Laforet

Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan

I decided to look up the author, as I do with most of what I read, and was surprised to find that Françoise Sagan was only 18 years old when she published Bonjour Tristesse. Also that it was her first novel and is her most popular novel ever published. This was inspiring to find. That one could have such a lasting effect with their writing, even if it was their first and only at the age of 18. Here we are in 2022, 68 years after Bonjour Tristesse‘s publication, and continuing to derive meaning from it.

Now, although I bring up the fact that memory appears to be a theme of Romantic writing, at least based off of the reading list we have access to, I have just recently discovered that it is not coincidental. It was gently calculated (haha) by Jon, our professor. It just so happens by chance that we have encountered many texts in reference to memory or reminiscing or past experience. However, this will not prevent me from making these types of connections from text to text.

Specifically, the main character being a young woman and the idea of moving, introduced early on in the novel, reminded me of Nada by Carmen Laforet, which I read last week. Laforet’s novel also followed a similar theme of memory. These texts were also similar in the modern aspect of them, for which they confronted concepts that teenagers should not, but often do, have to deal with. For example, in Nada the chaos inside of her house and problems from her family intertwining with her life and in Bonjour Tristesse, Raymond’s personal life with his mistress, Elsa, intertwining with Cécile’s thoughts and uncertainty of her and whether she was threatening to their father-daughter relationship. Additionally, Laforet’s novel involved sexual themes like Sagan’s, exploring language that can be seen as support for sexual liberation – something that may have been looked down upon in that day and age, of when Bonjour Tristesse and Nada were published. These novels are great at exploring modernity and push to dive into themes like sexuality, teenage thoughts, empowerment of women, and more – so much like what we see today.

With this I would like to ask, could you personally see yourself expressing these intense themes with the public eye watching over you? The first thing that comes to mind is age, the fact that Sagan was only 18 when she published this novel shows the true confidence and comfortability she had within herself. I feel as if I already express intense themes as such, with my music – through lyrics – figurative speech – explicit language. Just not caring about what an outsider would have to say, but that’s just me.

Nada by Carmen Laforet

The first thing I want to recognize is something I said in a discussion group during my class last week. It was along the lines of whether these texts (that I’ve chosen) will all follow the theme of memories, past experience, or just past tense writing in general. This is the fourth book to do so. Although this has little to do with whether I enjoy the reading at the end of the day, it does make me think about Romantic writing and if the past or memory is an element of it. Or if it just a coincidence. But for some reason I keep finding myself noticing that and questioning if it’s on purpose with all Romance writing. I guess I will soon find out as I continue reading each week.

Within the contents of the book, I wanted to relate to more in certain areas, such as making a close friend as Andrea initially transitioned into university. However, it just isn’t so. The current state of the world, considering safety precautions, masks and all, I feel makes it difficult to engage in conversation and friendships as easily. Not that I haven’t made friends by any means, just not that type of connection Andrea and Ena had. Though I did relate to the university component and

This novel played into the aspect of modernity quite a bit, similar to last week’s reading of The Shrouded Woman by Maria Luisa Bombal. With the main character being a woman and exploring concepts like university, friends, relationships, and such. It brought a more realistic dimension to it all. Also like Bombal’s book there were areas describing love interests, which although this course isn’t about that kind of romance, is nice to see. I feel like woman outwardly expressing their love interests wasn’t so common back when this was published in 1945, so to have two female characters addressing their appeal for romance was refreshing – something new. Additionally, the acknowledgement of Andrea being an orphan also seems to be somewhat in the realm of modernism. I say this for the fact that Laforet even had the idea of bringing forth a concept often looked down upon and that people are so hush-hush about.

All of this brings me to ask, do you believe that the theme of memory/past experience/past tense has something more to do with Romance writing than just a style of writing? It could just be by chance that a lot of writing is written from that sort of point of view or that Romance writing specifically had this embedded in its roots.