[In the excerpt below, Pronko explores Anouilh's technique of characterization, in which he mixes "characters who are often convincingly alive" with those that are symbols or general types.]

Serious dramatists of France today, like Sartre, Camus, and Anouilh, seem no longer to regard character as the kernel of the drama. They present not so much a psychological study as they do a picture of man's predicament, in which the personages are representative of various aspects of man and of life itself. This is not to say that these authors are writing allegories in which men are stripped of lifelike qualities and presented only as symbols. But psychology is too abstract, says Sartre. "For us a man is a whole enterprise in himself. And passion is a part of that enterprise" ["Forgers of Myths," Theatre Arts XXX, 1946]. According to Sartre, the contemporary French playwrights present more specifically a conflict of rights, embodied in characters who are dominated by a passion at the core of which is an invincible will. In addition to being an individual, each character is a symbol as well, and this latter aspect of the characters is undoubtedly more important than a realistic psychology; yet without the presentation of the characters as living individuals, their symbolic meaning would fail to reach us effectively.

In the theater of Anouilh we find characters who are often convincingly alive, and at the same time possess a symbolic meaning, for Anouilh presents what René-Marill Albérès [in La révolte des écrivains d'aujourd'hui, 1949] calls a "philosophical drama":

Like other modern writers, however, Anouilh has given up painting human passions in order to paint the human condition. One might thus find in all his work that philosophical drama which he constantly avoided before writing Antigone.

Anouilh's characters are a mixture of the realistic and the exaggerated. Some are extremely lifelike, some entirely artificial; whereas others contain both characteristics in varying degrees.

Modes of Characterization

In the serious plays of the first period, the realistic note dominates. The protagonist who is unwilling to accept life as he sees it, profoundly aware of life's absurdity, is often a complex personage who is lifelike because of his very complexity. The other characters—those of the mediocre race who have accepted life without trying to understand it, without realizing the baseness of their action—live on a much more superficial plane than the heroic individuals, but they are also real on the stage. In their mediocrity, pushed to the point of caricature, they are pathetically real. In fact, one of them, Jézabel, is pathologically complex. All the characters have been formed by their backgrounds and environments to which they are hopelessly bound; tied forever to their old selves and to the filth of their past.

The complexity of the characters is apparent from the first play [L'hermine] in the person of Frantz, the illogical young man who adopts an antisocial means to attain a position in that very society he hates. He is so dominated by his desire that even when the opportunity arises to better his condition by fair means, he blindly goes on with his original plans to murder the Duchess. Frantz's motives are never made clear to us, and his passionate reiterations that he desires purity above all else suggest he may be trying to convince himself of the purity of his motivations. Frantz creates himself before our very eyes. We are never aware of any intentions of the author in his characterization; those very doubts that we feel in regard to his words and acts make Frantz a richer creation, a more real person. As Ortega y Gasset has pointed out, in real life no person is presented to us neatly characterized. Instead, we get one impression today, a different one tomorrow, and finally form a concept of the person, sometimes one fraught with doubts and contradictions. We get such an impression from Frantz, of whom a reviewer said, "One feels the flow of human truth: a truth that springs from the intrepid flow of youth" [James de Coquet, Les annales politiques et littéraires, 10 April 1935].

This same "intrepid flow" is seen in La sauvage, of which Marcel Berger says [in Le style au microscope, 1952], "The dramatist plays with us like a cat with a mouse." We alternate between one opinion and another as we seek to understand the heroine. Thérèse has all the complexity of a living person with her pathetic hesitation between a shallow happiness with Florent and fidelity to herself in the wretched environment in which she grew up. She is different from Frantz, and more sympathetic than he, for she is more normally irresolute—not so blinded by one idea that she cannot see the advantages of the other side. Her tragedy is that her character, which demands utter purity, will not allow her to make the compromise that would have made life so simple and pleasant. Anouilh's portrait of Thérèse is thoroughly convincing and one of the most touching of his entire theater. Indeed, Jean Didier goes so far as to say [in A la recontre de Jean Anouilh, 1946]: "Never, we believe, has a dramatist gone so deep into the unfathomable mysteries of the heart as in La sauvage. Rarely has a man of the theater touched the depths of anguish with such rigor and lucidity."

In Jézabel the characters are again presented in a realistic way, and even in the melodramatic situation in which Anouilh places them we are easily convinced of their reality. The mother is a pathological character, but she is consistent insofar as human beings are ever consistent. She succeeds in awakening our sympathy to some extent, because we are shown the causes of her condition: her past, her unhappy marriage, and the natural weakness of her flesh. For her, life is suffering because she cannot see it in any terms except those of the sensual urges, which have acquired the mechanical nature of habit. She is caught, and yet she realizes the emptiness of seeking satisfaction in that habit.

