La Princesse de Clèves - Madame de Lafayette

From the moment of her arrival into the court of Henry II, the Prince of Clèves is stricken by the extraordinary beauty of the young Mademoiselle de Chartres. The desire to marry the young woman is not entirely within his control, but the various social considerations, alliances and protocol of position are eventually overcome. They are married, but the Prince fears that his new wife isn't capable of demonstrating the same depth of feeling that he has for her. To her surprise however, the new Princess de Clèves discovers that those feelings do eventually arise within her, but they are not for her husband, but a fervent and persistent admirer, the Duc de Nemours.

Thereafter there follows an elaborate game of dissemblance between the Princess and the Duc, each of them longing to explore these feelings and know what the other is feeling while keeping their emotions controlled within the accepted rules of Court etiquette, protocol and propriety. To fail to do so and have their secret known could mean ruin in the eyes of the elevated society they frequent, but each are no more capable of hiding their feelings from each other than they are from avoiding the gossip of the Royal Court. Worse still, the longer those feelings persist, the more difficult it becomes for Madame de Clèves to keep them hidden from her husband, and the consequences there can potentially be even more devastating.

Written in 1677, La Princesse de Clèves is one of the classics of French literature and on a par with Cloderlos de Laclois' Les Liaisons Dangereuses, similarly getting to the heart of the violent conflicting emotions involved in affairs of the heart. It's a historical romance that accurately describes the workings and the personalities of the Royal Court of Louis XIV, the novel taking in many various intrigues that involves marriage alliances with English and Spanish royalty, but they only add to the complexity of the relationships in the central romance. So powerfully and with such veracity are those barely suppressed emotions and romantic inclinations described, that the novel remains a timeless classic.

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