The Lady of the Camellias • Alexandre Dumas

This book spent some time on my wish list, and in retrospect I’m not quite sure why it took me so long to finally pick it up. A book with the name Alexandre Dumas on the cover has never disappointed me—though in this case it isn’t the author of The Count of Monte Cristo or The Three Musketeers, but his son, Alexandre Dumas, known as Dumas fils.

It had been a long time since a book moved me so deeply, gripped me so completely, and carried me away emotionally. A moving love story almost always gets to me—yet when it’s as deft and as genuine as it is here, my empathy becomes my undoing.

I love society novels and can never get enough of them. The doings of high society, the multi-layered dialogues that never follow a formula but keep surprising you and are a pleasure to follow—these books are gripping in their own way. The glimpses of a society’s interpersonal relations in a time that feels remarkably tangible today—that is a joy to read.

And so this story, too, set in mid-19th-century Paris, follows a young man who moves in the best circles. Armand Duval, the protagonist, meets the beautiful courtesan Marguerite Gautier and falls in love with her. A love that doesn’t fit the social norms—for courtesans are an accepted part of that world only in their prescribed role as mistresses. So this book also contains a good measure of social critique, typical of the period, in which this order was repeatedly called into question. In that, it strongly recalls Effi Briest, Madame Bovary, or Anna Karenina—unsurprising, since it also belongs to Realism, with its sharpened focus on the individual and the longing one senses for personal freedom. A social perspective that hardly strikes us today, dulled as we are by the constant lull of advertising and industry—these books remind us it wasn’t always so.

But none of that is what affected me so strongly here. It’s the way Dumas brings love—no, headlong infatuation—to life. Everyone has fallen in love in one way or another; everyone knows that intense feeling that can seize you and take over your mind and body, that can lift you uncompromisingly to unimagined heights and also plunge you into deepest sorrow. The doubts, the hope, the intoxication—and no matter how that infatuation ended, in love, in nothing, or somewhere in between—we know the feeling and we have an insatiable longing for it. With this novel Dumas managed to awaken that feeling in me—or the memory of it—and weave it into his story. And because I’m sure I’m far from alone in that, the novel became so successful.

How does Dumas do it? I think it’s several things. For one, he modeled the love story on his own affair with the courtesan Marie Duplessis. Of course Dumas embellished his liaison with Marie, but at its core—especially in Armand Duval’s emotions—you sense a great deal of Dumas himself. Allegedly he wrote the book in just four weeks, which would suggest he wanted to get fresh thoughts and feelings onto paper quickly—perhaps to get over his love story. But that’s speculation; who can say? What’s certain is that he builds the emotions between the two with mastery and transmits them to the reader.

Second, the familiar first-person narration creates great intimacy. The protagonist reports from his own perspective, but Marguerite, too, offers direct access to her feelings—both in what she says and what she writes. You feel as if you’re living through all the highs and lows together with Armand and Marguerite. The characters’ thoughts are understandable—even if I wouldn’t have acted the same way in every situation, their decisions feel plausible.

A third device is the clear, direct way Dumas describes feelings and circumstances. He doesn’t mince words and often seems to say exactly what the reader feels.

For if someone had said to me, “Today you shall possess this woman, and tomorrow you will already be dead,” I would have been ready. But had they said, “Give ten louis and you shall be her lover,” I would have refused and wept like a child who wakes to see the castle of his night’s dream vanish.

Aside from its setting, you never feel as if you’re holding a “classic” when you read this book. The sentences are pleasant to read, and the first-person perspective makes for a smooth flow. Judging by his father’s books, I have to say the son is in no way inferior to him. Passages in The Count of Monte Cristo captivated me in a similar way.

Conclusion: The Lady of the Camellias (La Dame aux Camélias) is, even by today’s standards, absolutely worth reading—not only for lovers of classics, but especially for those who don’t want a 1,500-page tome yet still want to dive into an outstanding, captivating society novel from the era of Realism. The love story cast a powerful spell on me, and I could feel the infatuation almost within reach. Love stories of this quality are rare; for that alone, this book is a masterpiece. If you make the mistake of leaving it on your wish list as long as I did, be warned: you might regret it later.

Book information: The Lady of the Camellias • Alexandre Dumas fils • dtv Verlag • 272 pages • ISBN 9783423137089