Georges (Le rendez-vous de Senlis) and Gaston (Le voyageur sans bagage) both come alive through the visions of a happier life and of themselves which they have created. They reveal themselves not so much through their actions as through their dreams. Gaston is characterized by a contrast with the past his family is trying to force upon him, and Georges by the past he has invented for himself and for his ideal parents and friend. Both he and Gaston like to imagine their pasts in similar ways. Each of them has an imaginary friend. Gaston has invented a memory of such a friend:

But among thousands of possible memories, it was precisely the memory of a friend which I was summoning up with most fondness. I've built everything upon the memory of that imaginary friend. Our impassioned walks, the books we discovered together, a girl that he had loved at the same time as I did, and that I had given up for him, and even—you're going to laugh—that I had saved his life one day in a little boat.

Georges has transformed a commonplace and dubious friendship into an ideal relationship of boyhood in which it was his friend who made sacrifices. This is how he had presented that relationship to Isabelle, who now questions the "old friend":

Isabelle. Is it true that you saved his life in a boat one day?

Robert. In a boat? No, Mademoiselle, I'm sorry, but I don't know how to swim.

Isabelle (after a pause). Ah! And the girl that you gave up for him?

Robert. A girl I gave up? No, I don't remember. Forgive me, Mademoiselle, but I've never heard anything about such a girl.

Of these characters of the first period, Thérèse, Frantz, and Jézabel attain a certain realism by the complexity of their natures. Gaston and Georges are much less complex characters and lack the lifelike quality of a Thérèse. Most of the secondary characters are even more simplified: people with one single drive, whether it be money, sexual passion, or drink. Frequently they are caricatures—simple types often broadly contrasting with each other, or with the major figures of the drama.

In the other Pièces roses of the same period we find a decided contrast to the realism of the Pièces noires. Although there are characters of the "black" world treated in a realistic way in Le rendez-vous de Senlis, in Le bal des voleurs and Léocadia we see people who have escaped into the play, who make of life a game. These people are clearly puppet-like: the pickpockets, the Dupont-Duforts, Lord Edgard in Le bal des voleurs, the Duchess, and the Baron and the valets of Léocadia. Characters like Lady Hurf, Juliette, the Prince, and Amanda are barely on the edge of realistic treatment; their suffering and their realization that there is some decision to be made gives them more reality than those unthinking creatures who merely exist.

The similarity to the realist dramatists which we find in this first group of Anouilh's plays might be misleading. Anouilh presents his characters and their realistic milieux not as ends in themselves but as representatives of man's estate. Rather than trying to prove, in the manner of Zola, that given certain conditions a person will grow in a certain way, Anouilh is presenting characters of symbolic significance.

In the second period realism occupies a less important place than in the early plays. With Eurydice, fantasy has invaded the serious play. Although Orphée and Eurydice are both creatures of their environment, they are not complex characters. Through their suffering they come alive, and through their desire for purity they take on a new realism, for the seekers after purity are the favored children of Anouilh. As he has said elsewhere [Pièces roses]: "These characters exist. They are already half alive. Someone believes in them." But already we see them more clearly as symbols. The air of fantasy which invades the play; the presence of M. Henri; and the title of the play itself; all prepare us for a more universal application of the characters and their predicament. In Eurydice, where the fundamental problems are treated as such for the first time, we also find for the first time that tendency toward abstractness which becomes patent in Antigone. In the four plays of the second group (Eurydice, Antigone, Roméo et Jeannette, Médée) we see the characters more clearly as representatives of man's condition. With the exception of Orphée and Frédéric, there is very little character development in the traditional sense, for the characters become only more like themselves, rather than changing in any way. They may pass through new experiences, but they are not altered essentially; rather, they are confirmed in their original strength or weakness.

Although the characters are less realistic in the conventional sense of the word, perhaps they are more so in their strength of will and their desire to find that inner purity without which life is impossible for them. As Marsh has said, "They present the essence of their predicament," [Edward Owen Marsh, Jean Anouilh: Poet of Pierrot and Pantaloon, 1953]. And the predicament of each one is similar to that of the others and to that of all mankind caught within the trap of life of which Médée speaks. They represent, therefore, the essence of the human predicament, as well as the private one in which they are enmeshed. They resemble each other, and yet they are different. Jeannette is not Antigone, nor could she ever be. Nor is Médée like Antigone or Jeannette. They resemble each other only insofar as each must remain faithful to what she believes to be her truest self. They are beings who act for no one but themselves. Proud or arrogant, they cannot abide the pity of others.

The puppet-like creatures of the Pièces roses whose bare strings are clearly visible have no part in the plays of the second period. The mediocre people who live fed by illusion possess a pathetic reality. Even if they are puppets, they are real insofar as they are accurate representations of types that are common in life. The method of emphasis through caricature and exaggeration is still employed.

In the plays of the third period the puppet characters dominate the scene. For the most part the spectator is aware of them as characters in a play rather than as living people. At times the realistic presentation typical of the first period is seen, as in the major characters of Colombe, and in the persons of Général Saintpé and Ornifle, who attain a complexity not usually found in this period. The others painted in light strokes are once again of an exaggerated simplicity: sometimes laughable, sometimes pitiable, often grotesque. Except for Julien in Colombe, the hero is no longer presented so convincingly; his inner fire is but a faint gleam compared with that bright flame burning within Antigone or Thérèse. In the last of the Pièces grinçantes, Bitos, the hero, has become an antihero; the characteristics of Thérèse and Antigone are preverted in such a way as to make Bitos appear despicable.

