[In the following essay, Mileham discusses the metaphor of movement through space in La Duchesse de Langeais, arguing that the spatial dynamics are represented in two modes: games and rituals.]

Critics haven't neglected La Duchesse de Langeais, but no one has yet fully demonstrated the importance of this novella's principal metaphor: movement through space.¹ Travel towards and away from the other, placing and overcoming obstacles, losing and finding one's way—such spatial images abound in this novella. In fact, this love story can be adequately summarized by its spatial dynamics: General Armand de Montriveau pursues Antoinette, Duchess of Langeais, while she holds him off; he kidnaps and then releases her, after which, she pursues him and he rebuffs her advances; finally, she flees and he searches for her but arrives too late.

There are two very different modes to the spatial metaphor in this story: games and rituals. Different as these two universally-human activities are, they are joined in the concept of play.² Both games and rituals involve movement through space, but games have to do with maneuvering for position relative to one's adversary, and they depend upon specific distances, so they are quantitative. In chess, for example, where you have deployed your pieces relative to those of your opponent determines how much power you wield. This is what you have achieved by your moves. In rituals, on the other hand, travel is metaphorical. In La Duchesse de Langeais, both Armand's real desert crossing and Antoinette's psychological one, which echoes it—her kidnapping by Armand—are undertaken on metaphorical landscapes, like those of the “carte du pays de Tendre” and the Roman de la Rose. Where the protagonists go on these psychological maps tells us less about what they have achieved than what they have become. While the meaning of space in game imagery is always relative to the position of the other, space in ritual has an absolute meaning: where you are on the metaphorical map tells what you are.

First, games. The general's primary game, logically enough, is war. In accordance with the age-old metaphor, he attacks the duchess in an effort to conquer her sexually.³ Her body is a battlefield that Armand overruns place by place: first, he wins the right to kiss her hands (959), then her forehead (964); later, we see him kiss the hem of her dress, her feet, her knees, and it is implied that he goes farther (978). The rule of this game is that, once a place is occupied by the lover (generally, as here, the male), he has permanent access to it and can then pursue his conquest of the rest of the other's body.

Armand's military seduction never succeeds, however. Antoinette's defense is supple but ultimately unyielding: “s'il la saisissait, elle voulait bien se laisser briser et tordre par lui, mais elle avait son nec plus ultra de passion; et, quand il en arrivait là, elle se fâchait toujours si, maîtrisé par sa fougue, il faisait mine d'en franchir les barrières” (966). Besides this potent but essentially passive defense of denying terrain, Antoinette uses another spatial defense, real rather than metaphorical. When under erotic pressure, she sometimes flees her boudoir, the site of passionate caresses, for the more public salon, where she expresses her passion through music rather than through the physical contact that Armand seeks (967, 972).

This military game of seduction is played out on ideological terrain also. The duchess erects moral bunkers, “redoutes,” to inhibit Montriveau's advance (954), and these she deploys in a triple perimeter configuration.⁴ That is to say, to reach her heart and possess her body, the general must overcome three successive objections: the duchess's obligations to her husband, to the Church, and to her class.⁵ After a few months of combat, the general overcomes the first objection, only to encounter the second, then overcomes the second, but encounters the third. This apparently progressive surrender of ideological terrain by the duchess is a strategic ruse: the general thinks he is gaining ground, because he is overcoming a series of different obstacles (objections), but in reality he is on a treadmill, walking, yet not moving forward.

Balzac uses two striking spatial metaphors to reinforce this military analogy of a defending general intentionally yielding small victories, yet never giving up the critical ground she wants to defend. In one of these images, Montriveau is an insect in a child's (the duchess's) hands. He jumps “d'un doigt sur un autre en croyant avancer, tandis que son malicieux bourreau le laisse au même point” (954). In the other image, the slow, desultory progress of this would-be seduction is called an “ouvrage à la Pénélope” (959). Like Penelope, weaving by day and secretly unraveling her fabric each night in order to delay her suitors, the duchess allows her own suitor no more than the appearance of forward progress. In fact, as long as Armand relies on this tactical model of seduction, he will never succeed.

Parallel to this military model of aggressive impotence is another model that resembles nothing so much as children's games of space and permission, such as “Un, deux, trois, soleil” or “Mother, may I?”⁶ whose unwritten rules are essentially the same as those observed in La Duchesse de Langeais. Even if the resemblances between these children's games and the game in this novella are entirely fortuitous, the strategy employed in the children's games reveals a lot about what is happening in the novella.

