FRATERNITY: LIBERTY OR INEQUALITY?
INCEST IN SARTRE'S DRAMA
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IN THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HIS CHILDHOOD, Les Mots, Sartre recalls how
he transformed his relationship with his mother from that of a son to that
of a younger brother. He attributes this curious mutation, in roughly equal
measure, to the effects of his father's death, on the one hand, and to the
inapposite (and arguably demeaning) treatment of Anne-Marie by her
parents, on the other. Why did the young Sartre assent to, even connive
at, the reduction of his mother's status from the exalted rank of parent to
the less distinguished class of elder sibling? Or, no less puzzling, why did
the sexagenarian autobiographer claim to have done so? Literally denied a
natural father—son relationship by Jean-Baptiste Sartre's premature death,
why should Jean-Paul Sartre then have deprived himself, metaphorically,
of a mother-son relationship also, by perversely insisting upon its
metamorphosis into a different family tie of which, in fact, he had no
experience at all?1
I want to explore this question by analysing Sartre's dramatization of
fraternal bonds in two of his plays: the first, early and adapted from
Classical sources — namely, Les Mouches, 1943; the second, late and
wholly original — namely, Les Sequestres d'Altona, 1959. In each of these
pieces, the nature of the hero's relationship with his sister is problematic,
ambiguous, and crucial to the progress and resolution of the dramatic
action. It is also to some extent symptomatic, I shall contend, of Sartre's
processing of the fantasy brother—sister relationship which he purports, in
Les Mots, to have consciously constructed from the fragments of a
circumstantially deconstructed mother-son relationship.
Scarcely in the second year of his life, and consequent upon his father's
death, Sartre moved with his mother, Anne-Marie (as he most frequently
calls her), to live with her parents, Charles and Louise Schweitzer, for
whom he quickly invented the collective name 'Karlemami'. In this
situation, Sartre recalls, he was naturally apt to regard Anne-Marie more
as a sister than a mother:
A qui obeirais-je? On me montre une jeune geante, on me dit que c'est ma mere.
De moi-meme, je la prendrais plutot pour une soeur ainee. Cette vierge en
residence surveillee, soumise a tous, je vois bien qu'elle est la pour me servir. Je
l'aime: mais comment la respecterais-je, si personne ne la respecte? II y a trois
chambres dans notre maison: celle de mon grand-pere, celle de ma grand-mere,
celle des 'enfants'. Les 'enfants', c'est nous: pareillement mineurs et pareillement
entretenus. Mais tous les 6gards sont pour moi. Dans ma chambre, on a mis un lit
de jeunefille.La jeunefilledort seule et s'eveille chastement; je dors encore quand
elle court prendre son 'tub' a la salle de bains; elle revient entierement vetue:
comment serais-je ne d'elle? Elle me raconte ses malheurs et je l'ecoute avec
LIBERTY OR INEQUALITY?
55
compassion: plus tard, je l'epouserai pour la proteger. Je le lui promets: j'etendrai
ma main sur elle, je mettrai ma jeune importance a son service.2
En verite, la prompte retraite de mon pere m'avait gratine d'un 'CEdipe' fort
incomplet: pas de Sur-moi, d'accord, mais point d'agressivitd non plus. Ma mere
etait a moi, personne nem'en contestait la tranquille possession. (Les Mots, p. 17)3
If this contrived fraternity falls short of bestowing equality upon the
partners — tending rather towards the hierarchical, with the son in the
ascendant — it can nevertheless be perceived as conferring a degree of
liberty upon Sartre himself. For, when filial shades into fraternal, certain
logical and, for Sartre, beneficial consequences follow. In the first place,
he escapes the isolation of his only-childness by acquiring a willing
accomplice (Anne-Marie) in the exploits of growing-up, whether visiting
the cinema and the Jardin du Luxembourg, or (crucially) learning to read
and write. 4 Secondly, by making his mother his sister, Sartre perfects his
orphanhood, thereby extending limitlessly his potential for self-creation,
his freedom to be (like Oreste, like Goetz, like Valera in Nekrassov) fils de
ses oeuvres:
Je vieillissais dans les t£nebres, je devenais un adulte solitaire, sans pere et sans
mere, sans feu ni lieu, presque sans nom. (LesMots, p. 94)
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Jean-Paul and Anne-Marie are necessarily siblings because they share the
children's room — c'est logique! The nakedness which would disclose his
mother's maturity, and help to establish the parental distance which has
been short-circuited by their intimate proximity, is a mystery occurring
while he sleeps — (was he sleeping?) — so that it does not challenge his
image of her as sisterly and 'virginal'. At the same time, however, although
they are both 'minors' and both 'kept', this imaginary fraternal relationship
is not quite one of equality. Sartre 'loves' his mother but does not 'respect'
her (because no-one does). She is doubly subordinate to him: firstly, in
that she is there to serve (and, in this respect, is not very different from
any parent of young children); secondly, in that she stands in need (as
Sartre sees it) of her son/brother's protection, and it is for that reason —
not for lust or desire — that he will 'marry' her when he grows up.