The most intense reality is possessed by the central figures of each of the serious plays, whereas the mediocre characters appear in a more superficially realistic light—real only as representative of a certain type. The hero is highlighted as a man of flesh and blood placed within a sort of vacuum of misunderstanding, within which the superficially alive people cannot penetrate. The hero's solitude is thus emphasized, and Anouilh's treatment of his characters is seen to be closely bound up with his major themes. Those characters who have accepted life and believe with Armand of Colombe that life is in the gestures one makes and the words one speaks, possess for the most part only the superficial reality of caricatures. The members of the heroic race burn with an inner fire, and by this fire create an intense life of their own.

Characteristic of Anouilh's theater is the narrow range of types who often recur from play to play. Since all his plays deal with the same problems, and Anouilh's view of man is essentially the same from his earliest plays to his latest, a kinship of characters is to be expected. A change in focus, emphasis, aspect, or detail gives sufficient variety to make each play an exciting exploration of man's problems.

The Personal Types

The most important of the recurrent characters is the hero, of course. The hero, from whatever period he may be, is primarily motivated by his desire for purity. This is his constant theme, but it is one that is capable of many variations. For Frantz, purity means the winning of wealth and a socially recognized union with Monime; for Mare, it lies in accepting the weight of the past of his family back-ground while keeping himself free from easy habit; Thérèse sees it not only in fidelity to the past but in a renunciation of the shallow life she could have led with her rich fiancé: for Ludovic, it means flight from family and society to a life where he can preserve his spontaneity and his sympathy for his fellow human beings; for Gaston, it is also a flight from the past, but an easy and convenient refusal to accept his old self, as well; for Antigone, for Orphée, for Frédéric, and for Jeannette, purity can be found only in death; for Médée, the same is true, with the distinction that she must find death through a return to her real self. With varying degrees of fixity, they all have the same passion, but in some it is noble, in others it is an ironic distortion of nobility, and yet in others a desperate but convenient effort to reject the ignoble self. And again, in some it seems quite normal, whereas in others we feel it is pathological.

The hero, moreover, is aware that life is not all rose, and that one cannot ultimately escape into a happy illusion. When people like Gaston refuse to face their old selves, they are not being true to the heroic role. It is such differences in the solution of their problems which give variety to the heroes of this theater, and make some stand out as stronger characters than others. The keenest awareness is that of an Antigone, who realizes that the very act of living is impossible if one is to conserve one's purity. For this reason the heroines of the second period—those who are most heroic in their absolute refusal of life—invariably seek death as the only solution.

It is noteworthy that the most heroic characters in Anouilh's theater are young girls. Thérèse, Antigone, and Jeannette are heroines of the first importance, and such heroes as Frantz, Marc, and Orphée seem weak beside them. Related to them are the paler heroines of the rose or brilliant world; the poor girls who, in a wealthy milieu, attempt to remain true to themselves: Amanda, Isabelle, and Lucile.

The Relational Types

The lineage of Madame Alexandra in her role as mother may be traced back to Jézabel, through Mme Tarde, Mme Renaud, Mme Delachaume, Eurydice's mother, and Isabelle's mother (L'invitation au château). All Anouilh's mothers are cut from the same material, although there are individual variations. Selfishness is the dominant characteristic: instead of desiring the happiness of their children, they seek their own comfort and contentment. They prefer to satisfy their own physical needs, whatever they may be, and their own petty vanity, rather than allow their children to have the happiness that they might have if freed from maternal ties. They are possessive women and, not infrequently, stingy. Jézabel cannot give up her dissolute life, even though her actions make it impossible for her son to find happiness. At the same time she maintains that she loves him and cannot live without him. She wants every-thing for herself—both her son and her weaknesses.

Madame Tarde, like Mme Delachaume, would push her child into a rich marriage so that she might enjoy the benefits of a wealthy son-in-law. She has no consideration for the real happiness of Thérèse. Or perhaps it would be fairer to say that she is incapable of visualizing happiness in any terms other than those of money, because her view has been warped by poverty. When she almost compels Thérèse to marry Florent, it is her belief that this is the way to happiness. Thérèse's renunciation is, of course, beyond the understanding of such people.

In Le rendez-vous de Senlis Georges describes his ideal mother to Mme de Montalembreuse, who is to portray her:

Georges. The role of the mother … It's the most difficult. What a range of emotions—from the graywigged enemy who defends her heritage dearly, to the disturbing mother who trembles and loses the thread of the conversation, like a young girl in love, when her son enters or leaves the room!

Mme de Montalembreuse. It's very simple: a good mother's role should include all mothers!

Georges. No, I would like this one to be very simple. Obvious. A mother like those they describe in children's books. Like the ones little boys dream about in the kitchen near the maid while they're waiting for their real mother to come home—wearing too much perfume—from her endless afternoon errands. A mother who would have no shopping to do, no friends to see. An admirable mother, in other words.

Mme de Montalembreuse. All mothers are admirable, my dear young man. Instinct speaks!