The rules of “Soleil” do differ from those of “Mother.”⁷ Still, both games have this in common: the caller stands at one end of a fixed space, and the other players stand at the far end and try to approach her, but they can only do so a few steps at a time, and only with her permission. A player wins these games by reaching the caller. The strategy of the caller in both games is to keep the other players interested (by allowing them the appearance of forward movement), but also to prolong her domination (by allowing little real movement). For example, by using various tricks of rhythm (in “Soleil”) or by complicating her instructions (in “Mother”), the caller can often catch the other players in an infraction and send them back to their starting line.

Like the children in these games, Armand wants to reach Antoinette physically, but can do so only incrementally and with her permission. Once Antoinette has granted Armand permission to move forward, she cannot rescind this permission, so she temporizes and tries to catch him in an infraction.

This game plays out in the thirty-eight pages of La Duchesse de Langeais that depict Armand's initial pursuit of Antoinette (948-85). In this section of the novella, she issues no fewer than eighteen orders telling him to come to her, to stay or to go.⁸ Armand obeys these orders scrupulously and never offers a counter-proposal of his own. Thus, it is Antoinette who first invites Armand to come to her home: “Monsieur, … vous me trouveriez toujours [chez moi] le soir jusqu'à dix heures” (948). Once Montriveau has come, she urges him to stay: “Ah! je serais bien fâchée de vous voir partir” (952). But later, on the occasion of another visit, when he has offended her with his jealousy (an infraction), she orders him to leave: “Allons, dit-elle d'un petit air impératif, sortez, laissez-moi” (984).

On the other hand, once Armand has earned, by precedent, the right to visit Antoinette essentially alone and at certain regular hours, she no longer has the right to deny him these visits. That is why Antoinette must convince Armand, contrary to the rules, to let her curtail the frequency of their meetings, and this is no easy matter; it requires an intense 4-page-long discussion. To justify her request, she cites the danger to her reputation of his frequent visits (961), and, as a reward for his acquiescence, she implies that she will grant him greater physical intimacy:

“vous viendrez un peu moins souvent; et puis, après …”

En disant ces mots, elle se laissa prendre par la taille, parut sentir, ainsi pressée par Montriveau, le plaisir excessif que trouvent la plupart des femmes à cette pression, dans laquelle tous les plaisirs de l'amour semblent promis.

(964)

Very often, in her long series of commands to Armand, Antoinette is seen to alternate rewards and punishments, spatial permissions and interdictions. When the general begins to speak too directly of his love, for example, the duchess sends him away, “allez-vous-en, il est minuit” (958), but she immediately follows this negative command with an encouragement: tomorrow, he will take her to a ball. On another occasion, Armand tells her (in an infraction on his part) that he will no longer tolerate her going to confession, so she sends him away: “Adieu, adieu pour jamais” (969), but as soon as he is more solicitous, she tempers her command, asking him merely to leave the room, and only “pour un moment,” at that (970).

Later, when Montriveau dares to enter her bedroom without being invited or even announced (another infraction), the duchess expels him again but immediately softens this rebuff, “Attendez-moi dans le salon. Allez” (983). This alternation of spatial interdiction and permission by the duchess is symptomatic of her lack of spontaneity. In her alternating commands, she is not (as the general might think) acting candidly, in accordance with fluctuating or conflicting personal desires. Rather, the duchess's intentions, exactly like those of the caller in “Mother, may I?” are constant but mutually-contradictory: she wants to encourage the general (by allowing him some forward movement), but she does not want him to arrive at his ultimate destination (her seduction), so she prevents his making any significant progress.

The literal context of these orders is the courtship ritual, itself rightly compared to a game by Johan Huizinga, in Homo Ludens (43-44). In the courtship ritual, a gentleman may call upon a lady, accompany her to and from a social event, and then take his leave. Both this courtship ritual and the game of military conquest have become dated in recent years, in part, at least, because of evolution towards sexual equality, but these courtship formulas continued to be observed well beyond the early nineteenth century, when Balzac wrote. They provided a clear-cut role and a certain degree of autonomy for both the man and the woman, either of whom could decide not to play. In this context, then, contrary to the tactics and expectations of Armand and Antoinette, these were not zero-sum games, wherein everything one player wins is necessarily lost by the other. If these protagonists had been able to realize that they both had interests in common, if they could have loved each other at the same time, they could both have won.

Roger Caillois, in his classic work, Les Jeux et les hommes, discusses the perversion of real life by inappropriate play (101-21). While competition is natural, he points out that competitive play, agôn, when conducted in real life (outside the regulated confines of a game), corrupts it:

[L]a concurrence absolue n'est jamais qu'une loi de nature. Elle retrouve dans la société sa brutalité originelle, aussitôt qu'elle aperçoit une voie libre dans le réseau des contraintes morales, sociales ou légales, qui, comme celles du jeu, sont limites et conventions.

