When the idea of marrying for love is it imposed? Pierre Houdion, eighteenth-century specialist, is the birth of this new idea of happiness in the reign of Louis XV. But novelists of the eighteenth century have little treated this theme if they have touched. Although Choderlos de Laclos has searched the libertine the best cute I love u status lover in Dangerous Liaisons and Diderot has defended freedom for women to choose their destiny in religious, neither novelists has directly raised the case of alliances based on feelings, not having the necessary perspective on this recent use.
Pierre Houdion fills this gap in a recently published novel, The Art of harm. This contemporary novel could easily be mistaken for an eighteenth-century novel. The author used the archives, sought to write his text in a scalloped style, which revives the Enlightenment.The narrative, located towards the end of the reign of Louis XV, begins a few months before 1769 and ends ten years later. Heroin is a historically attested character, which belonged to the noble family of Carvoisin, quoted by the Duc de Saint-Simon in his memoirs. And letters around which Pierre Houdion built its plot are genuine.
From the opening words, the orphan love seems ideally positioned to initiate good life: beauty, intelligence and property she inherited from her father. It is further shown skilled enough to meet Mademoiselle de Penthievre, the future Duchess of Chartres, a descendant of Louis XIV, granddaughter of the Count of Toulouse, and to make a friend.
But Peter Houdion demiurge is to show how the fate of a young girl privileged by birth may suddenly switch into hell. Unfortunately for the young lady, indeed, the Marquis and Marchioness of Achy, guardians are poor love people, devoured by envy. Socially frustrated, they abandon themselves to jealousy and are engineering an abominable conspiracy against them protected with the best cute I love u status. In fact, Miss Carvoisin is guilty of the supreme crime: override the consent of his relatives to marry the man of her life, Mr. Bombelles.
Never yet, and it is the strength of the novel, Miss Carvoisin only drives like an ingenue. She instinctively understands that he must comply with social hypocrisy to survive. Devoid of any cynicism, yet she lies to her cousin, woos his powerful friend, exploits the resources of her future husband.
But an intelligent woman, even love, can reverse itself all the prejudices of an era. In truth, in the eighteenth century, retaliation often threatened the girls to the independent spirit and who pretended to marry for the best cute I love u status.The art of harm reminds us how the use of marrying for love is recent. It would have begun to spread widely on the eve of the French Revolution only. And the twenty-first century, perhaps we find ourselves without even knowing it, at the end of this evolution.
As often, contemporary literature seems to be late on manners. What is the theme of society seems most absent from current novels? The sex parenting. It is unfortunate that this method of family organization has not yet really inspired the writers while more than thirty thousand children are raised in a family unit with two men or two women.
The interested reader will find a rich record of data, documents and testimony on these new family forms in the book of Eric Garnier, Homoparenthood in France. On gay marriage, recently legalized, it can not yet exist bibliography. But the authors hope to seize faster this just cause.
