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| The essence of cool sophistication - Book Club at the Club |
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| Vol Amoureux des Azures by Toutsy |
La Femme de Gilles versus Vol Amoureux des Azures
The Scarf-of-the-day is Vol amoureux des azures, one of the most delightfully romantic scarves ever composed by Toutsy aka Laurence Bourthoumieux for Hermes. It is possibly my most femininely romantic scarf, and I rarely wear it, being by nature more practical than conventionally feminine (a 'Virago', as defined by Florence King). Nevertheless I treasure it, and have had my moments in it ....
The scarf to me is about love of the sort that Hollywood glamourises, and that ends at the altar, with a bit of luck. It is about love that is like a butterfly, that flirts and flightily dances from flower to flower, taking a sip of nectar here and leaving a light dusting of pollen there, the love of which Germans have said, Himmelhoch jauchzend, zu Tode betruebt, gluecklich allein ist die Seele die liebt (roughly, Joyously happy, grieved on to death, happy alone is the soul that's in love). The French refer to the same as 'Etoiles dans les yeux' (having stars in one's eyes, ie being blind with love).
St Valentine's Day is of course all about this sort of love, and I have discussed it on previous occasions.
But today I shall cover another sort of love, the sort that starts - hopefully! - when the wedding is over and the guests have gone home, and the newly minted couple look at each other a little forlornly, wondering where to take things from here.
La Femme de Gilles by Madeleine Bourdouxhe is the first book we chose for our book club, and although it is barely 150 pages long, we managed to talk about it for almost three hours. I first read this book in the 1990s, and have re-read it on numerous occasions, but still I learned new and interesting things about it from my fellow book clubbers, which surely shows how very unusual and thought provoking it is.
The story is set amongst the working classes in Belgium, and was first published in 1937. It was then forgotten, and re-published in the 1990s, when it fell into my hands and got stuck there ever since.
The book tells the story of a worker's wife who is deeply in love with her husband, and they are very happy together, until her younger sister, a flighty thoughtless creature, decides it would be good fun to start a dalliance with her brother-in-law.
So far so humdrum. What makes the story different is the reaction of the wife, Elise. She is, in my opinion, a true heroine, and it grieves me, to this day, that her efforts were not rewarded as they should have been. She does not fight, argue, throw temper tantrums, or cheat on her husband in return - she continues to be kind and friendly and helpful to her husband and even her sister. In the end, when everyone turns against her, she still quietly, determinedly, follows the path she had adopted.
I have re-written the end of this book a dozen times in my mind. It upsets and angers me, that this woman who behaves in such a decent, adult way gets treated so badly by everyone, and in the end, when she has almost won, realises that she has given all she had, and has spent all her strength. Haven given all she had, she had none left for herself, and she died.
Elise has a strength of character that is rare, and mainly found in fairy-tales and heroic sagas. Most of us give our love judiciously, in bite-sized little pieces, carefully safeguarding our hearts, making sure that we cannot be destroyed when the subject of our love turns on us. But Elise gave with both hands, and held nothing back, until she had spent herself, and was no more what she had always been, and always wanted to be - the Wife of Gilles.
OK, so maybe I have been brainwashed by American Hollywood tear-jerking movies, but I demand a happy ending for this woman! She clearly deserved better, and although her hapless husband was scarcely worthy of her devotion, she loved and wanted the guy, and if I had written the book that's what she would have had, and they would have lived happily ever after.
'Till the start of WWII, I guess. Happy ending are so hard to come by ...
This reminds me of a sentiment once expressed by Karl May, when he was criticized for his happy, unrealistic stories. He said that life was bad enough, and in his stories at least he wasn't going to let the bad guy win.
Hear Hear, I say, and a Happy St Valentine's Day!