Sartre's Oedipal complex is apparently less erotic than a classic
Freudian analysis would admit: he does not complain that he is deprived
of the sight of his mother's body; indeed, his unflattering description of
her as 'a young giantess' invites the inference that he perhaps did not
desire to behold her naked in any case. Moreover, the absence of the
father, the missing 'super-ego' to which he facetiously alludes in the first
paragraph of this section (Les Mots, p. n ) , spares Sartre the concomitant
threat of castration, so that he can fearlessly assume a dominant,
patronizing role vis-a-vis Anne-Marie, confident of his own importance,
and of his unchallenged right of ownership:
56
BENEDICT O'DONOHOE
Brutus tue son fils et c'est ce que fait aussi Mateo Falcone. Cette pratique
paraissait done assez commune. Autour de moi, pourtant, personne n'y avait
recouru. [.. .] Mes jours n'etaient pas en danger puisque j'6tais orphelin [. . . ] .
Karl fredonnait parfois:
On n'peutpas
it'plusproch'parents
Quefrere et sceur assurement. . .
Ca me troublait: si Ton m'eut donne, par chance, une sceur, m'eut-elle ete plus
proche qu'Anne-Marie? Que Karlemami? Alors e'eut 6te mon amante. [. ..]
Frere, en tout cas, j'eusse ete incestueux. J"y revais. Derivation? Camouflage de
sentiments interdits? C'est bien possible. pavais une sceur ainee, ma mere, et je
souhaitais une sceur cadette. Aujourd'hui encore — 1963 — c'est bien le seul lien
de parent^ qui m'emeuve. (Les Mots, pp. 40, 41)
It is indeed 'possible' that Sartre's imaginative recreation of his filial
relations with Anne-Marie enabled him to indulge the 'forbidden feelings'
of a son for his mother, not only undeterred by any punitive father, but
even encouraged by the endorsement of the stand-in father. After all, it
was Charles Schweitzer who both sanctioned the young Sartre's sharing a
bedroom with his mother and, for good measure, cheerfully hummed
reassuring ditties about the proper closeness of brother and sister. It is
equally possible, of course, that the absence of a real sister induced Sartre
to fantasize idealistically about the fraternal relationship, just as the
absence of a real father tempted him to idealize the father-son relationship
in some of his writing.5
However this may be, Sartre was conscious that he had indulged his
incestuous fantasy in certain areas of his work:
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At the same time, however, and paradoxically, he also acquires new
parents (two in place of one, so he makes a huge profit), who are, in
reality, his grandparents. With typical subversiveness, Sartre then chooses
to amalgamate his surrogate mother and father into a single parental
entity, 'Karlemami', whose significance is largely symbolic since neither
element of the compound wields the power (the mother, of attraction; the
father, of punishment) necessary to engender an Oedipal complex in their
infantile charge. The net gain for Sartre, therefore, is a pseudo-sibling
relationship, devoid of rivalry, free of the overshadowing of parental lawmaking, yet still imbued with the residual desire of a son for his mother —
a fertile culture for the fantasy of incest:
J"ai longtemps r£v6 d'6crire un come sur deux enfants perdus et discretement
incestueux. On trouverait dans mes ecrits des traces de ce fantasme: Oreste et
Electre, dans Les Mouches, Boris et Ivich dans Les Chemins de la Liberte, Frantz et
Leni dans Les Sequestres d'Alwna. Ce dernier couple est le seul a passer aux actes.
Ce qui me seduisait dans ce lien de famille, e'etait moins la tentation amoureuse
que l'interdiction de faire l'amoun feu et glace, delices et frustration m£16es,
l'inceste me plaisait s'il restait platonique. (LesMots, p. 41, footnote i) 6
LIBERTY OR INEQUALITY?
