Denis D

Archiwum

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less sensitive to the depiction of our suffering than to the image of
our charms, and do we hope that it is much easier to seduce them
than it is to touch their hearts? (p. 152). The effect has been, not one
of spontaneity and naivety, but one of studied control and seduction
through the many devices of a first-person narrative. Suzanne is a
deft narrator presenting the Marquis and us with the image of an
inexperienced young girl. So what are these devices and how do they
work? How persuasive is Suzanne?
Suzanne displays great narrative and descriptive skills, despite her
claim to be writing in an artless way, and she uses these skills to offer
the most positive image of herself possible. One of the most striking
is her ability to deploy direct speech. She shows other people
responding favourably to her in order to encourage the reader to
react to her in the same way. At the end of the vow-taking ceremony,
for example, she reports the words of her fellow nuns: But look,
Sister, look how pretty she is! Look how her black veil brings out the
whiteness of her complexion! How her headband suits her! How it
rounds off her face! How it makes her cheeks stand out! How her
habit shows off her waist and her arms!... (p. 7). Conversely,
she reproduces her exchange with her mother in order to provoke
revulsion in the reader for the mother s cruel, twisted logic: don t
make your dying mother suffer; let her go to her grave in peace so
that she may tell herself, as she s about to appear before the judge of
all things, that she has atoned for her sin as far as she could, so that
she can reassure herself that, after she is dead, you won t make
trouble for her family and you won t lay claim to rights that aren t
yours (p. 21). The technique is a clever one: offering accounts of
how others see her means that Suzanne does not have to rely on
putting forward her own views; the text works for her to create an
illusion of innocence.
But if Suzanne appears to be good at remembering dialogue, she is
also good at forgetting it. Just as she dwells on conversations which
cast her in a favourable light, so too she is adept at avoiding scenes
THE NUN
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The Marquis de Croismare s reply, if he decides to reply, will give
me the opening lines of this story. Before writing to him, I wanted to
find out what sort of man he was. He is a man of the world, with a
distinguished military career behind him.* He is a widower, not
young, with one daughter and two sons, whom he loves and who love
him too. He is well born, enlightened, intelligent, cheerful, fond of
the arts, and, above all, he has a somewhat eccentric cast of mind.
People have spoken to me in glowing terms of his humanity, his
honour, and his integrity; and judging by the keen interest he has
taken in my case, and by everything I have heard about him, I con-
cluded that I had in no way compromised my position by writing to
him. But that is not to say that he will agree to intervene on my
behalf without first knowing who I am, and it is for this reason that I
have resolved to put aside my pride and my diffidence and write
these memoirs in which I depict some of my misfortunes, writing
with neither skill nor artifice, but with the naivety of a young person
of my age and with my own native honesty. Since my protector may
well require it, or perhaps since I might simply decide one day to
complete these memoirs at a time when the details of distant events
might no longer be so fresh in my memory, I thought that the sum-
mary at the end, together with the deep impression they have made
on me and will continue to make on me for the rest of my life, would
be enough to allow me to remember them accurately.
My father was a lawyer.* He had married my mother quite late in
life, and they had three daughters. He had more than enough money
to provide for all three. But to have done that would have meant at
least that he should love them equally, and that is the last thing I can
give him credit for. I certainly outshone my sisters in terms of intel-
lect, beauty, character, and ability, and this seemed to upset my par-
ents. As both the gifts of nature and the fruits of hard work, which
set me above my sisters, seemed only to create trouble, I decided at a
very early age to try to be like them, in the hope of being loved,
cherished, praised, and invariably excused as they were. If somebody
happened to say to my mother: Your children are charming... , the
comment was never taken to refer to me. On the rare occasion when
4 The Nun
this wrong was righted, the praise I received cost me so dear when
she and I were alone that I would have been just as happy to have
been met with indifference or even insults, for whenever visitors
showed an interest in me, things would take a turn for the worse once
they had left. Oh, how many times I wept because I was not born
ugly, stupid, foolish, conceited in a word, with all the disadvan-

tages that earned my sisters the favour of our parents! I tried to find
some explanation for this strange behaviour in a father and mother [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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