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.
Recent Comments