(Caillois 106)

Antoinette's obsessive desire to defeat Armand at all costs is an example of Caillois's idea of inappropriate competition. It drives her even to the paradoxical idea of competitive love: she claims to win, because she loves Armand more than he loves her. In sacrificing herself to his spiritual salvation, she declares her triumph: “Ah! J'éprouve une joie sombre à vous écraser, vous qui vous croyez si grand, à vous humilier par le sourire calme et protecteur des anges” (my italics; 1028).

The original title of La Duchesse de Langeais was, “Ne touchez pas la hache” (904),⁹ because Armand compares his own self-righteous vengeance upon Antoinette to that accomplished by an executioner's axe. But Antoinette claims she outdoes Armand: “Adieu, vous ne toucherez point à ma hache; la vôtre était celle du bourreau, la mienne est celle de Dieu; la vôtre tue, et la mienne sauve” (1028). Antoinette's competitive obsession is so complete she sees even her self-sacrifice as a winning tactic, and the love of God as her weapon.

In this game as well as in the couple's game of military conquest already discussed, it is the passive, defensive player who dominates play. The passive player can always stop the opponent's progress with a verbal command. Nevertheless, it is traditionally understood that the passive (dominant) player will ultimately lose. This is because, by definition, neither of these games ends until the distance between the participants is reduced to zero, that is to say, (in the military game of seduction) until the woman is conquered, or (in the children's games discussed) until another player reaches the caller. Thus, according to these rules, Antoinette has a right to the pleasure of dominating play and, in particular, the right to choose when these games will end, but she cannot expect to win. (This does not mean that every woman who played these traditional love games was expected, by tradition, ultimately to accept her opponent as a lover, but it does mean that if she decided not to be his lover, she was expected to make this clear and to withdraw from the game.)

Contrary to these rules, Antoinette never accepts this outcome and never withdraws either.¹⁰ Instead of loyally playing against Armand, she plays with him, as with a musical instrument (953) or a toy (954). Ruse is an essential part of her strategy and of her tactics. Unlike Antoinette, Armand only rarely employs ruse, yet it is he who totally subverts and destroys the game. For Armand, ruse is merely the opening that allows him to impose his will by force. He employs ruse to kidnap Antoinette from Mme de Sérizy's and, later, to discover Antoinette and then abduct her body from the convent.

Antoinette accepts the rules of the game, pretends to obey them, but does not. Armand behaves very differently; realizing that he cannot win the game, he rejects it and imposes his will by force. In Johan Huizinga's terms, Antoinette is a “cheat,” whereas Armand is a “spoil-sport” (11-12). The “cheat” operates within the confines of the game, Huizinga points out, because s/he tacitly accepts its rules, even while breaking them. It is the “spoil-sport” who puts an end to play by contesting its validity. Since, by definition, play is an activity that must be entered into freely by all parties (Huizinga 7-8; Caillois 42), it is Armand, not Antoinette, who puts an end to play by arbitrarily imposing his will on Antoinette, in kidnapping her.

When Huizinga discusses the socialization of human conflict into play, he points out that once play is abandoned, predation is possible (95). Warfare is play only to the extent that it is conducted by rules (those of chivalry, for example, or of the Geneva Convention), and, conversely, unchecked violence is no longer a fully human activity; it is the recourse of mobs and of wild animals. Thus it is precisely when speaking of Armand as a man capable of abandoning play for pre-emptive action that Balzac depicts his protagonist as an animal rather than as a man. In his short “vengeance” scene, Armand is described as an “animal terrible”; variously, he is a bull, a lion, a tiger, a frenzied horse, an elephant (986-89). Pamiers and Ronquerolles both speak of Armand as a potential kidnapper by comparing him to an eagle.¹¹ Since play is, by definition, an interactive, rule-based means for realizing one's goals, once Armand has abandoned play, his unilateral actions are those of a predator.

Montriveau's first predatory act is to kidnap, threaten, and humiliate Antoinette, before releasing her. Although this scene lasts less than one hour and occupies only eleven pages of text (991-1001), it is of critical importance to the novella: it completely reverses the relationship of the two protagonists. Because of this scene, Antoinette falls in love with Armand and begins to pursue him, while he stops pursuing her and begins to flee.

The formula for provoking Antoinette's sudden conversion is explicitly prescribed by Ronquerolles, who is, we are told, a gifted man and an expert seducer (980). In a monologue, Ronquerolles tells Armand how to treat Antoinette:

Sois aussi implacable qu'elle le sera, tâche de l'humilier, de piquer sa vanité; d'intéresser … les nerfs et la lymphe de cette femme à la fois nerveuse et lymphatique. … N'aie pas plus de charité que n'en a le bourreau. Frappe. Quand tu auras frappé, frappe encore. … quand la cervelle aura cedé, la passion entrera, peut-être.

