Hi everyone, this is my blog post for this week’s novel The Lover by Marguerite Duras. There is a lot to unpack with this book and honestly, there are so many different themes and layers that make this highly inappropriate relationship so complex. Firstly, I agree with what was stated in the lecture, which is that the novel is intentionally told in a way where it is unclear as to who is taking advantage of who. I still hold the opinion that the initation of the relationship is on the man because he is an adult, who has to be held to a much higher level of accountability than a teenage girl who is also being submerged in conditions of poverty and adversity.

Now going to my title of this blog post, I want to ask, what do we get out of relationships, or more broadly, people? This was the theme that really stood out to me the most in this novel because I think if someone were to ask every single character, they would all have completely different responses. What I’m saying may sound obvious, but I don’t think that it is and I will try to explain. The element of danger in inappropriate relationships can often be a feeling both the “predator” and “victim” are chasing together and hence why they engage in an inappropriate relationship together. I would say this is not the case for this novel and instead, their relationship highlights the selfishness and juxtaposing wants and desires people have and how they interact with one another.

The young girl is living in Sadec, Indochina, and lives amongst her mother, her two older brothers and one younger brother. Importantly, the young girl’s father is dead and her mother definetly shows moments of mental instability, as well as poor financial choices that place her family in a position of poverty and profound unhappiness. However, the young girl will return to school in Saigon at 15 years old, where she takes a ferry by herself to get there and by chance meets the man who will become her lover, a wealthy Chinese financier in his 30s. Their relationship becomes sexual very quickly and their initial encounters are described as pleasurable for the young girl, but overcast with the man’s immense fear that they will be caught. However, the affair continues for quite sometime and here are my thoughts. Firstly, the young girl being white is an important factor in my opinion. Although the man already has a decent sense of status because of his wealth and gender, I think he finds his relationship with the girl to be another trophy and sense of security within himself. As for the girl, I do think she gets pleasure from the relationship but because she is immersed in love, care and desire, which is not what she gets at home. Despite the man and the young girl having completely different goals, perceptions, and concerns with the relationship, the unionship stands even if it is immoral.

To me, this spoke to a much larger theme of how things play out in people’s lives. Her autonomy is explored in this novel quite a bit. How she travels alone, the relationships she conducts in her life even with her family knowing. But, I think what this novel did for is point out that the things we think we have control over and are narrating, have another side that equally influences outcomes.

Thanks for reading!!

Discussion Questions:

1. What does her younger brother’s death mean to her?
2. Is there anyway to reconcile the fact that her family knew about the young girl’s relationship and did not directly intervene?