57
Honte! Nous nous injurions comme deux femmes de meme ige qu'une rivalite
amoureuse a dressees l'une contre l'autre. Et pourtant je suis ta mere. Je ne sais
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We are entitled to wonder why Sartre adds (almost as a post-scriptum)
the proviso that incest must 'remain platonic'. No doubt his 'incest' with
his mother (alias 'elder sister') was indeed platonic, but he here implies
that this was because she was not really his sister — which is as much as to
say that she was really his mother, which fact explains, in turn, why their
relationship was bound to remain chaste!7 By contrast, Sartre asserts that,
if he had had a real (especially a younger) sister, he 'would have been
incestuous1, just like the 'lost children' of his literary daydream — though
we notice that they are no more than 'discreetly incestuous'. What, we
may ask, is 'discreet incest'? Is it simply incest which does not get found
out? Or is it the same thing as 'platonic incest'? And what can 'platonic
incest' be other than an oxymoron, i.e. no incest at all? It seems to me that
Sartre unwittingly embroils himself in the kind of convoluted mind-games
which, when writing about Jean Genet, he calls 'tourniquets'. In the hope
of casting some light on this obscure, confused, yet intriguing, tangent of
Sartre's emotional life, I want briefly to review the fraternal relationships
dramatized in those two plays to which he draws our attention in Les Mots.
In Act 1 of Les Mouches, Oreste returns to his native Argos where he
meets for the first time (and in this order) his sister, Electre, and his
mother, Clytemnestre, to both of whom he introduces himself pseudonymously, using the name of his Athenian upbringing, Philebe. Almost
at once we are struck by several points of similarity between this legendary
scenario and that concerning the mythical sister/mother in Les Mots. In
the first place, the hapless condition of the wretched Electre recalls that of
the typically fabulous damsel-in-distress, whom Sartre assimilates to, and
virtually conflates with, the ill-used child/mother, Anne-Marie (Les Mots,
pp. 41-42). felectre is afflicted by what we might call the 'Cinderella
syndrome': reviled and exploited by her family (just as Anne-Marie had
become an unpaid factotum in the parental home (Les Mots, pp. 9-11)),
she awaits the advent of her heroic white knight — 'Mais il viendra, celui
que j 'attends, avec sa grande epee'8 — who will, naturally, be none other
than her long-lost brother. Next, brother and sister find each other
instantly attractive: 'Tu es belle. Tu ne ressembles pas aux gens d'ici' (Les
Mouches, p. 31), Oreste tells Electre, with admirable directness; and he
does not have to wait long to hear that this feeling is reciprocated: 'Tu es
beau, toi aussi' (Les Mouches, p. 33).' Since only Oreste knows that they
are, in fact, brother and sister, this immediate mutual allure provokes a
frisson of sexual excitement, and sows the seed of what Sartre possibly
means by 'discreet incest'. Thirdly, Clytemnestre — whom Electre,
despite her protests, strongly resembles10 — sees herself both as a potential
mother to this young stranger,11 and as an amorous rival for his affections:
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BENEDICT O'DONOHOE
qui tu es, jeune homme, ni ce que tu viens faire parmi nous, mais ta presence est
nefaste. {Les Mouches, pp. 40-41)
{LesMots, p. 9) 1 2
In short, in his first theatrical 'family album',13 Sartre, knowingly or
otherwise, gives expression to some of his most intimate fantasies (not to
say 'neuroses'). The anonymous brother/son hero strides boldly into a
dangerous situation which only he is man enough to handle: 'un
gemissement parcourait le desert et les rochers disaient au sable: "II y a
quelqu'un qui manque ici: c'est Sartre'" {Les Mots, p. 93). Here he
encounters the two contradictory, but inseparable, aspects of his mother/
sister, incarnated in two characters who are nevertheless as symbiotically
bonded as they are reciprocally repellent.14 Surfacing unbidden from the
depths of Sartre's infantile memory, elements of alienation and predestination, of powerful attraction and equally powerful interdiction, interweave
to form the complex fabric of Oreste's rapport with mother and sister. It
is perhaps inevitable that these self-contradictory relations can ultimately
be resolved only by their total dissolution.
Space does not permit a detailed account of the course taken by Oreste's
and Electre's newly discovered fraternity. Suffice it to say that Electre's
yearning for the heroic saviour/brother does not survive its translation
from the sphere of idealization to that of realization: 'Non. Tu n'es pas
mon frere et je ne te connais pas. Oreste est mort' {Les Mouches, p. 66).
The whole purpose and justification of an idealistic concept is that it
sustain a fantasy in being. (How, for example, would Sartre's sisterly idyll
have fared if challenged by the arrival of a real sister?)15 Ironically,
however, Electre's repudiation of Oreste — 'Laisse-moi! Tu me fais mal,
tu me fais peur — et je ne t'appartiens pas' {Les Mouches, p. 71) — frees
him to perform his acts of vengeance for his own sake, regardless of their
consequences for her, and in this sense her denial of their fraternity
liberates him.16 For whereas Electre is repelled by their assassination of
Egisthe, once again appalled by the realization of what had hitherto been
reverie — 'C'est done ca que je voulais? Je ne m'en rendais pas compte'
{Les Mouches, p. 89) — Oreste is drawn on to complete his revenge by
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Oreste is a stranger to his own mother, like Sartre himself— 'je reprenais
connaissance sur les genoux d'une etrangere' {Les Mots, p. 9) — so that
here too, as with Electre, relative unfamiliarity creates the tantalizing
possibility of incest. Last, but not least, Clytemnestre is held responsible
for the death of her first husband, Agamemnon, just as Anne-Marie was
blamed for the untimely demise of Jean-Baptiste Sartre:
Sans argent ni metier, Anne-Marie decida de retourner vivre chez ses parents.