Georges. The slightest oversight is enough to spoil everything. A smile at a strange man which you fail to conceal. A single hard word on a day when you're exasperated and have in front of you only a disarmed, but intractable little enemy. A single kiss forgotten. And a child is there every day spying on you, requiring your all as tyrannically and minutely as a sergeant. Oh, I know the mother's role isn't easy. It's a role that won't allow stand-ins and which shouldn't be accepted lightly.

The ideal mother aids, of course, in the search for purity; in the return to the prelapsarian world which all the heroes of Anouilh are seeking. But there exists no ideal mother, and the hero must seek alone, doomed to failure.

When Georges tests Mme de Montalembreuse by telling her he wants to marry a poverty-stricken young girl instead of the wealthy woman his mother had chosen for him, the actress, in the role of the ideal mother, falls right into the spirit of her role, and answers him: "if your happiness is somewhere else, don't hesitate; leave, and be happy. At your age, love is worth everything." So convincing is her acting that Georges assumes she has actually experienced such an incident. As it turns out, she is a mother and her son had wanted to marry a poor girl. But the real mother's reaction was entirely different from that of the ideal mother: "Can you imagine! She was a little violinist … an insignificant little strumpet. … Believe me, I smacked him down!"

Madame Renaud had done much the same thing when her son Jacques, at the age of eighteen, had gone off to the war. There had been a fight between mother and son because she had refused to consent to his marriage with a poor seamstress, The son had shouted to his mother, "I hate you," and Mme Renaud, with wounded dignity and unbending pride, had locked herself in her room, refusing to make the first step of reconciliation. Thus, she had let him leave for the war and possible death without a farewell and without her blessing.

Eurydice's mother is too selfishly concerned with her own ridiculous affair with Vincent, and with her career as an actress, to pay much attention to her daughter. Her only constant admonition is, "Sit up straight." She is somewhat outside the stream of mothers; she is rather, as she calls herself, "an animal of the theater."

Isabelle's mother in L'invitation au château is foolish, sentimental, and selfish. She would have Isabelle make a marriage of convenience with Romainville so that their livelihood will be assured forever. She combines the romantic imagination of Eurydice's mother with the selfishness and moral weakness of the earlier mothers in Anouilh's theater.

In Colombe we are once again in the world of make-believe which is the stage. Madame Alexandra is revealed to her audience as a devoted mother, but Julien exposes the ugly underside of this picture when he describes his unhappy childhood—wasting away in a third-class pension, neglected by a mother too busy with her career and her lovers. Selfish and morally weak, Mme Alexandra possesses all the vices of the mothers in Anouilh's plays. Like many of them, she has not restrained herself sexually. Jézabel was hardly more than a prostitute, and Mme Tarde and Eurydice's mother were both living with men who were not their husbands. Isabelle's mother is unmarried. Jeannette's mother, we are told in Roméo et Jeannette, has run off with another man. And Mme Alexandra has gone through a good number of husbands and lovers, and she is probably not finished yet.

The fathers are shown in no better light than are the mothers. Indeed, the parental couple is an abject pair. Real fathers, as Anouilh sees them, can hardly conform to the picture of the ideal father which Georges paints for us in Le rendez-vous de Senlis:

Georges. You're a charming old gentleman, still quite young, with a youthfulness that time can't touch. You're the ideal father who gave up the "biblical" look along with his beard; the kind who was able to become a big brother in time. A big brother who wouldn't play at being a big brother, but a comrade; you're my comrade, papa. Besides, you dress just as I do, and even—it's so natural at your age—a bit younger.

Philemon. But … a father just the same?

Georges (smiles). Of course, papa … on the days when most big brothers would have the right to think of themselves first; the days when you have to be dedicated, to pardon, to give money too. … On those days you become a real father, strong and reassuring, with whom your son can become a little boy for a while.

The ideal father is conceived of, then, as being affectionate and capable of giving advice and help when needed; and when not needed in this capacity, he is a friend, not a commander. How far this is from the foolish, pompous father that is Georges' in reality; a man whom Georges supports, or rather, whom Georges' wife supports.

Marc's father in Jézabel, M. Tarde in La sauvage, Orphée's father, and Jeannette's father—are all weak, ineffectual, and lazy men who inflate their own egos and try to impress others with their importance. They are only deceiving themselves. They are frequently cuckolds, and too weak or insouciant to do anything about it. Marc's father gave up long ago, and has turned his attention upon his money and the maid. Orphée's father lives a dull day-to-day existence compounded of menu prices and a study of the best way to get the most for least. He is third-rate in every way, but he tries to make Orphée believe otherwise. At last he is reduced to admitting that he is not a good musician, despite his second prix at the Conservatoire d'Arcachon. He lacks what all these mediocre characters lack—the very quality that he lauds to Orphée and which he deludes himself into believing he possesses—a will of iron. Monsieur Tarde looks upon himself as an "old man to whom life refused everything," and is ever ready to place the responsibility for his weaknesses upon others, and to excuse himself on the grounds that he is an artist. "We are artists who are allowed all kinds of eccentricities," he claims. "I'm an old artist," says Jeannette's father, "I need a certain laxity around me." All these fathers are men without character; lazy, good-for-nothing people without any real ambition, relying upon others and insisting at the same time that they are independent. They are optimistic because they are too shallow to see how pathetic they really are.

