Gale - A Study Guide for Andre Gides The Immoralist

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ISBN 0-7876-6944-X
ISSN 1094-3552

Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Andr Gide

1902

Andr Gide's controversial short novel L'Immoraliste (1902; The Immoralist) describes a journey of self-discovery by which a young man becomes increasingly aware of his homosexual inclinations. The Immoralist is based on Gide's personal experience of discovering his homosexuality while traveling as a young man in North Africa.

The Immoralist is narrated by Michel, a young man who describes his marriage to Marceline, a woman he hardly knew, and lays bare the developments of his inner life during the first few years of their marriage. While on an extended honeymoon in North Africa, Michel finds himself attracted to young Arab boys. This experience inspires him to embark on a journey of self-discovery through which he eventually finds himself leading a double life: he presents a false facade to his wife, while going out on his own to follow his natural inclinations and experience his true inner being. Back home in France, Marceline announces that she is pregnant. Meanwhile, Michel finds himself increasingly drawn to healthy and attractive young men. Becoming ill from tuberculosis, Marceline suffers a miscarriage. Michel, motivated by a strong desire to return to North Africa, pushes her to travel with him, despite her deteriorating health. After she dies, Michel is left to grapple with the meaning of his own life, and to come to terms with his homosexual tendencies.

The central theme of The Immoralist is repressed homosexuality. Gide's narrative further explores themes of life versus death, mind versus body, and the process of self-discovery.

Andr Gide was one of the most important French writers of the twentieth century. He was born Andr Paul Guillaume Gide, 22 November 1869, in Paris, France, the only child of Paul Gide, a professor of Roman law, and Juliette Rondeaux Gide, a Norman heiress. When Gide was eleven, his father died of tuberculosis. Soon after, Gide developed a predilection for faking illness, and was often kept home from school, receiving an uneven education from private tutors. Upon passing his baccalaureate examination at the age of twenty, he determined to devote his life to writing. His first book, Les Cahiers d'Andr Walter (1891; The Notebooks of Andr Walter), is an autobiographical novel based on his youthful experiences.

In 1893, Gide made his first trip to North Africa, where he had his first homosexual experience. That year, he suffered from tuberculosis, though he soon recovered. Two years later, he returned to North Africa, where he met with the well-known homosexual Irish writer Oscar Wilde. In important conversations with Wilde, Gide was encouraged to admit his homosexual tendencies to himself and his friends. Gide's trips to North Africa became the basis of The Immoralist, in which Michel, the central character, travels twice to Algeria. The character of Menalque in The Immoralist is based on Wilde, and Michel's late-night conversation with Menalque in which his friend hints at his homosexual tendencies is based on Gide's discussions with Wilde. Gide's mother died in 1895. Soon after, he married his cousin, Madeleine Rondeaux. At the age of twenty-seven, Gide was elected mayor of La Roque, making him the youngest mayor in France.

The Immoralist, one of Gide's most important works, was first published in 1902. Like Michel in The Immoralist, Gide struggled in his marriage with feelings of genuine love for his wife that conflicted with his homosexual inclinations and his strong need for individual freedom. These tensions resulted in many years of estrangement between husband and wife. When she learned of Gide's love affair with a young man in 1918, she retaliated by burning all of his letters to her. In 1923, Gide's daughter, Catherine, was born to Elisabeth van Rysselberghe, a married woman with whom Gide had an extramarital affair. However, Gide's paternity of the child was kept secret from Madeleine. After a lengthy illness, Madeleine died in 1938. Gide's lifelong concern with individual freedom lead him to advocate for the social, economic, and political liberty of oppressed peoples throughout the world, and he is remembered as a great humanitarian. During World War I, he worked for the Red Cross, then in a convalescent home for wounded soldiers, and later offered shelter to war refugees. During the 1920s, he became an advocate for the oppressed peoples of colonized regions, as well as for women's rights and the humane treatment of criminals. In 1947 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Gide died in Paris on 19 February 1951, at the age of eighty-one.

Michel, the protagonist of The Immoralist, has spent his early adulthood as a scholar of ancient Greek and Roman cultures. He describes his marriage at the age of twenty-five to Marceline, a twenty-year-old woman whom he hardly knows. Shortly after their engagement, Michel's father dies. The newlyweds travel on their honeymoon to North Africa, a region that at the time was colonized by the French. During their travels, Michel becomes ill from tuberculosis. By the time they arrive in the city of Biskra, Algeria, he is gravely ill and close to death.