(982-83)

It is significant that the narrator does not disavow this strategy of brutal domination. In fact, he justifies Balzac's well-known authoritarian penchant in a declaration that today would be considered virulently sexist: “Les peuples, comme les femmes, aiment la force en quiconque les gouverne, et leur amour ne va pas sans le respect; ils n'accordent point leur obéissance à qui ne l'impose pas” (926-27).

During Armand's brief imprisonment of Antoinette, he threatens first to decapitate her and then to burn a metal cross into her forehead, but he does neither, nor does he ever strike her. This mitigated version of Ronquerolles's prescription is explained and justified by the narrator: “Mettez une créature féminine sous les pieds d'un cheval furieux, en face de quelque animal terrible; elle tombera, certes, sur les genoux, elle attendra la mort; mais si la bête est clémente et ne la tue pas entièrement, elle aimera le cheval” (988).

And, in fact, Antoinette does seem to fall in love with Armand because he has terrified her and impressed her with his power. Balzac clearly endorses this brutality of Armand's and finds that Antoinette's masochistic submission is plausible and appropriate, but Balzac's own reasoning is not disinterested. The relationship of general and duchess is actually a veiled autobiography. Not long before he wrote La Duchesse de Langeais, Balzac had suffered a humiliating amorous rejection by the Duchess of Castries (Fortassier 752-56). Armand's spectacular “vengeance” (988) on his own duchess might thus be seen as authorial wish-fulfillment. In fact, this novella is not the only work in which Balzac re-imagines this episode from his own life. Rolland Chollet has demonstrated how much the plot of La Duchesse de Langeais has in common with that of one of Balzac's Contes drôlatiques, “Dezesperance d'amour” (93-120). In this conte, exactly as in the novella, a gifted, unmarried man becomes the passionate suitor of a beautiful married noblewoman, who encourages his interest, meets frequently with him, allows him to kiss and caress her, but always refuses to have sex with him. In both stories, the man, exasperated, finally threatens to disfigure the lady, saying she has ruined his life and must be prevented from doing the same to other men. Faced with this display of power, passion and rage, the noblewoman, in both plots, feels love for this man for the first time and declares it.

Thus the outcome of “Dezesperance” seems to confirm the domination-submission theory expressed by Ronquerolles in La Duchesse de Langeais: a haughty woman can be made to fall in love by physical threat and display of force. Yet “Dezesperance” also provides a clue to another interpretation of Antoinette's conversion to love in the novella, an interpretation drawn from reading the the work as a whole.

The clue offered by “Dezesperence” is based upon what its plot does not contain as compared to that of La Duchesse de Langeais: the hero of “Dezesperance” has completed no equivalent to Armand's desert voyage. In this experience, which takes place long before Armand meets Antoinette, he crosses an uncharted African desert, conducted by a Nubian guide, endures great hardships and finally reaches an oasis previously unknown to Europeans. The importance of Armand's desert journey is clearly highlighted in the text; for example, Armand is repeatedly called a “voyageur.”¹² Even before meeting Armand, Antoinette has heard of his desert voyages and has dreamed of this experience. She imagines “[s]'être trouvée dans les sables brûlants du désert avec lui, l'avoir eu pour compagnon de cauchemar” (946). Later, she reveals her fascination when she asks him to retell these experiences: “Vos aventures en Orient me charment … J'aime à participer aux souffrances ressenties par un homme de courage, car je les ressens, vrai!” (957). Still later, after she has been kidnapped and mistreated by Armand, Antoinette draws this parallel, essential to understanding her conversion: “Dans cette terrible aventure qui m'a tant attachée à vous, Armand, vous alliez du désert à l'oasis, mené par un bon guide. Eh bien, moi, je me traîne de l'oasis au désert, et vous m'êtes un guide sans pitié” (1026).

In fact, Armand's desert ordeal and Antoinette's kidnapping do have a lot in common, and comparing them reveals how much general and duchess have shared. Both are kidnapped by ruse. Both are threatened with torture and death. Both walk, led by guides, each of whom feigns indifference, but actually cares for his charge. Both guides disorient their charges, concealing from them their true physical location. And, most importantly of all, Armand and Antoinette both finally submit to the authority of their guides, endure fear and confusion, and, by doing so, reach their goal.

Until both protagonists have endured their desert ordeals, the reader sees only the obvious and important differences that separate the brusque, sanguine, naive general and the lymphatic, sophisticated lady. It is the parallelism of their two ordeals, and especially of the way both Armand and Antoinette confront these ordeals, that reveals the couple's essential similarity of character: both duchess and general show themselves to be brave, independent and idealistic. By successfully enduring their strange and terrifying experiences, they have demonstrated that they are worthy to love and be loved. By completing these voyages, Armand and Antoinette actually undergo a change of being, they accede to a new, higher and nobler state. In other words, their ordeals have symbolic significance; they are, in fact, rituals, and, more precisely, initiatory rites.