The friend occupies no better place than the parents in Anouilh's world. The ideal friend does not exist. As we have seen, he is twice described in somewhat similar terms as a person who is willing to make sacrifices; who will give up the woman he loves for his best friend; who will risk his life to save him. In reality, Anouilh suggests, friends are somewhat different. Georges in Le rendez-vous de Senlis had wisely decided not to have anyone impersonate the friend, so that he might remain a perfect friend. But Robert arrives at the house at Senlis, and it turns out that the real friend—stingy, selfish, jealous, petty, and vicious—in no way resembles the ideal one.

In Le voyageur sans bagage Gaston thinks he must have had a beautiful friendship as a young man. He imagines it in the terms described above. But when he discovers the real situation his dream fades. Rather than give up the woman he loved, or thought he loved, for his "friend," the young Jacques Renaud had quarreled with his friend and pushed him down the stairs, causing a spinal injury that made him bed-ridden for life.

The other "friends" in Anouilh's world fare little better. Philippe (L'hermine) and Hartmann (La sauvage) are incapable of understanding the people whose friends they profess to be. Hartmann is from a different kind of back-ground from Florent's, and his love for him is a mixture of envy and admiration. Héro in La Répétition is the Count's old friend, and it is he who, nursing an old grudge, gets back at Tigre by seducing the innocent girl who might have saved the Count from mediocrity. Perhaps the Doctor in La valse des toréadors comes closest to being the ideal friend, for he is sympathetic and devoted to the old General and helps him in every way he can to understand himself and his role in life. But even he fails to be effective, for the Doctor and the General, like everyone else, are shut off from each other by walls of flesh, and any true understanding is impossible.

Similarly, Becket and Henry, who at first seem close friends, are quickly revealed as fundamentally incompatible. Becket, proud and reserved, is incapable of giving himself to anything less than the absolute. Henry, pathetically weak and selfish, cannot forget the distance between king and vassal. "If you were my true prince," says Becket, "if you were of my race, how simple things would be." Becket and Henry are separated by the abyss that lies between heroism and mediocrity: they belong to different races and must remain forever incomprehensible to each other. And yet despite their differences, in the face of overwhelming odds, a feeling of friendship subsists between the two, and it is with reluctance, one feels, that they separate for the last time, each incapable of expressing his real feelings for the other.

Even L'alouette, which in so many ways seemed promising of a new optimism, has nothing good to say for friendship, for in the end Jeanne is deserted by all those who were her friends, including La Trémouille, her bosom companion. In fact, he is not even mentioned as present at her apotheosis with which the play ends.

The Social Types

Society, as Anouilh sees it, is divided into two groups: the rich, who are charming and blind, and the poor, who are bitter and humiliated. But within each social class, there are several distinctive types.

The rich are most often represented by the wealthy old dowager. We first meet her in Anouilh's first performed play, L'hermine. The Duchesse de Granat is a "sort of fabulous character." Selfish, spoiled, and insensitive to the feelings of others, she is a symbol of the superficiality of the rich and of all those who live life in a shallow way, following the easy course. She has never had a real feeling, was never in love, and refuses to think of death. Ironically enough, in spite of her failure to live deeply, she dominates the lives of those about her, simply because she has money, and money is the measure of man's influence. The full meaning of her tyranny is seen in the person of her servant-companion Marie-Anne, whom she treats like an animal. The maid cowers before her, hesitates lest any action displease her, has warped her entire life to conform to the wishes of the egoistic Duchess, and is frustrated in her most meaningful emotional attachment.

Madame Bazin (La sauvage), Florent's aunt, a "charming old lady, full of lace, little jewels and ribbons," is ostensibly kind and thoughtful, but in fact she is every bit as insensitive to the feelings of others as is the Duchess de Granai. Because her experiences have been limited in scope, and she has never ventured beyond her own social class, she has no understanding of others.

Lady Hurf (Le bal des voleurs), we feel, has a broader experience of life, for she is aware that she is alone, and confesses that she is as bored "as an old carpet." But she is willing to play the game. In fact, she is one of the chief organizers of this play where she (and Anouilh through her) pulls the strings of the other puppets. Like the Duchesse de Granat, she dominates the lives of those about her, and arranges them according to her will. But her rule is benevolent rather than malicious, and she wishes the happiness of others while it is still possible. She is clever, witty, amusing, and somewhat giddy.

This is true of all the other wealthy old ladies. The Duchess in Léocadia is, in fact, almost insane. Although extremely clever, she is so wildly extravagant that her actions are improbable. Again, she is incapable of understanding the poor. She has had Amanda dismissed from her job without a thought for the girl's wishes or her future. Like Lady Hurf, she is largely in control of the intrigue. Like her predecessors and the later dowagers, she is romanesque, absent-minded, dictatorial, wildly optimistic, and extremely theatrical. There is something of the nonsensical atmosphere of Alice in Wonderland in the scenes with the Duchess, as she chats with her deceased husband or goes hunting for birds in the hope that she will not catch any.

