“Bonjour Tristesse” was exactly the type of novel I was expecting to read in this course. A series of romances intertwined with family drama and a backdrop of summer, it felt like a classic French story. But wow, did this book make me uneasy…
Right from the beginning, I found Célie’s relationship with her father very odd. There is little backstory provided about her mother or her life prior to when the book starts, but I’m curious if there’s any cause of this infatuation with her father. There are many passages that made me cringe but this one has to take the cake…”I went up to my room to put on an evening dress, as it happened the only one I possessed. It had been chosen by my father, and was made of an exotic material, probably too exotic for a girl of my age” (pg.35). Then Célie tells her father “’You’re the best-looking man I know'” (pg. 35). Célie describes her father almost in a romantic tone, then combined with the protectiveness over him and wanting him all to herself, it made me quite uncomfortable.
Célie is essentially a 17-year-old being treated like a 30-year-old and a toddler at the same time. Her father exposes this strange mature lifestyle to his teenage daughter along with his fascination with women. This is then reflected in her own relationship with 25-year-old Cyril and her not knowing what she wants with him. I also don’t think she’s been told ‘no’ by her father in her entire life which is the reason she takes Anne’s discipline as a threat to her relationship with him. “At all costs I must save myself, regain my father and our former life”(pg.52).
I really didn’t like Célie as a character. I would describe her as impulsive, manipulative, and careless. “For the first time in my life I had known the intense pleasure of analyzing another person, manipulating that person toward my own ends” (Pg.71). This is what she says after manipulating Elsa into trying to make her father jealous so he wouldn’t marry Anne. She gets pleasure out of selfishly using people to her advantage and is fully aware of that.
Célie never seems to express how she genuinely feels to anyone because I don’t think she even knows herself. For example, in part 2 of the book she says, “For the first time in my life my “self ” seemed to be split, and I discovered opposing forces within that shocked me” (p.g 57). This feels like the devil and angel on Célie’s shoulders trying to reconcile with the thought of Anne barging into what she believes is the perfect family dynamic, just her and her father. Honestly, it really annoyed me seeing Celie like this because it’s not up to her, yet she is so consumed by her father’s love life. On the other hand, being a child of divorce myself and dealing with ambiguous stepparent figures, I do relate to this conflicting feeling she has. I believe she thinks she is just wanting the best for her father but she’s actually wanting the best for herself, again relating to her cynicism and ego.
Although I don’t like Célie, she does make an interesting narrator because of her intense conflicting emotions that kept me on my toes as a reader. It made me wonder how the book would differ if it was narrated from another point of view. So, my question for the class is: Who else would you like to see narrate this story and why? How would it affect the series of events?