As I claim in my introduction, rituals are actually forms of play, as are the games I have been discussing. Both Johan Huizinga and Roger Caillois, the theorists I have relied upon for my game analyses, agree on this. Their definitions of play, which are almost identical, clearly apply both to games and rituals: both of these activities are, in a sense, fictional, explicitly separated, both in time and space, from “real” life [quotation marks Huizinga's]; both are regulated by their own sets of rules, again, distinct from those of real life; both are participated in freely by all parties; both are performed for their own sakes, not to further the goals of real life; and both games and rituals involve tension and uncertainty of outcome (Huizinga 7-27; Caillois 42-44, 123-30). Still, while agreeing that games and rituals are both play, Huizinga and Caillois explicitly distinguish between them. Huizinga does this by designating two basic types of play, “a contest for something, or a representation of something” (his italics; Huizinga 13). Caillois, following Huizinga, is even more explicit in distinguishing between what he calls agôn (competitive play) and mimicry (representation as play), which includes all rituals (Caillois 57-67).

It is the parallelism of the two protagonists' ordeals, highlighting their structural importance in the novella, that reveals Armand's kidnapping to be, for Antoinette, something much more complex, an initiatory rite, just as Armand's desert crossing had been his own initiation. A brief examination of initiation rites will bear this out.

Since the work of Arnold van Gennep, initiation rites are considered to be a form of “rite de passage.” This term is a spatial metaphor, chosen by van Gennep to point up the parallelism of ceremonies marking territorial passage (across a boundary river, for example) with ceremonies that accompany social transitions, such as birth, puberty, marriage, death (19-33). Van Gennep found three stages in all rites of passage: “rites préliminaires les rites de séparation du monde antérieur, rites liminaires les rites exécutés pendant le stade de marge, et rites postliminaires les rites d'aggrégation au monde nouveau” (27; his italics).

Following van Gennep, there is agreement among scholars that the preliminal (“préliminaire”) stage generally implies the presence of parental figures who set the initiation in motion, guide the candidate to the place of separation, instruct the candidate, and oversee his/her travails, the hardships which prepare the main phase of initiation (100-63).¹³ Expanding upon van Gennep, Simone Vierne posits the presence of an initiatory guide, indicates the purpose of van Gennep's “séparation,” and discusses the many types of travail that the candidate might confront. The guide, Vierne says, is a religious leader “[qui] ‘fait la morale’ aux futurs initiés” (16), and the role of separation is to purify the candidate: “l'initiation a lieu dans un sanctuaire; [le candidat] doit être purifié; enfin, il doit être séparé des profanes” (14). Vierne enumerates the travails confronted by candidates: “Parmi les pratiques ascétiques, il faut noter le jeûne. … Froid, fatigue, épreuves d'endurance diverses,” as well as vigils, self-imposed silence, and purificatory suffering by exposure to earth, air, fire or water; by flagellation, mutilation and disfigurement (23-27).

Van Gennep called his liminal stage, “marge,” in another spatial metaphor: an allusion to the medieval marches, neutral zones that surrounded kingdoms and provided the only possible transition from one state to another (23). In this liminal stage, in a number of cultures, van Gennep says, “le novice est considéré comme mort, et il reste mort pendant la durée du noviciat,” and, later, “on le ressuscite et on lui apprend à vivre” (108). The symbolic death and rebirth of the candidate appear in a number of van Gennep's examples, and Vierne, likewise, but, again, speaking of initiations in general, posits a “mort initiatique,” (29), often accompanied by “descentes aux Enfers” (33, 40).

Finally, van Gennep's post-liminal stage marks the reintegration of the initiate into society. In secret societies, van Gennep points out that “les initiés font semblant de ne savoir ni marcher, ni manger, etc., bref, agissent comme des nouveaux-nés (ressucités)” (117). And, again, Vierne affirms, for initiation rites in general, that, “une fois ‘renés,’ les jeunes gens jouent souvent pour un temps le rôle de bébés: ils ne se souviennent apparemment de rien qui les rattache à la vie passée” (46).

As already noted, the desert voyages of Armand and Antoinette resemble each other, but even more important, they both closely resemble the initiation rites of passage described by van Gennep and Vierne. Both general and duchess are seized by others without their consent,¹⁴ and isolated, and each is taken to an inaccessible place. Armand crosses a desert where “[j]usqu'alors aucun voyageur n'avait pu pénétrer” (944). Antoinette, similarly, is kidnapped and brought to a site that evokes this desert in a curious way. It is a suite of rooms, Armand's apartment in fact, which she has never seen before, and whose candle holder “rappelait, par sa forme égyptienne, l'immensité des déserts où cet homme avait longtemps erré,” as does his sphynx-legged bed (992). The “sentiers chauds … l'enfer des sables” (946) of Armand's test are mirrored, for Antoinette, in Armand's rooms, by multiple fires: the lighted cigar (992), the burned perfumes (993), and, most especially, the mysterious threatening fire in the next room (994).