Mais l'insolent trepas de mon pere avait desoblige les Schweitzer: il ressemblait
trop a une repudiation. Pour n'avoir su ni le prevoir ni le prevenir, ma mere fut
reputee coupable: elle avait pris, a l'etourdie, un rnari qui n'avait pas fait d'usage.
LIBERTY OR INEQUALITY?
59
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killing his mother also (contrary to the wishes of his sister). This matricide
marks the rebirth of Thilebe's' as Oreste, his rite of passage to adulthood
and freedom. Its consequence for FJectre, by contrast, is quite the reverse:
she is immediately burdened by the weight of remorse (tormented by the
Furies and the flies) and assumes both the appearance and the role of her
slaughtered mother.17 Because mother and sister are indivisibly linked,
not only by blood but also, and more importantly, by the secret fantasy of
the playwright, the death of the former entails that of the latter: after her
years of resistance, Electre at last enters upon the living death of
repentance. As for Oreste, unable to convince his benighted sibling to join
him on his road to freedom, he must content himself with the solitary selfdetermination which ensues from the massacre of the interloping father
and the faithless mother.
If a parallel case suggests itself in Sartre's own biography, it would be
that exhilarating sense of liberation which he surely experienced when he
returned to Paris, at the age of fifteen, to become a boarder at the Lycee
Henri IV. By kicking the dust of La Rochelle from his feet, and casting off
the yoke of his unlovable stepfather and of Mme Mancy (as Anne-Marie
had by then become), Sartre put an end to 'the worst three or four years
of [his] life'.18 No doubt the cherished idyll of the beloved sister had also
to be shed at that time, by Sartre as well as by Oreste: a price to be paid
for an overdue autonomy. I will return to this point in due course.19
In Les Sequestres d'Altona, where there are no Classical antecedents
urging conformity or tempting divergence, Sartre chooses to depict a
fraternal relationship overshadowed more by the paternal than by the
maternal element of the Oedipal equation. (We soon learn that the mother
of the family is dead.)20 Here, the protagonist, Frantz, long since involved
in a fully (but arguably 'discreet') incestuous liaison with his sister Leni —
the sole human relationship he has sustained for the past thirteen years —
is consciously resisting the continued super-imposition of the grotesque
super-ego which his domineering father personifies. His connection with
Leni is, therefore, as much as a source of comfort and assistance, a
strategic alliance in a power-struggle in which his very survival is at stake.
Like Sartre's 'platonic incest' with Anne-Marie, Frantz's liaison with
Leni is implicitly sanctioned by the Father, though it remains unclear
whether he realizes, much less condones, the true nature of their
relationship: 'Frantz vit la-haut depuis treize ans; il ne quitte pas sa
chambre et personne ne le voit sauf Leni qui prend soin de lui' {SA,
p. 30). Also like the young Sartre and his mother, Frantz and Leni have a
fraternity based rather upon subordination and inequality, than upon
freedom and mutuality. She is his servant in more senses than one:21 she
fuels his fantasies by feeding him lies about the abject state of post-war
Germany; she 'mounts guard' {SA, p. 64) to deter unwelcome visitors,
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BENEDICT O'DONOHOE
caresser. (B lux caresse lapoitrine, ellefrissonne etferme lesyeux.) Moi, je sais'
(SA, pp. 90—91) — yet anxious, also, to reduce their incestuous lovemaking to the merest bodily function, to animal coupling independent
even of their humanity, let alone of their intimate blood ties:
Pretendras-tu que je fais l'amour? Oh! soeurette! Tu es la, je t'etreins, l'espece
couche avec l'espece — comme elle fait chaque nuit sur cette terre un milliard de
fois. (Au plafond.) Mais je tiens a declarer que jamais Frantz,filsaine des Gerlach,
n'a desir£ Leni, sa soeur cadette. (SA, p. 91)
The younger sister, dreamt-of in childhood (Les Mots, p. 41), is brought
to life in the mode of what we might call the 'Paradise complex': like
Adam's helpmate, Leni is as indispensable as she is mortally dangerous,
irresistibly alluring yet an occasion for sin, guilt, self-loathing, and
punishment. Frantz violently repels his sister when she becomes sexually
aroused — "Va-t'en done! Tu me degoutes!' (SA, p. 91) — recognizing in
her the prototypical femme fatak, the original 'fatal attraction': Eve.23
The passage of incest from 'discretion' (or 'platonic' latency) to the
practice of acts would appear, then, to be fraught with dangers — moral,
emotional, and ultimately physical, since the breakdown of Frantz's and
Leni's relationship is the prelude to his suicide and her incarceration.
