Short Fiction · Chapter
The Awakening explained
Jeanne, a young married woman living a quiet life in the Val de Ciré, is advised by doctors to spend winter in Paris for her health.
What happens
Jeanne, a young married woman living a quiet life in the Val de Ciré, is advised by doctors to spend winter in Paris for her health. There, she becomes animated by social life and receives attentions from two men: the bold Paul Péronel and the gentle Monsieur d'Avancelle. After a vivid dream of love with d'Avancelle, she develops a deep but chaste attachment to him. To avoid yielding, she writes to her husband asking to return home, but he advises her to stay. One evening, while riding with d'Avancelle, she feels overcome with desire, but upon returning home, she mistakenly embraces Paul Péronel in a hallucination, thinking he is d'Avancelle. Horrified, she drives Péronel away and returns to her husband, realizing her love for d'Avancelle was only a dream.
Themes in this chapter
Love and Desire
Jeanne's awakening to romantic and sensual desire, triggered by a dream and leading to a conflict between fantasy and reality.
Illusion vs. Reality
Jeanne's love for d'Avancelle is based on a dream, and her mistaken embrace of Péronel underscores the blurring of fantasy and actual events.
Marriage and Domesticity
Jeanne's quiet married life is disrupted by her Parisian experiences, and her husband's trust contrasts with her secret desires.
Characters to notice
- Jeanne Cordier
The protagonist, a married woman who experiences a romantic awakening through a dream and struggles with desire and fidelity.
- Monsieur Parent
Jeanne's husband, who is kind and trusting but fails to perceive her inner turmoil.
- Paul Pavilly
A bold and enterprising suitor who mistakenly receives Jeanne's passionate embrace meant for another.
- Duc de Servigny
A gentle and devoted suitor who becomes the object of Jeanne's dream-induced love.
Key passages
“She would have loved her husband much more if they had lived together like two friends, and had restricted themselves to chaste kisses, which are the caresses of the soul.”
Jeanne wishes her marriage were a platonic friendship, valuing emotional intimacy over physical contact.
Reveals Jeanne's initial aversion to physical love and her idealization of chaste affection.
“We are quite different in our dreams to what we are in real life. She felt full of love for him, full of calm and deep love, and was happy in stroking his forehead and in holding him against her.”
In her dream, Jeanne experiences a pure and profound love for d'Avancelle, contrasting with her waking restraint.
Highlights the theme of illusion vs. reality and the power of dreams to shape desire.
“Happiness exists only in our dreams in this world.”
Jeanne concludes that true happiness is unattainable in reality and can only be found in dreams.
Reflects her disillusionment after the mistaken embrace and her return to a mundane life.