Like other candidates for initiation, Antoinette and Armand are each accompanied by a single person, their guide. These guides, the Nubian who accompanies Armand, and Armand himself, who accompanies Antoinette, have found their charges lacking and impose upon them the ordeal by which they come to compensate this lack. Each guide is perceived as cruel, the “bourreau” of his charge (945, 994). Yet each guide eventually reveals his benevolence—the Nubian, when he tells his secret plan to bring Armand to the oasis, and Armand, through such surreptitious acts as shedding a tear (998-99), kneeling before Antoinette (1000), and protecting her dress (1001). Both guides seem to have superhuman powers. The Nubian is first described as “un vrai démon” (945) and, finally, as “ce géant d'intelligence et de courage” (946). Similarly, for Antoinette immediately after her initiation, Armand “avait repris [d]es proportions gigantesques” (1002), and his powers seem magical, like those of the Nubian, as he effects both the kidnap and the release of Antoinette, without her foreseeing either, or understanding, afterwards, how it was accomplished (990-91, 1001).

The travail faced by Antoinette and by Armand as part of their initiation is based on the element of fire, as formulated by Vierne. The “sables brûlants” (946) test Armand's ability to endure his two-day desert crossing—“ses forces épuisées et ses pieds ensanglantés par la marche … ses joues enflammées … courbé par la douleur renaissante de la marche … son gosier lui semblait coagulé par la soif du désert [… ayant] dépensé ses dernières gouttes d'énergie” (945). Antoinette's trial is realized in the threat to burn her forehead with a branding iron. She passes this test by refusing to be intimidated: “Venez, messieurs, entrez et marquez … mon front brûle plus que votre fer” (998).

Like the initiates of van Gennep and Vierne, Antoinette and Armand confront the threat of death and then die, symbolically. Armand accuses his guide of having killed him, then lies down, “pour mourir” (945). He is then invited by his guide to commit suicide: “si tu n'as pas assez de courage, voici mon poignard” (946). Antoinette is also threatened with death, by her kidnappers—“Madame, nous avons ordre de vous tuer si vous criez” (991). And she is frequently threatened by execution in allusions to the executioner's axe in London (989-90, 994). These threats form a leitmotif in the novella, as already noted, and are made explicit during her initiation, when Armand, her guide, tells her that her lot is that of a murderer who is to be beheaded (994), and she later tells him, of this ordeal, that, “tu me montrais la mort” (997).

Closely associated with their ritualized deaths are the images of hell confronted by both general and duchess. While Armand's desert is called “l'enfer des sables” (946), Antoinette's hell is evoked, during her captivity, by a scene in which her fears and confusion are fed by repeated descriptions of the branding fire, each presented in the novella from Antoinette's point of view and each more specific, and infernal, than the last. First, she sees, “des lueurs rougeâtres allumées dans l'autre pièce” along with, “dans les ténèbres quelques formes bizarres,” (992). Then, as she looks again, “Elle resta clouée par la peur, en croyant voir la lueur placée derrière le rideau prendre de l'intensité sous les aspirations d'un soufflet” (993). She glimpses “trois personnes masquées,” but then decides this is a “fantaisie d'optique” (993). Later, the fire blazes again, and her fears are confirmed: there are indeed three masked men. And Armand tells her the purpose of the fire: she is to be branded (998). Like the fires of hell, this fire burns to punish a condemned person for her sins.

All the elements of the initiation ritual enumerated so far are linked through the concept of the journey, sometimes physical, always spiritual, by which the candidate passes through them. Simone Vierne discusses three forms that the initiatory journey can take: horizontal, ascending or descending (39-40). While Armand's desert crossing is a horizontal voyage, Antoinette's ressembles the classic voyage of descent, that of the labyrinth. As in a labyrinth, Antoinette is first disoriented (“elle ne put jamais s'expliquer par où ni comment elle fut transportée” 991). Then, at the end of her trial, she walks, blindfolded and guided by Armand, in narrow, uneven passageways, sometimes upward, sometimes downward. The pair travels a certain time this way, until Armand helps Antoinette pass through a narrow opening, and there her voyage suddenly ends. Amazed, she finds herself alone, back in the boudoir of Madame de Sérizy, at the social gathering from which her voyage began (1001).

