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A New Reading of Gide's La Porte étroite

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Loring D. Knecht
Loring D. Knecht*
Affiliation:
St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minn
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Extract

It is all too tempting on first acquaintance with Gide's La Porte étroite to see in it only the pathetically tragic tale of a young girl who believed too wholeheartedly that “virtue is its own reward.” Not too surprising, for this seems to be the reaction Gide intended to elicit. He protested against the view of some critics that he had “evolved” to a more sympathetic moral and religious attitude since 1902 and the publication of L'Immoraliste. He insisted repeatedly that he sought rather to make the work a criticism of a certain furiously deplorable protestantism, a puritanism that curiously evokes Jansenism, a misplaced sense of heroism which he characterizes as a sort of “cornélianisme gratuit.” This last must certainly apply to Alissa rather than to Jérôme.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 82 , Issue 7 , December 1967 , pp. 640 - 648
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1967

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References

1 André Gide, Journal, 1889–1939, Pléiade edition (Paris: Gallimard, 1948), pp. 365–366, 428–429, 437—hereafter cited as Journal I.

2 Paul Claudel et André Gide, Correspondance, 1899–1926 (Paris: Gallimard, 1949), p. 90 (17 Oct. 1908); pp. 103–104 (18 June 1909). See also Journal I, pp. 428–429 (30 June 1914): “Récits et Soties, je n'écrivis jusqu'à présent que des livres ironiques—ou critiques si l'on préfère, dont sans doute voici le dernier [i.e., Les Caves du Vatican]. Il y a amusement, et même quelque avantage à laisser errer d'abord les critiques. Mais comment m'étonnerais-je qu'ils n'aient pas compris aussitôt que ma Porte étroite était un livre critique?”

3 Paul Claudel et André Gide, Correspondance, p. 104 (18 June 1909).

4 Germaine Brée, Gide (New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1963), p. 153—hereafter cited as Brée.

5 André Gide, La Porte étroite, in Romans, récits et soties, Pléiade edition (Paris: Gallimard, 1958), p. 501—subsequent references will be made in text.

6 André Gide, Et nunc mattet in le in Journal (1939–1949), Souvenirs, Pléiade edition (Paris: Gallimard, 1954), p. 1148—hereafter cited as Et nunc.

7 Perhaps one might rather say that Madeleine is Alissa. The resignation that Jérôme imposed on Alissa was later to be imposed on Gide's wife Madeleine.

8 See Et nunc, p. 1137: Long after the publication of La Porte étroite, the same road is taken by Gide's wife Madeleine: “Le vrai c'est qu'elle croyait que j'avais cessé de l'aimer. Dès lors, à quoi bon s'orner pour me plaire? Me plaire, il n'y fallait plus songer.”