The Duchess Dupont-Dufort (Le voyageur sans bagage) is another charmingly deranged lady. She has romantically wild dreams about Gaston. She is certain that he is of a good family, and feels it would be nothing short of a national tragedy if he turned out to be from the lower classes. To a certain extent she dominates the characters of this play, but only for a time. She has undertaken to discover Gaston's identity and she almost pushes him into the arms of the waiting Renaud family. But when Gaston discovers the unpleasant truth about his past he frees himself from her influence.

In L'invitation au château we meet Mme Desmermortes, the last of these creatures who are often as puppet-like as the characters whose lives they seek to control. Just as Lady Hurf had done seventeen years earlier, Mme Desmermortes exclaims, "I'm as bored as an old carpet," and like her earlier counterpart she creates an intrigue to amuse herself. Like the others, she is domineering and blind to the feelings of others, particularly in her attitude to her reader Capulat. She can be brutally insensitive at the same time that she is witty. Speaking to Capulat, she says:

Mme Desmermortes. You are ugly. When one is ugly, one is never twenty years old.

Capulat. Nonetheless, one has a heart!

Mme Desmermortes. Ah, my dear girl! That instrument, without the others, is good for nothing. But stop making me talk foolishness. … You've been happy all the same, Capulat, worthy and respected. For a woman like you that's the best thing that can happen. … You still have God. A life of boredom is an investment.

She is extravagant and imaginative, but not so wildly romantic as her predecessors. Indeed, she is unusually clear-sighted and stable, and must often check the romantic cravings of Capulat.

All these characters show us the rich man's blindness, his insensitivity to the sufferings of others, and his selfishness. It is interesting to note that many of them are sick.

Madame Desmermortes is confined to a wheelchair; the Duchesse de Granat suffers insomnia and must take her powders; and the Duchess in Léocadia is ready for a mental institution. Their maladies are but exteriorizations of the condition of their souls—warped by money and the sense of over-confidence, exaggerated self-importance, and self-righteousness which it brings. They are charming and cruel at the same time without suspecting the hurt that they inflict.

Two of the old ladies have as their friend and confidant an ineffectual old nobleman: Lady Hurf turns to Lord Edgard for advice which is not forthcoming; and the Duchess of Léocadia, to the Baron Hector. Both are simple-minded men who may now and then have an unexpectedly clever thought. They are treated lightly, but we may look upon them as another type found in the circles of the wealthy, ridiculous, and inept, with no purpose in life.

Villardieu and Villebosse, the jealous lovers found in Ardèle and La Répétition, are treated comically also. They are conventional and puritanical people, not only critical of the looseness of the husbands, but even jealous of them as if the roles of husband and lover were reversed. They are ridiculous and tedious with their constant attentions and complete lack of humor. They are hangers-on—neither one doing anything more than living in the home of another man with the latter's wife. Such is the pass to which wealthy society, as Anouilh sees it, permeated by immorality, has brought us.

The poor are represented by several types of characters. We have already seen the downtrodden maid-servants of the dowagers: Marie-Anne in L'hermine and Capulat in L'invitation au château. Related to them is the poor kitchen wench who appears for a moment in La sauvage as she spies admiringly upon the beauty and happiness of Thérèse.

Although not pictured as poverty-stricken, the many valets who appear throughout the plays may well be included here, for they are all icily perfect, frozen impersonalities; people who have lost their identities in their service to the rich—for whom they are but another possession.

The poor working girls include four heroines, not the least of whom is Thérèse. She, Amanda (Léocadia), Isabelle (L'invitation au château), and Lucile (La répétition), poor girls in the homes of the rich, emphasize by contrast the unwitting narrowness of the rich who have purchased them as tools for their pleasure. The girls, true to their desire for purity, refuse to be corrupted by the wealthy milieu, in spite of its glitter.

Unlike the heroines, there are some poor girls who have made the compromise, and these are represented by Nathalie in Ardèle and Valentine in Le voyageur sans bagage. Both of them poverty-stricken girls dependent upon wealthy aunts, they became tired of the humiliation that comes out of penury and servitude, and sold themselves to the elder sons of wealthy families, although they were in love with the younger but ineligible son.

Perhaps the most impressive and pathetic representation of the poor occurs in La sauvage, in the characterizations of M. and Mme Tarde. The tyranny that poverty has exercised over them is evident in their exaggerated reverence and desire for money, in their willingness to grovel before the wealthy to win favors, and in M. Tarde's attempt to convince himself that he was made for such a life as the one he leads at Florent's home.

The social significance of Anouilh's plays is apparent both in the satire of the rich and the poor, and in the depiction of the kinds of lives the people lead. The poor are depicted as more aware than are the rich (the hero or heroine usually comes from the poor classes), for they have suffered deeply, and learned through their suffering that life is made up not only of joys and pleasures, which for the poor are few, but of disappointments and pains. Poverty, however, also warps a person's view, as we have seen. Rich and poor alike are prisoners of their social spheres: incapable of understanding anyone who is not of their own world.

