The Lover, Duras

 Hello everyone! This weeks book is The Lover by Marguerite Duras, set during the French colonial occupation of south east Asia. It is an autobiographical story of Duras' family's struggles with death and poverty, as well as her affair with "the lover" a Chinese man who is 27 years old, 12 years older than her. Overall, I don't know what to think about this book. I understand where the author is coming from and how she may have genuinely loved him in the end. However, throughout reading I could not stop thinking about how I know the nature of this relationship to be entirely wrong. 

I think the power dynamics in their relationship are important to understand how Duras portrays the relationship. First of all, the obvious age gap, she is 15 and he is 27, he has much larger level of maturity and understanding of consent than she could have. Second of all, he is very wealthy compared to her, and she needs his money, at the beginning even saying that the relationship was to her, only for his wealth. However, Duras recognizes how there were racial disparities between the two, her being white, and him being Chinese. This is shown when he is originally very nervous to speak to her as well as when her family refuses to speak to him, yet still accepted his money. Yet, she is gaining wealth, living more comfortably, and experiencing genuine pleasure from this relationship, so it seems as though she is benefitting more from this relationship than he is. 

I struggled with the fact that this is an autobiographical book, and I understand how the author is not portraying their relationship in an exploitative way, yet I still felt uncomfortable when reading many scenes in the book. For example, the discussion of how she became his child made me extremely uncomfortable. The lines "it was with his own child he made love every evening" (page 100) and "he takes her as he would his own child" (page 101) were extra uncomfortable because the morally wrong issue is no longer just the extreme age difference and relationship with a minor, she's now associating herself with being his child. I'm having trouble understanding why this had to be included, or why the narrator would even think she is like his child. 

Furthermore, I found myself confused with all the switching back and forth between first person and third person, as well as the switch in writing in the present, to the narrators childhood, and the book all around not being written in any sort of pattern or chronological order. So my question for this week is: Did you also find the flow of writing confusing? Would you have enjoyed reading this better if it was written in more of a chronological order, or less switching back and forth?

Comments

  1. Tesi13 March 2024 at 09:13

    That moment of her becoming his child definitely has a lot to unpack. There are other moments in the narrative when the girl is described as a child so I think there is definitely something there. I think perhaps it might hint at that same power imbalance you mention or it might reflect the narrators desire to be loved and cared for?

    Thanks for your comment!
    - Tesi

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