After undergoing their death experiences, as already noted, both Antoinette and Armand are reintegrated into the world of the living; they are reborn, after which, like other new initiates, they become like children. Antoinette explicitly tells Armand this: “Va, je suis jeune et viens de me rajeunir encore. Oui, je suis une enfant, ton enfant, tu viens de me créer” (999). Similarly, Armand, upon reaching the end of his desert ordeal and seeing the oasis, feels he has been reborn—“Armand crut renaître” (946). And, like an infant, he is gathered up in his guide's protective arms and carried out of the desert's hell into the oasis's “paradis terrestre” (946). Armand's second birth helps explain a very frequent leitmotif in this novella: no less than thirteen times, Armand is described as a child.¹⁵

Through their rebirth, Antoinette and Armand are clearly transformed; they have become worthy of love and capable of loving. Armand's desert experience intensifies his love. For example, early in his relationship with Antoinette, he is seized with “un violent désir, un désir grandi dans la chaleur des déserts” (950), and he is characterized by an admirer with this observation, italicized in the text: “Il sait aimer!” (1005). Antoinette herself says that her sudden love for Armand was provoked by her ordeal, specifically by his death threat: “je voyais toute une vie d'amour au moment où tu me montrais la mort” (997). And immediately after her ordeal, she thinks back on it as “la terrible scène qui venait de donner à sa vie un autre cours” (1001).

Both initiatory journeys are now complete: Armand's trek across a real African desert and Antoinette's later metaphorical voyage. Through their journeys, general and duchess become able and worthy to love, and their love is real; it is not merely the phantasm of macho domination proposed by Ronquerolles and exemplified by “Dezesperence d'amour.” This love is equally shared and equally deserved, and it is the mutual worthiness of the ill-starred lovers that raises the couple's final rupture and separation from the proportions of a facile conte drôlatique to those of a tragedy.

Antoinette's and Armand's initiations involved journeys across metaphorical landscapes that I have compared to those of classical love allegories. This resemblance is not coincidental. The verger de Déduit in Guillaume de Lorris's Roman de la rose and the carte de Tendre in Madeleine de Scudéry's Clélie are both intended to be initiatory landscapes. In each, the potential lover is explicitly assigned a specific starting point, and the desired love-object is separated from the lover by difficult and dangerous terrain. It is only by means of a good journey, a pilgrimage, requiring courage, suffering, perseverence and virtue, that the seeker can hope to arrive at love, his destination.

Once Antoinette has completed this initiation, she and Armand are, for the first time, in phase. Each now loves the other. But despite his love for Antoinette, and despite her transformation, Armand continues to conduct his relationship with her as a competitive game: he clings to Ronquerolles's brutal agenda and systematically rejects all of Antoinette's advances. So she pursues him, first by intermediary, sending him letters for twenty-two days (1008), then ostensibly, publicly compromising herself by sending her liveried carriage to pass the day in front of his home (1009); finally, she goes physically, in secret, to his room (1023). Once she realizes he hasn't even read her letters, she, herself, refers to his conduct as a game: “Si vous m'aimez, cessez un jeu cruel” (1025). And she offers him one last chance: he is to meet her at 8 p.m. that evening. But Armand arrives late; she disappears from view, and he begins a five-year quest for her, reaching her only after her death, upon which, in a paroxysm of gamesmanship, Armand wins a last, hollow victory by stealing her body, from the convent and from God (1036).

Thus the plot of La Duchesse de Langeais is composed of a game phase (in which Antoinette resists Armand), a ritual phase (where Antoinette learns to love), followed by two more game phases (Antoinette's pursuit of Armand, and then the reverse). All four of these phases are realized in terms of physical movement across space.

The space involved may be large, but it isn't infinite. The games and the rituals observed above are all played out in clearly-defined spaces, fields, in fact. And each field is polarized, just as is, say, a football field. At each end of the field stand two boundaries, one desirable, the goal that the participant seeks, and the other undesirable, which s/he flees. Clearly, Armand's metaphorical battlefields and the playgrounds for Antoinette's game of “Mother, may I?” conform to this model. So do the initiatory terrains traversed by both protagonists. As in de Lorris's verger de Déduit or de Scudéry's carte de Tendre, an unpleasant, difficult terrain had to be traversed before Antoinette and Armand could reach the locus amœnus they sought. Thus, both the games and the initiations of this novella take place on surprisingly similar ground, always polarized along an axis of desire. Like all of Balzac's characters, Antoinette and Armand desire intensely, often obsessively. It is because of this couple's passions that the salons, ballrooms and boudoirs of La Duchesse de Langeais are all transformed into fields of struggle.

Notes

1. Eléonore Roy-Reverzy does discuss space in her “La Duchesse de Langeais: un romanesque de la séparation?” She points out that the novel's protagonists “ne peuvent s'aimer que dans l'éloignement” (68) and discusses their social and psychological separation at length, but their physical separation only rarely.

