Strait Is the Gate by André Gide

First published:La Porte étroite, 1909 (English translation, 1924)

Type of work: Psychological realism

Time of work: The late nineteenth century

Locale: The French province of Normandy

Principal Characters:

• Jerome Palissier, the narrator, a scholar
• Alissa Bucolin, his first cousin, whom he loves
• Juliette Bucolin, Alissa’s younger sister
• Felicie Plantier, the cousins’ aunt

The Novel

Drawing its title from Luke 13:24 (“Strait is the gate and narrow is the way...”), André Gide’s second recit, or short novel, tells the tale of a totally earnest yet ultimately futile quest for sainthood, or at least for salvation.

Appalled in early adolescence by the discovery of her mother’s blatant infidelities, Alissa Bucolin seeks to elevate her awakening feelings for her slightly younger cousin Jerome Palissier to a truly spiritual love worthy of divine approval. Aware, as Jerome is not, of her younger sister Juliette’s unrequited feelings for him, Alissa at first seeks to divert Jerome’s attentions in Juliette’s direction; when that strategy fails, owing as much to her own feelings as to his, Alissa embarks deliberately on a search for a mystical, nonphysical love in which she and Jerome will be joined for all eternity. To that end, she dresses plainly and even neglects her physical appearance, rejecting Jerome’s clumsy advances as she retreats increasingly from “the world,” willfully denying her intelligence, education, and culture by forsaking literature in favor of religious tracts.

Jerome, limited by literal-mindedness and a rather plodding nature, believes his own love to be unrequited when Alissa dies, in seclusion, from"no known cause.” After Alissa’s death, however, her diary is discovered. Although a number of pages are missing, those which remain are a stunning revelation to Jerome. Alissa’s diary, excerpts of which are given in the novel, makes clear to Jerome what the reader has already guessed: that her love for him was strongly sensual. The diary also reveals to Jerome her scheme to match him with Juliette. Finally—the most ironic note in a darkly ironic conclusion—the diary suggests that, for all her single-minded pursuit of sainthood, Alissa died without the consolation of faith.

The Characters

Evidently inspired by Gide’s recollections of his courtship with his future wife Madeleine Rondeaux (like Alissa, a slightly older first cousin), Strait Is the Gate departs from autobiography in the author’s skillful presentation of characters both major and minor. Jerome Palissier is an unreliable narrator, a literal-minded pedant who ignores clues in Alissa’s behavior that are readily perceived by the reader. Alissa herself, her sensuality seeping out despite—or perhaps even because of—her willful quest for sainthood, is a truly masterful creation, delicately balanced just on the credible side of caricature. Although doubtless aware of Sigmund Freud’s early studies of repressed sexuality, Gide in Strait Is the Gate manages to establish the link between Alissa’s mother’s nymphomania and her own outraged reaction without resorting to obvious stereotype. Alissa’s bizarre quest, although solicitously portrayed throughout by Jerome, is undermined from the start by her evident stubbornness, a manifestation of self-centeredness that argues against any true vocation. Throughout the novel, Alissa’s renunciations and “sacrifices” are simply too deliberate and willful to sustain the reader’s complicity, even as he or she might feel tempted to share the same ideal. Like Michel, the protagonist of Gide’s earlier recit, L’Immoraliste (1902; The Immoralist, 1930), who sacrifices his marriage and other relationships for the goal of self-realization, Alissa will fail to reach her chosen goal.

Set among the rich bourgeois and landed gentry of late nineteenth century Normandy, Strait Is the Gate nearly qualifies as a novel of manners, thanks to Gide’s perceptive delineation of the minor characters involved. Juliette Bucolin, Alissa’s younger sister, is earthy and spontaneous; despite her early infatuation with Jerome, Juliette’s successful and prolific marriage to the prosperous Tessieres, many years her senior, surprises the reader less than it does the other characters. Mme Felicie Plantier, the cousins’ aunt, emerges delightfully as a busybody who supposes that her meddling is unobtrusive. Abel Vautier, son of the Protestant pastor whose sermon on Luke is credited with launching Alissa on her quest, flees the family hearth for a career in journalism and sudden notoriety as the author of a sensational novel which Alissa, by then, will refuse to read. Jerome’s widowed mother (a reflection of Gide’s own) and his British governess Miss Ashburton (modeled on Anna Shackleton) help to fill out the picture of comfortable, well-educated French aristocracy sufficiently idle to be especially vulnerable to such aberrations as Alissa’s initially thoughtful, ultimately thoughtless striving toward a sainthood envisioned after listening to Pastor Vautier’s sermons.

Critical Context

Winner of the Nobel Prize in 1947, three years and several months before his death at age eighty-one, André Gide lived his last years as a celebrity, often photographed and quoted, generally considered among the major writers and prose stylists of his time. In the decades after his death, however, Gide’s reputation diminished considerably; his work is no longer considered nearly equal in stature to that of Marcel Proust, a close contemporary whom he outlived by nearly thirty years. Nevertheless, Gide remains a significant figure in Western literary history, a major practitioner (along with Hermann Hesse) of what Ralph Freedman has termed the “lyrical novel.”

Strait Is the Gate was the first of Gide’s works to attract both popular and critical notice, calling attention also to his earlier, Symbolist-influenced prose works and to The Immoralist, published seven years previously, to a minimum of comment. Gide, responding to the reception of his second recit, claimed that he would never have written The Immoralist had he not also planned to write Strait Is the Gate. Taken together, the two works in fact constitute a coherent, thought-provoking fictional treatise on the nature and limits of human freedom, illustrated by truly credible and memorable characters. Only once more, with the somewhat shorter The Pastoral Symphony, would Gide return to the recit (tale), as opposed to the longer, more fully developed roman (novel). Only once, in fact, would Gide apply the designation “novel” to a work of long fiction, in the case of Les Faux-monnayeurs (1925; The Counterfeiters, 1927), a massive, thickly populated volume that deals in depth with a number of the same issues already raised in his shorter fictional pieces. Thanks in part to the credible if disheartening portrayal of Alissa, and in part also to the social background evoked, Strait Is the Gate remains among Gide’s more memorable and frequently reprinted efforts, together with The Immoralist.

Bibliography

Bree, Germaine. Gide, 1963.

Cordle, Thomas. André Gide, 1969.

Fowlie, Wallace. André Gide: His Life and Art, 1965.

Freedman, Ralph. The Lyrical Novel, 1963.

Hytier, Jean. André Gide, 1962.

Ireland, George William. André Gide: A Study of His Creative Writings, 1970.

Starkie, Enid. André Gide, 1954.