Indiscretions | The Journey from Disorder to Order

Robinson has a Master of Arts in English. She is a writer and editor and a former teacher of English literature and creative writing. In the following essay, Robinson examines the journey from disorder to order in Jean Cocteau’s Indiscretions.

Indiscretions explores the chaos engendered in a bourgeois family by a mother’s obsessive love for her son. The mother, Yvonne, is determined to keep her son, Michael, for herself and so seeks to destroy his burgeoning romance with the young Madeleine. The destructive nature of the love that Yvonne feels for her son is summed up by her husband George when he says, “She’d rather hold his corpse than see her son in someone else’s arms.” This is a love that is more allied with death than with life.

Yvonne’s internal disorder is reflected in the external disorder...

[The entire page is 1740 words long]

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