Offset against this catastrophic, but somehow ineluctable liaison —
'L'inceste, e'est ma loi, e'est mon destdn', claims Leni (SA, p. 112) — is
that which unexpectedly grows up between Frantz and Johanna. This
starts out as a tactical ploy on the part of the Father, but soon takes on its
own momentum as a love affair beyond the scope of his control — wherein
lies its chief attraction for Frantz, no doubt. It is not, I think, fanciful to
suggest that this relationship is the reverse of the Frantz-Leni coin, for, in
an important sense, Johanna represents the idealized, the 'platonic' aspect
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especially the Father, whom she makes believe that Frantz 'hates' (SA,
p. 45); not least, she sates his bodily appetites, both gastronomic and
sexual. It is in this last, and crucial, respect, of course, that any comparison
with Sartre's real relationship with his imaginary sister breaks down.
Nevertheless, the manner in which the incestuous theme is extended to
the point of acts, provides an intriguing contrast with the childlike, but
enduring, fantasy recorded in Les Mots. For whereas Leni proudly affirms
her incestuous love for Frantz — 'Moi, Leni, soeur incestueuse, j'aime
Frantz d'amour et je l'aime parce qu'il est mon frere' (SA, p. 91) —
Frantz, by contrast, is full of equivocation, self-doubt, and guilt. On the
one hand, he is emotionally dependent upon Leni — 'Ne me laisse pas
seul. [. . .] J'ai besoin de toi, Leni' (SA, p. 90) — while, on the other, he
never tells her that he loves her and sternly refuses any emotional
involvement: 'A distance! A distance respectueuse. Et surtout pas demotion' (SA, p. 90).22 Or again, on the sensual level, Frantz is proud to
demonstrate that he can give pleasure — 'Les puritains ne savent pas
LIBERTY OR INEQUALITY?
61
In a scene strongly reminiscent of a pivotal moment in Huts clos,26 Frantz,
taunted by Leni, puts Johanna's love to the test in order to discover just
how much historical truth, how much 'reality', it can bear: the answer is,
not enough (SA, p. 196). This rivalry between the conflicting principles
of femininity (i.e. between the female principals) for the ownership of the
mad brother is duly resolved in favour of Leni, who justly observes:
Mort ou vif, il est juste que tu m'appartiennes puisque je suis la seule a t'aimer tel
que tu es. (SA, p. 191)
In fact, however, Leni's hold over Frantz has been mortally weakened,
and he will not survive the disintegration of both his incestuous affairs:
Toutes les voies sont barrees, meme celle du moindre mal. Reste un chemin qu'on
ne barre jamais, vu qu'il est impraticable: celui du pire. Nous le prendrons.
(SA, p. 164)
This might as well read 'celui du pire', since it is to him that Frantz will
have recourse in his final desperate bid to resolve the insoluble dilemma:
it is with Le Pere, not with Johanna, that Frantz will take the last
'unblocked, impassable' road.27
There is an ironic justice, here, in that the Father is eventually undone
by his own over-complicated machinations. Frantz insists upon their
shared and rapid suicide partly because Johanna's frail love for him has
evaporated in the face of his dreadful secret; and partly because bis
reabsorption into the Father is the logical, ethical and emotional consummation of his deranged moral and affective life: 'Vous aurez ete ma cause
et mon destin jusqu'au bout' (SA, p. 218).
Happily, nothing (that we know of) in Sartre's own experience
compares with the nightmarish roller-coaster of Frantz von Gerlach's
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of incest. She speaks of Leni and herself as 'twin sisters' on the grounds
that they are both equally the product of the Father.24 And it is surely no
accident, given the emphasis placed upon Johanna's beauty and its
importance in her 'seduction' of Frantz, that he repeatedly calls her 'bellesoeur' (e.g. SA, p. 102), variously glossable as 'sister-in-law' and 'beautifulsister'. Moreover, in the lengthy scene 2 of Act rv (SA, pp. 152-72),
avowals of love and plans to live together forever, unchanging in this
eternal space, preclude any thought of sexual acts, the very suggestion of
which Johanna fiercely resents and vigorously denies.25
The capital constituent of this pseudo-incestuous relationship is unconditional love which, so far as Frantz is concerned, means forgiveness:
FRANTZ [. ..] Je renoncerai sur l'heure a l'illusionisme, quand.. .
