAYN), a parish priest. The Abbe Toussaint is a complex figure, a priest who has faced black doubt and who believes in evolution and botanical experimentation. His manner is nervous and diffident, his appearance bony and simian. Another gardening enthusiast, Toussaint finds joy in his connection with Claude, although in his pleasure he forgets to offer consolation to Alice.
Theodore Butler, an American painter and father of Jimmy and Lily. Once flamboyant and playful, Claude's stepson-in-law has aged and grown thin since his wife's death. He is marked by the sorrow of Suzanne's loss and by the realization of his own limitations as a painter. Theodore proposes to Marthe as a means to remain in Claude Monet's vital sphere of activity and to provide a mother for his children.
Jean-Pierre Hoschédé (zhahn-PYEHR), Alice's son. On the verge of the great world, about to continue his studies, Jean-Pierre is full of excitement. He longs to join the world's bustle and progress.
Jimmy Butler, the son of Suzanne and Theodore. Adventurous within a small boy's limits, Jimmy dreams of tigers and Ohio. He has begun to fasten his affections on his Aunt Marthe.