Sagan’s “Bonjour Tristesse” is about a 17-year-old girl named Cécile who has family issues. Her relationship with her father significantly affects the type of lifestyle she lives. The narrator is emotionally and psychologically connected to her single father, who serves as the main male figure in her life and is the only source of parental love that is available to her. Elsa, the mistress of the household, serves as a close friend to the narrator and offers companionship and understanding to her. She is the most relatable person to Cécile and they are easily accessible to each other.  Cyril is Cécile’s romantic love interest that is becoming a little sour as she falls into her own depravity and needs more time for herself even if she may love him. As we read deeper into the novel, we find Cécile to be very cunning and manipulative because she knows what she wants and consciously plans her intentions. In the very opening of the novel, the first paragraph shows her as the victim to her sorrow, retelling how she went from being perfectly happy to being completely changed in a negative way. Other people in her life can get over the fact that an accident happened, but the irreversible consequence sits with the dark truth about what really occurred and this is what would follow and haunt Cécile after Anne’s car crash accident. However, the need to maintain something outside of her (like the satisfaction of her father’s close relationship with Elsa over Anna) makes me relate to the fundamental idea about philosophy and that floats on Søren Kierkegaard’s principle of “do it or don’t do it — you’ll regret both” which is the situation that the narrator finds herself in. On the other side, Cécile’s fickle father bounces back and forth on different women in his life, sometimes even being unsure of himself too. We can also see that some manipulation is not as intentional as nature permits it to be. The façade of a woman is judged by a man subconsciously, which is how beauty can be a tool used for manipulation. It seems we can remember more about the characters based on their appearance than on what they have to say or do.

The novel is an example of how young women and girls can also be very manipulative and not know what they are getting themselves into, similarly comparable and highly contrastive to the popular stereotype of daring teenage boys endangering others through violence, abuse and drugs. Unlike the masculine physical domination of the man, the woman taps into the domination of emotions without leaving much trace behind. The exploration of maturation in the face of relations shows us who is in control of the power dynamics. Sagan shows how the main character makes the wrong decisions which hints at her suggestion to be careful what one wishes for. Not all choices are essential to make for yourself when the teenage life is already bound to be very experimental at the risk of potential loss. My question for this week would be: what should be said about French society in the time that this novel was published and what type of background or struggles as an 18-year-old influenced the author to write this novel?