Uhesite
JOHANNA Quand?
FRANTZ Quand je vous aimerai plus que mes mensonges, quand vous m'aimerez
malgre ma verite. {SA, p. 167)
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BENEDICT O'DONOHOE
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abortive incestuous and quasi-incestuous relationships. Indeed, we are
bound to reflect that they do terrible violence to the only child's incestuous
idyll, leaving it in tatters and functioning more, perhaps, as a cautionary
tale — or even an exorcism — than as any possible wish-fulfilment.
Returning to Les Mots, we find (in amongst the polyvalent memories of
the couple as 'orphan children') sufficient recollections of Anne-Marie as
the mother of her son, to reassure us that Sartre nevertheless had a positive
conception of their bonding as more filial than fraternal.28 Yet when, aged
nearly sixty, he published, after a long gestation, the account of his early
life, the incestuous fantasy clearly remained a vivid presence in his mind,
unextdrpated, it would seem, even by the tragic debacle of his latest
dramatic hero. In conclusion, I want briefly to speculate why that might
have been the case.
The incestuous idyll belonged, for Sartre, to the golden age of
childhood, when he had no rival for the affections of Anne-Marie; when
her natural authority as his mother was more than countervailed by his
self-importance (his imaginary destiny as her heroic protector), and by the
equality of the treatment they received from 'Karlemami'. I suspect that
Anne-Marie unwittingly shattered that idyll when she remarried (in April
I I
9 7 ) J precipitating at first a temporary, then a definitive, rupture from
her son by inflicting upon him (as a matter of convenience, not of love) an
unlooked-for stepfather, a belated super-ego, '[qui] n'etait d'ailleurs pas
tres aimable'.29 If this abandonment, which inaugurated the unhappiest
years of Sartre's life,30 amounted to an act of treachery in the eyes of
Anne-Marie's eleven-year-old son, then it was to find its echoes in
£lectre's desertion of Oreste, in Leni's betrayal of her brother, and finally
in Johanna's condemnation and repudiation of Frantz. Why else would he
say to her: 'Une femme est une traitre, Madame.' (SA, p. 161)?
Whatever the truth of these divinations, one authoritative critic, at least,
was confident that Sartre had got his childhood all wrong — his mother:
'Poulou n'a rien compris a son enfance.'31 Perhaps so; but, then, it is in
the nature of childhood trauma to distort — or merely shape? — one's
worldview. In any case, we have the right to ask whether there was not
some intention of reparation and restitution (in addition perhaps to
rejuvenation and renewal), in Sartre's decision (taken in 1965) to adopt
as his own daughter a young Algerian Jewish scholar, Arlette Elkai'm,
whose keen intelligence and dark beauty had won a place in his affections
ten years before.32 Certainly, Sartre's biographer, Annie Cohen-Solal,
detects a trace of infantile nostalgia in the ageing writer's routine of
visiting his mother and his 'daughter' alternately, spending long hours at
Arlette's apartment playing the piano, 'des heures un peu magiques qui
ressemblaient, peut-etre, aux seances du petit garcon musicien avec sa
mere'.33 However that may be, it is interesting to note this coincidence:
LIBERTY OR INEQUALITY?
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LSU, SOUTHAMPTON
BENEDICT O'DONOHOE
1
In an illuminating section on Les Mots in his interesting study, The Perverted Consciousness:
Sexuality and Sartre (Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1989), Andrew N. Leak has rightly argued that:
The parental figures in Les Mots all have a double articulation. [. . .] Anne-Marie, too, is
double. Most often she is the virgin mother, albeit a "vierge avec tache". She is constantly a
"jeune fille", in the sense of an unmarried young woman. The emphasis, then, is on her chastity,
her virginity, those aspects which situate her as companion or friend but not as mother
(Mots 21)' (Leak, p. 93). Surprisingly, perhaps, the ensuing perceptive analysis eschews any
specific discussion of Sartre's incest fantasy, a curious omission given the focus of Leak's
attention.
2
Sartre, Les Mots (Paris, Gallimard, 1964), p. 13. Further references appear in the body of
the
text.
