On Ne Peux Pas Depasser L'Horreur De la Bourgeoisie

[poliphilo]

French provincial towns are the stuffiest, most stultifying provincial towns in the world.

Or so one would gather from a crash course in French literature and cinema.

The one word- bourgeois- says it all. We don't have an English equivalent.

I just watched Chabrol's Les Noces Rouges. God, but these people are dim; they commit two unnecessary murders because they can't imagine moving out of the ugly little town that accords them status.

We English have a different attitude. Cranford, Middlemarch, Barchester are well-loved places; quite lively really; no-one is stifled by them the way Emma Bovary is stifled.

I put it down to France being such a big country. English towns are all squashed up close together; escape is easier. French towns are cut off from one another by miles and miles of prairie.

Physical isolation breeds cultural isolation.

No English town is as deaf and blind to London as any French town is deaf and blind to Paris.

Comments

[frsimon.livejournal.com]

Jude the Oscure?

Wuthering Heights?

[frsimon.livejournal.com]

OK, so the latter actually to do with the isolation of a TOWN...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think my answer would be along the lines that Hardy was deeply in love with his Wessex.

And the same goes for the Brontes and Yorkshire.

French artists have a contempt for the provincial that I just don't find in their English equivalents.

[frsimon.livejournal.com]

But these English artists, at least, realise that the provincial can be a two edged sword.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

That's true.

[ibid.livejournal.com]

Have you read 'peasants into Frenchmen' by Eugene Weber? His thesis is that France before the revolution was like a lot of mini kingdoms. France really only came into being with the revolution (and still has to be emphasised a lot more - 'Vive la France' and all that) and is still very provincial. Before ww1 Picardy peasants could only speak patois - and that is only 50 miles from Paris, England* has no parallel

*I do not include Wales, Scotland or Ireland in this

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I haven't read that book, but I like the sound of the argument.

I find it very persuasive.

[frumiousb.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, in the real French provincial town, I encountered a level of knowledge of history and culture that I have *never* encountered in the US and rarely encountered in the UK (although the second may be lack of exposure.)

Decaying farmhouses with the whole second floor given over to history books springs to my mind...

(I walked from Utrecht to Spain a year and a half ago, and spent a great deal of time in small French towns, hence the opinion.)

[treehavn.livejournal.com]

(I walked from Utrecht to Spain a year and a half ago, and spent a great deal of time in small French towns, hence the opinion.)

Completely random comment but: wow, that sounds quite fascinating.

[frumiousb.livejournal.com]

It was a good use of time. :)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'm in no position to argue, my knowledge of French towns is effectively limited to the way they're portrayed in books and movies.

Utrecht to Spain- on foot- that's amazing

[frumiousb.livejournal.com]

I do agree with you about the portrayal, but I think that it comes more from Paris being deaf and blind to the towns. In most of the biographies of French royals that I read, the kings kept their nobles close to them in Paris by emphasizing strongly that there was no place worth living besides the court. I'm sure that attitude must have bled over into literature and art.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

This stuff is fiction, you know, it isn't obliged to give you a balanced viewpoint.

France is about double the size of Britain, so although it is - still - a more rural country, there aren't the miles of prairie that separate American small towns (about which I know only from books, so let's not start making comparisons).

And it's true that - perhaps because France became a single unity later than England did - the provincial cities are more independent of the capital. This is not necessarily a Bad Thing.

As for Emma Bovary, she was a very silly woman, and deluded herself that she was bored because of where she lived, when in fact she was bored because she was boring (Charles, on the other hand, deserved better).

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

"it isn't obliged to give you a balanced viewpoint"

Mais oui. The French provinces may be overflowing with culture and magnanimity for all I know. It's just that French artists don't seem to think so.

I find this interesting.

[ex-kharin447.livejournal.com]

Historically, the continent has tended to regard the country as being largely suitable for peasants. Aristocracy and plutocracy accordingly tended to converge on the towns and around Paris in particular (presumably a throwback to a court being there). By contrast, the English tended to build estates and mansions in the countryside and held pastoral life as far more of an idyll.

There is also a difference in terms of how fiction is structured. The British novel prefers the moral fable as its skeleton and novels like Great Expectations see the move from country to city as one that leads from virtue to decadence. The naturalistic influence in French fiction means that while something similar could be said of Lost Illusions, Balzac nonetheless makes it fairly clear that he does regard the provinces with disdain.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Here's another take on it.

The English, being an urban people with an urban economy, tend to idealise the country, while the French, being a rural people with a rural economy, tend to idealise the big city.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Physical isolation breeds cultural isolation.

We have dangerous towns.

I'm thinking of Briceville, a little place up in the mountains, where there's supposed to be inbreeding and violence.

I drove up to Laurel Grove long ago, and the road went steeply up--I remember the entire trip as claustrophobic and dark, the woods close to the road, no houses--and then the line of cars had to stop because a man with a gun was threatening a woman with a suitcase; they were putting on a drama yards away from our cars--he was drunk...

I had children in the back seat. They kept coloring in their books, but I was transfixed: Old mountain man.

I don't remember what happened. They must have taken their argument back into the dark woods. I drove on to the Laurel Grove music festival, where we hippies danced in the grass...