2. Johan Huizinga and Roger Caillois, seminal theorists in this concept, agree that games and rituals are both forms of play. This will be discussed later, in my text.

3. As, for example, in Jean de Meung's continuation of Le Roman de la rose.

4. Antoinette accuses Armand, in a monologue that she hypothesizes, of seeing his campaign challenged by a triple defense: “Elle me parlera de son mari pendant un certain temps, puis de Dieu, puis des suites inévitables de l'amour; mais … je serai le maître de cette femme” (974-75).

5. Barriers 1 & 2: “Il avait parfaitement conçu les scrupules de la femme mariée et les scrupules religieux” (973). Barrier 2: “… s'entoura-t-elle bientôt d'une seconde ligne de fortifications … Elle évoqua les terreurs de la religion” (966). “La religion dura trois mois” (973). Barrier 3: “Vous exigez donc le sacrifice de ma position, de mon rang, de ma vie, pour un douteux amour” (974).

6. “Mother, may I?” and more than 10 similar games are described in Iona and Peter Opie. “Un, deux, trois, soleil” is widely-known in France, and is described at websites such as www.momes.net. The Opies list 30 different names for English and foreign equivalents of this game (192-95), including “Red Light,” common in the United States.

7. In “Mother, may I?” and its avatars, the caller gives specific instructions, e.g., “John, take three giant steps,” then the player must ask permission (“May I?”) and receive it (Opie, 187-95). In “Un, deux, trois, soleil” and its equivalents, permission to advance is tacitly granted while the caller turns her back to the other players and recites a formula, such as, “Un, deux, trois, soleil” or “L-o-n-d-o-n spells London.”

8. These are Antoinette's commands to Montriveau not cited in my text. Commands governing when he is to come to her: “Viendrez-vous demain soir? … je vous attendrai jusqu'à dix heures” (954). “Vous n'oublierez jamais de venir à neuf heures” (956). “Vous me conduirez [au bal]” (956). “Venez moins souvent, je ne vous en aimerai pas moins” (961). “… vous viendrez ici comme par le passé. …” (964). “… vous viendrez un peu moins souvent …” (964). “Ayez la bonté de revenir quand je serai visible” (985). Commands that he stay where he is: “Mme la duchesse … vous prie de l'attendre ici” (955). “Voulez-vous me faire le plaisir de rester où vous êtes …” (971). Commands that he go: “elle rougissait et bannissait Armand de son canapé” (967).

9. Balzac chose this title despite his heroine's use of the expression “toucher à la hache” (1028).

10. Antoinette's intention never to be Armand's lover: “[elle] n'imagina pas d'être à lui” (947). Antoinette's awareness that she is misleading Antoine in this: “Cet homme est capable de me tuer, s'il s'aperçoit que je m'amuse de lui” (my italics; 979). The narrator's explicit assertion that Antoinette's actions constitute a betrayal: Armand is “cet amant trahi” (988).

11. Vidame de Pamiers: “Celui-là, ma chère duchesse … est cousin germain des aigles … il vous emportera dans son aire” (959-60). Marquis de Ronquerolles: “Si, [ayant pressé la duchesse] dans tes serres d'aigle, tu cèdes, si tu recules … elle glissera de tes griffes … pour ne plus se laisser prendre” (982).

12. Montriveau is called, “Un homme qui arrive des déserts,” (952), and is referred to three times as a traveler: “Compliment de voyageur … Le célèbre voyageur,” (953), “Mais sachez, monsieur le voyageur” (957).

13. Among scholars studying initiatory rituals: Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1949); Mircea Eliade, Initiation, rites, sociétés secrètes (Paris: Gallimard, 1959); Yehudi Cohen, Transition from Childhood to Adolescence (Chicago: Aldine Publishing, 1964); Victor Turner, The Ritual Process (Chicago, Aldine Publishing, 1969); T. O. Beidelman, The Cool Knife: Imagery of Gender, Sexuality, and Moral Education in Kaguru Initiation Ritual (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994).

14. Armand pursues his desert voyage after being intentionally and repeatedly misled by his guide (944-45); Antoinette thinks she is going home in her carriage, when she is actually being kidnapped (990-91).

15. Montriveau described as a child: “I'impétuosité de l'enfance,” “comme les enfants,” “comme un enfant,” “Pauvre écolier!” (951); “tant d'enfance dans l'âme” (962); “Plus enfant” (965); “comme un enfant,” “Un enfant volontaire” (978); “en faire un enfant” (979); “Tu es joué comme un enfant,” “idées d'enfant” (982); “un enfant gâté” (985); “cœurs aussi enfants que l'est le mien” (995).

Works Cited

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