3
Commenting on the same sentence, Leak justly observes: 'But there is another side to this
situation, and another face to Anne-Marie. If there was no one to contest the child's absolute
possession of the mother, then by the same token the mother enjoyed the total possession of the
child' (Leak, op. cit., pp. 93-94). This would suggest, in the terms of the present article, a
mutuality or equality in the mother-son relationship. Leak, however, considers that 'at several
points in the text, the representation of Anne-Marie topples over into menace. For Anne-Marie
is also the potent phallic mother, the "jeune geante". The threat that she embodies ranges from
engulfmcnt to castration and mutilation' (ibid., p. 94). I find this point less convincing, at least
on the evidence adduced here: I think it is clear from the context of the 'young giantess' epithet
that 'Poulou' preferred his own interpretation of his mother as 'an elder sister", an interpretation
which makes them siblings and, if anything, hands him the advantage as the author of the incest
fantasy (upon which Leak does not comment explicitly).
4
For Anne-Marie's highly formative influence upon Sartre's will to read, see Les Mots,
PP- 33-39See my chapter, 'Sartre: Orphan Playrwright1, in Autobiography and the Existential Self
(Liverpool
University Press, 1995), pp. 39—59.
6
John S. Williams asserts that 'these remarks provide no solid clue to the dramatic function
or meaning of Frantz and Leni's incestuous relationship in Les Siqucstris d'AUona'. See 'Sartre's
Dialectic of History: Les Siquestris d'Altona', Renascence, 20.2 (Winter 1970), pp. 59—68 (p. 65).
Williams goes on to draw an ingenious parallel between their incest and 'the attempt of Nazi
Germany to create a pure Aryan race [which] was incest on the national level' (ibid.). Less
persuasively, he further interprets this metaphor as an oblique attack on 'American involvement
in Viet Nam' (ibid.). Clearly, Williams is concerned with the possible historical and political
meanings
of this relationship, whereas I am interested in its potential affective origins.
7
Commenting on the same footnote, Janina Hochland detects 'an air of superiority to
universal moral and social precepts in heterosexual relations', and wonders 'whether "the
platonic incest" Sartre finds "pleasing", does not denote that Sartre never outgrew his infantile
mother-attachment*. See 'Incest: A Theme in Sartre's Literary Work', Journal of the British
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Sartre's adoption of a beautiful and talented daughter occurred at about
the same time as Anne-Marie Mancy (nee Schweitzer and, for thirteen
years of her life [1904-17], Anne-Marie Sartre), 'en feuilletant un album
de famille, [. . .] s'apercut qu'elle avait ete belle' {Les Mots, p. 7).
If Sartre's incestuous idyll could not endure life's vicissitudes intact —
'J'ai commis la grave erreur de chercher souvent parmi les femmes cette
sceur qui n'avait pas eu lieu' {Les Mots, pp. 41-42) — then perhaps his
adoption of Arlette Elkalm enabled him to replace it by a real relationship
which met the main criterion: here, at last, was the woman to whom he
could be the longed-for hero — Pardaillan, Michel Strogoff, Goetz von
Berlichingen, all at once; the woman who would say of him, as perhaps
Anne-Marie never had: 'II y a quelqu'un qui manque ici: c'est Sartre'.
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BENEDICT O'DONOHOE
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Society for Phenomenology, 1.2 (May 1970), pp. 93-99 (p. 94). Leaving aside the problem of the
judgemental perspective which enables Hochland to make questionable assertions about
'universal moral and social precepts', I would contend that she is missing Sartre's point: this is,
precisely, that his relationship with his mother was not an 'infantile mother-attachment', but
rather a sui generis relationship of pseudo-siblings.
* Sartre, Les Mouches (1943), in Thi&tre (Paris, Gallimard, 1947), I, 30. Further references
appear in the body of the text.
Hochland asserts — perhaps too boldly — that Electre 'falls in love with him. The language
they use is that of a love relationship at its very beginning' (Hochland, op. cit., p. 95).
10
'Je nc veux pas vous ressembler!', etc. {Les Mouches, p. 37). Compare Hugo's anxiety over
his resemblance to his father in Les Mains sales.
11
'Et ta mere? Elle doit avoir mon ige a peu pres? [. . .] Mais j'avais un fils — il aurait ton age'
(LesMouches, pp. 38, 39).
12
Sartre goes on to explain how Anne-Marie expiated her sin by taking on the role of family
servant, becoming the object simultaneously of her mother's jealousy and contempt (see Les
Mots,pp. 9-11).
13
Excluding Bariona, which has never been publicly performed, nor yet published under
separate cover.
Clytemnestre calls Electre, 'ma trop fidele image': see their dialogue on pp. 40-41.
