Harmony and Discord in Paul et Virginie

Harmony and Discord in Paul et VirginieMalcolm C. Cook Recent years have seen significant critical reassessments of the meaning of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's Paul et Virginie. Clifton Cherpack , rightly emphasizing the significance of the death of the heroine, views Virginie's departure for France and her refusal to save herself from drowning as the effect of civilization's corrupting influence.1 Philip Robinson rejects mis view as "wrong" and proposes, in place, an interpretation based on the idea that Virginie's refusal to undress is a result of her natural modesty.2 More recently, inspired by the reading of Chateaubriand's interpretation, I have suggested that the novel is primarily a religious text.3 My view has not changed dramatically. A close reading will always tend to a religious interpretation—but not simply for the reasons previously stated. Looking particularly at the ideas ex1 Clifton Cherpack, "Paul et Virginie and the Myths of Death," Publications of the Modern Language Association ofAmerica 90 (1975), 247-55. 2 Philip Robinson, "Virginie's Fatal Modesty: Thoughts on Bernardin de Saint-Pierre and Rousseau," British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 5 (1982), 35-48. See also his excellent study, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre: "Paul et Virginie, " Critical Guides to French Texts, 51 (London: Grant and Cutler, 1986). 3 See my "Paul et Virginie: A Roman Poétique," Australian Journal ofFrench Studies 24 (1987), 245-52. See also the recent number of the Revue d'Histoire Littéraire de la France 5 (1989), in which different articles touch on aspects discussed here. For a full discussion of Bernardin's religious beliefs, see Kurt Wiedemeier, La Religion de Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (Fribourg: Université de Fribourg, 1986). He writes: "Pour Bernardin ce n'est pas l'Eglise qui lui transmet le message d'un Dieu vivant. C'est la nature qui révèle à notre auteur le secret de Dieu" (p. 231). Hinrich Hudde, in his Bernardin de Saint-Pierre: "Paul et Virginie" in Münchener Romanistische Arbeitein 41 (1975), discusses the way in which the author structures his novel around repeated contrasts. EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION, Volume 3, Number 3, April 1991 206 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION pressed by Bernardin in his Etudes de la Nature with which the novel first appeared, I will demonstrate that a religious interpretation can further be justified by reference to the author's views on natural contrasts and harmonies as elements of divine creation. We need, first of all, to put the plot of the novel into some kind of philosophical context: Paul and Virginie are constantly described as "natural" children living in a natural paradise. Virginie leaves the island primarily, it would seem, because of the onset of her "mal," her puberty. Yet what could be more natural than the development of a girl into a woman? She dies, we are told, because of her refusal to undress in front of the sailor who offers his assistance. Modern readers often find this situation perplexing. What could be wrong with nudity? Is nudity not natural? Is Virginie's death supposed to be edifying? If not, what possible purpose does it serve? After all, it is apparent to the most naive reader that we are dealing here with fiction and not with any kind of transposed reality. We must surely read the novel as an allegory and seek the message offered by the author. But what is that message? Is it dependent solely on the plot of the fiction or are elements of natural description to be seen not as parts of the background or landscape but as essential aspects of the sense of the novel? A contemporary critic writing in the Année Littéraire regretted the fact that the heroine had been killed off: "On désireroit que cette aimable et vertueuse fille fût réunie à son amant."4 But it seems likely that if the novel had offered a banal happy ending we would not be reading it today. Indeed, Bernardin, writing the Avis to the first separate edition of 1789, realized the crucial significance of the death scene; cutting it, he wrote, "retrancherait de ce sujet ce que son but moral a de plus int...