Those Romantic French

One of the most persistent clichés about the French is that they are exquisitely refined and passionate in the areas of courtship, love and romance.  Antoine, who at age 24 came to the US for a year to teach French to undergraduate college students, told me that several young women were coyly probing his romantic life.  He felt like a disappointment because he didn't live up to their fantasy image of the smolderingly passionate French lover.  Students study abroad in France, expecting to be swept into a dizzying love affair--and sometimes it does happen. 

Conversely, Hélene, an attractive French woman, married, fiftyish, and living in the US, confided that one thing she missed most about France was harmless flirtation in the workplace.  Even though she was not interested in an actual romantic liaison, being flirted with made her feel more feminine and more alive.  The French have fewer complexes about flirting than their US counterparts.

Regarding mariage and romance, it seems that the serial monogamy model has not caught on in France as it has in the US.  I have no statistics, but if French movies are an accurate reflection, extramarital affairs are more often the French antidote to the monotony of mariage.  When someone married has a mistress or a lover in France, it is often referred to openly in matter-of-fact tones.  Mariage seems to represent a legal bond that is not dissolved easily, even in the case of infidelity.  There are many ways of being a couple.  Françoise, a young English teacher in a Parisian suburb explained to me that she and the man she lives with are not married, but "pacsé," which is an alternative form of vow.  Many couples opt to live together, either as a trial mariage, or a long-term arrangement. 

Although the French language itself seems made for seduction, the French are often ambivalent about love. Most major authors have written about it and a few themes emerge.  With the 19th-century post-Romantic novelist Flaubert, love is portrayed, like in the old blues song, as a game you just can't win.  He writes of Felicité in Un Coeur simple: Elle avait eu, comme une autre, son histoire d'amour.  (Like everyone else, she had had her love affair.)  Her fiancé ended the love story abruptly and brutishly and it became a mere footnote in her life.  Flaubert's best-known heroine, Emma Bovary, is destroyed by her search for romance. 

In Voltaire's 18th-century portrayal of love, Candide searches the globe for his lovely Cunégonde, sacrificing and even killing in order to be reunited with his lost love.  When at last they are reunited, she has become horrid and shrewish.  They nonetheless cultivate their garden together.  Candide's happiness is ultimately found in lowered expectations about romantic love combined with Cunégonde's skills as a baker. 

Going back to the 17th century, François de la Rochefoucauld, a Parisian moralist and salon habitué, commented on a range of human experience, including love and passion.  His maxims also seem to portray love as a game you just can't win, but one that is worth playing nonetheless.  Here are a few examples:

• "Dans l'amitié comme dans l'amour on est souvent plus heureux par les choses qu'on ignore que par celles que l'on sait."

In friendship as in love, one is often happier because of what one is ignorant of rather than because of what one knows.

• "Dans les premières passions les femmes aiment l'amant, et dans les autres elles aiment l'amour."

In the first throes of passion women love the lover; afterwards, they love love.

• "En amour, celui qui est guéri le premier est toujours le mieux guéri."

In love, the first healed is the best healed.

• "Il en est du véritable amour comme de l'apparition des esprits; tout le monde en parle, mais peu de gens en ont vu."

        True love is like ghosts: everyone talks of it but few have seen one.

The French seem to have a tradition of giving the yellow light to romantic love.  It is part of the human experience, but one that should be approached with respect, and without illusions.

Comments

[Elisabeth]

The first thing that came to my mind after having read your entry was this:
Love hurts, Love scars, Love wounds and mars
Any heart not tough or strong enough
To take a lot of pain
(Intro to the song Love Hurts composed by Boudleaux Bryant and covered by many American singers since the early 1960's.)
I guess it came to my mind, because I saw Elvis Costello perform it with Emmylou Harris in concert last Sunday.

To me, it typifies one classical representation of love in the American cultural landscape (country music and Blues.)

And yes, that thing about the French being more romantic is a bit strange. May be it has to do with French being a "romance" language (ah!) - actually Italians, Spaniards, and Latinos in general have the same reputation (I wonder if there are surveys that indicate comparative levels of satisfaction with sexual partners of different nationalities!) Remember also that the American tradition stems right from puritanism and the Bible and, hence, upholds sex as evil and, definitely as nothing that should be relished and enjoyed. The French tradition goes in the opposite direction.

It is true that the typical French couple stays married, sometimes in spite of infidelities (and hell, who cares if even the President has an illegitimate daughter?). I do come from a very catholic family, and this may skew the statistics but, in my generation, I am the only one who is separated (although my marriage lasted 21 years.) I have an uncle who has been married three times, though. There has also been, in France, over the course of my daughter's and nieces and nephews' generation, a change regarging cohabitation and out-of-wedlock pregnancy and childbirth. Two of my cousins' daughters and my niece were either pregnant when they got married (with no shame whatsoever attached to this fact), or already had a child with the man they married.

Oh, and flirting on the job. Yes, fairly common and regarded as innocuous in France (check this week's comic strip For Better or for Worse which has to do with a guy hitting on Elizabeth on the job, and sexual harrassment.) Women in France (I think) use their femininity (I am purposefully not using the term "sexuality" - what I mean here is something else and more intangible than sexuality, it has to do more with seductiveness) to their advantage to get what they want on the job.

Most of this has to do with the difference between a society that represses sexuality (America) and one that embraces it (France.)