Both groups in Anouilh's view are completely amoral, and accept free love and adultery almost as a matter of course. The pursuits of the poor are love and money, and with this in mind life seems extremely simple to them. The wealthy already have their money, and consequently can devote themselves more single-mindedly to the pursuit of "love."

Anouilh condemns society, we feel, for its lack of real sincerity, and for its preoccupation with inessentials which offer a temporary consolation, but which ultimately bury man deep in habits that prevent him from seeing life as it really is.

The Professional Types

Two professional types are frequently depicted by Anouilh: the actor and the musician. The author's mother, it will be recalled, was a member of the orchestra of the Casino at Arcachon, and it was there that Anouilh first came into contact with the world of the theater. It is thus not surprising that the first artists we find in his plays are musicians. And M. Tarde speaks for them all, musicians and actors alike, when he insists that any extravagance is permitted to an artist.

The artists we meet in this world are almost invariably of third-rate calibre, but they have deluded themselves into believing they are fine artists whom the world has not yet recognized. They attempt desperately to convince themselves of their superiority, but in reality, with the exception of Mme Alexandra, they are all failures in their chosen profession.

In Le rendez-vous de Senlis we have our first taste of the actor's character, in the persons of M. Philémon and Mme de Montalembreuse. Imaginative, romanesque, and bulwarked by much self-esteem, this couple insist upon playing every scene for all it is worth, dramatizing the tiniest incident. But all their playing is hollow; we feel their emotions are as untrue as are their characterizations of Georges' ideal parents upon the arrival of Isabelle. When they play a scene it is to no purpose other than that of making themselves the center of the stage and giving themselves, for a brief moment, the feeling that they are allimportant. It also brings out the ease with which they are prone to delude themselves into exaggerating their successes in the past. This is seen when Philémon and Mme de Montalembreuse describe at length their coincidental meeting at the station after years of separation; and it is revealed in their conversation as they go to the house Georges has rented. Passing the Place Clemenceau, the actress is suddenly convinced that formerly the two of them had played in that very city:

Philémon. She pinches my arm: "Ferdinand, we've played before in this city!"

Mme de Montalembreuse. Something told me!

Philémon. Then, skeptical, I say: "There are Clemenceau Squares everywhere, my dear." "I tell you that something tells me we've played here!" And suddenly she shrieks: "Look at the statue!"

Mme de Montalembreuse (with a gesture). Ah! That statue.

Philémon. I look at the statue; I stop, glued to the spot. …

Georges (cutting him short). And had you really played here before?

Philémon (simply). No, it was a mistake.

This is much ado about nothing, but it gives the actors an opportunity to create a little scene for themselves. We see a similar situation when they suddenly recall a former colleague, laugh uproariously over his customary saying of "We're all ears," become quickly sad when they remember he is dead, and as quickly forget him when they turn back to Georges to hear the remainder of their instructions. They are constantly striking attitudes and making grandiose gestures. They conceive of themselves as people apart—the spoiled children of Mother Nature, gifted with their own special genius, eternally young and glamorous. Mme de Montalembreuse cannot play a very old mother—she must be a young one—and Philémon claims he has the profile of a jeune premier. To portray the roles of father and mother, each of them has a bundle of tricks up his sleeve, for as far as they are concerned there is only one type of father and one type of mother. It is only hesitantly that they finally agree to enact the characters Georges has in mind.

The mother in Eurydice and Vincent, her "gros chat," are no better. As vain as Philémon and Mme de Montalembreuse, they also believe themselves younger than they actually are, and artists of a much higher calibre than their success would seem to indicate. But the mother explains that "Paris no longer goes crazy over anyone but stupid little fools who have no bosoms and are incapable of pronouncing three words without stumbling. …" She is related to the overbearing duchesses, and whenever she enters a room, it is in a triumphant manner: "Eurydice 's mother makes a triumphant entrance. Boa, hat with a feather. She has not stopped growing younger since 1920." Vincent is no less theatrical: "silver hair, handsome and soft under a very energetic exterior. Sweeping gestures, bitter smile, a wandering glance. He kisses the Mother's hand." All their life is contained in the wild melodramatic events or colorful scenes evoked through description of picturesque detail: attempts at suicide, petty jealousy, Mexican tangos, skating rinks, Monte Carlo. And all this is described in the most superficial way, until we cannot help but realize that for these two cabotins life lies in the gestures one makes and not in any deeply felt emotions or convictions.

So much is life a theater for Vincent that he cannot distinguish the point where the play begins and life ends. He declaims Perdican's lines on love from On ne badine pas avec l'amour, and believes he is expressing his own thoughts in original words.

In Mme Alexandra of Colombe we find another true "animal of the theater," as Eurydice's mother had called herself. She is a monstre sacré in the old tradition, following in the footsteps of the more malicious duchesses. Selfish, stubborn, blind, and insensitive, she lives only for herself and her petty whims. For her, as for the other artists of Anouilh's world, life is simply the motions one goes through. Her "love" affairs have been one whirlwind after another, their sincerity sufficiently proved by the fact that they were melodramatic and colorful. Her interest in others is as false as her love. She never gives herself; nor even lends herself except for a moment. Her interest in Poète-Chéri, in Armand, or in anyone else, is based upon the benefit she may derive from those people, and not from any deep-felt love or concern for them, or even any awareness of them. Perhaps Mme Alexandra is one of the most isolated characters in the theater of Anouilh. But she does not realize her solitude, because for her the gestures are enough. The motion of a kiss is as good as a kiss, and so much the better if it is made midst the flames of a burning mansion.