" '[Aquinas] is also the author of two interesting arguments against incest. Firstly, it would
make family life even more hellishly complex than it is already; and secondly, incest between
siblings should be forbidden, because if the love proper to husband and wife were joined to that
appropriate between brother and sister the resulting bond would be so powerful as to result in
unnaturally frequent sexual intercourse. It is unfortunate that St Thomas does not define this
last intriguing concept. One might also doubt whether he had any brothers or sisters.' Jim
Hantrinson, Bluff Your Way in Philosophy, (Horsham, West Sussex, Ravette Books, 1985), p. 18.
16
Therefore, I concur here with Hochland, who contends mat 'the moment of conversion,
too, when Orestes discovered his own road of salvation, is closely linked to Electra's rejection
of her brother', and that 'Sartre is clearly treating sympathetically a fundamental preoccupation
of his own' (Hochland, op. cit., p. 96). However, I am again struck by the inappropriateness of
her theological moral tone when she writes that 'incestuous love existed as a temptation to be
overcome' (ibid.).
17
See the last scene of Act n and the first of Act m, pp. 90-104.
18
See Michel Contat and Michel Rybalka's 'Chronologic' in Sartre, CEuvrts romanesques,
Pleiade (Paris, Gallimard, 1981), p. xl.
• " Sartre's version of events differs in two important respects from his Classical sources: in
Sophocles, Orestes murders Clytaemnestra before he kills Aegisthus, to excited vocal encouragement from Electra; in Euripides, it is clear from Electra's prologue that, so far from finding
liberation, Orestes has been 'wasted with a fierce disease' (i.e. remorse) since he struck down
his mother, although it is claimed that he did so at the behest of Apollo (see Sophocles, Electra,
trans, by E. F. Wading, (Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1953) and Euripides, Orestes, trans,
by Philip Vellacott (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1972) respectively). The sympathetic affinity of
mother and daughter; Electra's misgivings about Orestes' matricide; and Electra's abandonment of her brother to his solitary freedom — these are all significant Sartrcan inventions.
20
Sartre, Les Siquestris d'Akona (Paris, Gallimard, i960), p. 25. Further references appear in
the body of the text, using the abbreviation SA.
21
'Je recevrai Leni: pour le service' (Frantz, SA, p. 209).
M
Leni later concludes that Frantz was incapable of loving her (SA, p. 189).
23
By no mere coincidence, the name of the heroine of the wartime screenplay, Les Jeux sont
faia, is 'Eve' — another/«mme fatale of Sartrean drama.
24
'Nous sommes secure jumelles. Ne vous en 6tonnez pas: e'est vous qui nous avez faites
pareilles' (Johanna to Le Pere, SA, p. 138).
23
'Quoi? (EMe iclate de rire.) Amants? Figurez-vous que nous n'y avons pas pense. Etait-ce
necessaire & vos projets?' (Johanna to Le Pere, SA, p. 131; and cf. her exchange with Werner,
pp. 145-46).
" See Sartre, Huis dos (1944), in The&tre, 1,173-77.
27
Hochland offers a different reading of the power-struggle between Leni and Johanna for the
control of Frantz: I^eni intervenes, determined to use any means to regain her position of
power. [. . . ] Yet incest is never brought to light, and in its stead we are told of Frantz's share in
torture and terror on the Russian front. The dramatic device used here is a trick played on the
reader or audience, who, familiar with Frantz's action, expect the confrontation of incest with
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a normal love relationship. W h y did Sartre prefer to keep incest within the walls of Frantz's
sequestration? N o t wanting to moralize, yet unable to approve of it, h e left it unsolved'
(Hochland, op. cit., p . 98). T w o points: first, Johanna hardly offers 'a normal love relationship'
(whatever that might b e ) , since she has a very specific brief and is, in any case, another sister of
sorts; second, H o c h l a n d once more, it seems t o m e , damages h e r case by ascribing h e r o w n
prejudices (one assumes) about sexual morality to Sartre, w h o is consequently seen as 'unable
t o approve' of incest. B u t Sartre is n o t concerned t o 'approve' or disapprove: for h i m , incest is
less a question of ethics than of existential pathology.
28
A touching example where these two aspects appear to b e in equilibrium is found in S a m e ' s
account of their excursions to the cinema: ' " O u allez-vous, les enfants?" — " A u c i n e m a " ,
disait m a m e r e ' , etc. (LesMots,pp.
97ff.).
M
Sartre, quoted in 'Chronologic', in CEuvres romanesques, p . xxxviii.
30
See 'Chronologie', in CEuvres romamsqua, p . xl.
31
M m e Mancy, quoted in 'Chronologie', in CEuvres romanesques, p . lxxxiv.
32
Sec 'Chronologie', in CEuvres romanesques, p . lxxvi, a n d Annie Cohen-Solal, Sartre,
1905-1980 (Paris, Gallimard, 1985), p . 489.
" Sartre, 1905-1980, p. 585.