The shallowness of the other backstage characters is evident. Their lack of true individuality, and their puppet-like natures are amusingly accentuated by their approach to Colombe. Each one, in the very same words, indicative of a stereotyped approach, invites her to meet him after the performance for "a drop of port, and two cookies."

Since Anouilh so often presents life as a game, and the world as a kind of theater in which man is assigned a role, his depiction of the theater takes on a deeper meaning. What he tells us of theater people and of the theater in general is true of all life, and the shallow people—gesticulating melodramatically, puppet-like, finding life on the surface rather than in any real reelings—are representative not only of players but of all human beings.

The Mouthpiece and the Meneur de Jeu

Certain of the plays contain a character who might be looked upon as the author's mouthpiece. They are characters who are either completely outside the action of the play because of the nature of their roles, or who are unaffected by what happens in the play because they can look upon it with a more objective eye than the other characters. Their attitudes range from a gently disillusioned kindliness to a bitter cynicism; from a M. Henri of Eury-dice, or the Doctor in La valse des toréadors, to Lucien in Roméo et Jeannette. Between the two extremes is the Count in Ardèle. Off to one side, completely detached, is the Chorus of Antigone, who has no role in the intrigue of the play. These characters present nothing in common, except that their view of life is perhaps a little more coherent and presented at greater length than that of the other characters in the plays in which they appear. One feels that M. Henri and the Chorus are freer than the others, since they are not affected by what is going on. Lucien has lost a personal interest in life because of his bitter resentment, but he can hardly be called objective. The Count and the Doctor are characters within the frame of the plays. They are acting and acted upon, but by their intelligent attitudes we feel they obtain a certain immunity from events which is not possessed by the other characters.

Monsieur Henri is not only outside the game; he is, to some extent, directing it. It is he who brings back Eurydice for a brief moment, and who suggests to Orphée that death is the only answer. To a large extent, he is pulling the strings of the drama. There are characters of this type in many of Anouilh's plays, but the others do not possess M. Henri's omnipotence. They are characters within the plays, and yet they manage to manipulate the other characters like so many dolls. It is the wealthy dowagers above all who engage in this activity. Lady Hurf, the Duchess in Léocadia, and Mme Desmermortes are the most obvious ones. Actually Mme Desmermortes is but one of the two meneurs de jeu in L'invitation au château. Horace starts to manipulate certain events, but his plans are upset when Mme Desmermortes enters the game and starts pulling the strings behind his back, including those attached to Horace himself. The wealthy old ladies are old enough to understand life, and also old enough to be no longer in the game; hence they are the logical meneurs de jeu.

All these characters (with the obvious exception of such persons as M. Henri and the Chorus of Antigone, who belong to neither group) have a certain similarity, precisely because they are members of what Anouilh calls the mediocre race. Their similarities are ones typical of that race: selfishness, pettiness, blindness, vanity, weakness of character, a false pride in things they have not accomplished, and a picture of themselves which does not coincide with reality. Since Anouilh's characters are representative of his major themes, and those themes are few and oft-repeated, it is not surprising that these people resemble one another.

A further indication of the resemblance lies in their speech. It is typical of these plays that certain phrases are repeated from work to work. We have already noted that Lady Hurf and Mme Desmermortes were as bored "as an old carpet," and both Mme Desmermortes and the old General of La valse des toréadors note, in somewhat similar terms, that their plays are dragging on.

Another frequently repeated phrase—"Children are no longer children"—expresses disillusionment and despair. It is used by the father in Jézabel, by Lucien in Roméo et Jeannette, and by the General in La valse des toréadors. The Duchess of Le voyageur sans bagage also uses the phrase, but in her instance it is used as an excuse for not understanding Gaston's attitude toward himself. But still, taken in the framework of Anouilh's entire theater, this repetition reminds us that beneath the brilliant surface is an ugly and meaningless reality.

Such repetitions as that of the "Second Prize of the Conservatory of Arcachon," won by both Mme de Montalembreuse and M. Tarde, that of the proper names like "Pontau-bronc," used both in Léocadia and in Le voyageur sans bagage, and "Dupont-Dufort," applied to characters in Le voyageur sans bagage and in Le bal des voleurs, point up similarities between various characters, and suggest they are all inhabitants of the same universe.

The characters of Anouilh reveal broadly the various kinds of people who make up a world. Not richly, but surely quite clearly, they embody the characteristics of mankind as envisaged by the dramatist. Sometimes they are realistic; they come alive for us with all the complexity of human beings. At other times they are merely puppets, clearly moved by the author or by some meneur de jeu on stage—simple, grotesque creatures with no will of their own. But always they effectively serve their primary purpose in depicting for us Anouilh's concept of the human condition.