Clara is the main character in the French novel ''
''The Torture Garden'''' ( ''Le Jardin des supplices'', 1899), by
Octave Mirbeau
Octave Mirbeau (16 February 1848 – 16 February 1917) was a French novelist, art critic, travel writer, pamphleteer, journalist and playwright, who achieved celebrity in Europe and great success among the public, whilst still appealing to the ...
.
A free woman
Clara, who has no last name or civil status, is an
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
woman with red hair and green eyes: “a greyish green of the young fruits of the almond tree.” Single, rich and
bisexual
Bisexuality is a romantic or sexual attraction or behavior toward both males and females, or to more than one gender. It may also be defined to include romantic or sexual attraction to people regardless of their sex or gender identity, whi ...
, Clara lives near
Canton, and leads an idle existence, entirely devoted to finding perverse pleasures. She is fully emancipated, financially and sexually, and freed from oppressive laws and taboos prevailing in the West and which, according to her critique of
anarchist
Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is skeptical of all justifications for authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including, though not neces ...
inspiration, prohibit the development of the individual. Clara thus claims to enjoy complete freedom. She particularly enjoys visiting the city prison every week, which is open to tourists on Wednesday. Clara delights in watching the death row inmates, many of whom are innocent or guilty of minor offenses, being brutally tortured and put to death.
This protagonist meets the anonymous narrator, a petty political crook, aboard the ''Saghalien'', where the pseudo-embryologist was sailing to
Ceylon
Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...
, as part of an official mission. In reality, his primary goal is just to distance himself from
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
. She seduces him, awakening his sexual desire along with the need to unburden himself, and becomes his mistress. She takes him with her to
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
, where both the narrator and Clara share a lover, Annie.
Two years later, the narrator, who had fled from Clara's pernicious embraces and gone to Annam, returns. Clara regains her power over him and is pleased to dominate and humiliate him. She takes him to visit the
torture
Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person for reasons such as punishment, extracting a confession, interrogation for information, or intimidating third parties. Some definitions are restricted to acts c ...
garden of the prison, where they wander around. During a crescendo of horror, Clara experiences waves of ecstasy and has a hysterical fit. She then feels almost purified after climaxing. The scene takes place in a "flower boat", a floating brothel, where orgies take place. According to the narrator, the area is more like a place of punishment than a garden of delights. But, as Ki Pai, the boatman who regularly accompanies Clara, says, "It will start all over again!"
A fantastic and sadistic woman
The enigmatic character of Clara, "fairy of mass graves, angel of decomposition and decay", seems to be based on pure fantasy, unrelated to a plausible reality that the novel would be expected to reproduce mimetically, to the point at which the narrator becomes haggard wondering whether she is not a figment of his imagination: "Does she really exist?... I wonder, not without fear... Was she not born out of my debauchery and fever?... Is she like one of those impossible images, like a child in a nightmare? ... A criminal temptation, lust sparking the sick imaginations of murderers and madmen?... Could she be nothing but my soul, escaped outside of my body, despite myself, which materialized in the form of sin?... "
This character is an illustration of a ''fin-de-siècle''
femme fatale
A ''femme fatale'' ( or ; ), sometimes called a maneater or vamp, is a stock character of a mysterious, beautiful, and seductive woman whose charms ensnare her lovers, often leading them into compromising, deadly traps. She is an archetype of ...
, an all-powerful ghoul who treats men as puppets and enjoys their humiliation. Sadistic and voyeuristic, she experiences an intense and ever growing pleasure to view sophisticated executions, whose art was perfected by China, as opposed to industrial and technological massacres, which were practiced on a large scale in Europe without any concern for art. As Jean-Luc Planchais wrote, she is a "bloody tribade who castrates ideals", who "believes herself to be God, the destruction of the other confirms her supremacy".
However, she is equally masochistic because she likes to imagine herself in the role of a victim whose suffering is an unparalleled source of ecstasy. For example, when witnessing the “iron rods” torture, she says, "It felt like the rod entered the small of my back with every strike... It was atrocious and very sweet!" Perverse, she is an apologist for "lust" in all its forms and sees it as "the perfection of love" because "all the mental faculties of man are revealed and sharpened" and that "it is only by lust" that can achieve "development total personality. " And it is through lust that she intends to initiate the shy narrator.
This character's perhaps monstrous values and claims seem totally at odds with the humanism of
Octave Mirbeau
Octave Mirbeau (16 February 1848 – 16 February 1917) was a French novelist, art critic, travel writer, pamphleteer, journalist and playwright, who achieved celebrity in Europe and great success among the public, whilst still appealing to the ...
, a defender of
Alfred Dreyfus. However, one could make the argument that the novelist was using Clara's character as a means of denouncing English and French
colonialism
Colonialism is a practice or policy of control by one people or power over other people or areas, often by establishing colonies and generally with the aim of economic dominance. In the process of colonisation, colonisers may impose their relig ...
.
Pierre Michel
Pierre Michel (born 11 June 1942), is a professor of literature and a scholar specializing in the French writer Octave Mirbeau.
Michel was born in Toulon, the son of the historian Henri Michel.
After defending his doctoral dissertation on the w ...
« Octave Mirbeau et le colonialisme »
Brussels, Librairie Van Balberghe, 2002. The reader can only be disconcerted and uncomfortable and may lose his aesthetic and ethical bearings.
References
Bibliography
* Julia Przybos, « Délices et supplices : Octave Mirbeau et Jérôme Bosch », in ''Octave Mirbeau'', Presses de l’Université d’Angers, 1992, p. 207-216.
* Fabien Soldà, « Du ''Calvaire'' au ''Jardin des supplices'' : la passion de l'homme », ''
Cahiers Octave Mirbeau
''Cahiers Octave Mirbeau'' is a French literary journal founded in 1994 by French scholar and Octave Mirbeau specialist Pierre Michel.
The journal is based in Angers
Angers (, , ) is a city in western France, about southwest of Paris. It is ...
'', n° 19, 2012, pp. 4–24.
External links
*
Pierre Michel
Pierre Michel (born 11 June 1942), is a professor of literature and a scholar specializing in the French writer Octave Mirbeau.
Michel was born in Toulon, the son of the historian Henri Michel.
After defending his doctoral dissertation on the w ...
,
« Mirbeau et l’hystérie » in ''Écriture et maladie'', Imago, Paris, 2002, p. 71-84.
*
Pierre Michel
Pierre Michel (born 11 June 1942), is a professor of literature and a scholar specializing in the French writer Octave Mirbeau.
Michel was born in Toulon, the son of the historian Henri Michel.
After defending his doctoral dissertation on the w ...
« Octave Mirbeau : “gynécophobe” ou féministe ? » in ''Un Siècle d’antiféminisme'', Fayard, 1999, p. 103-118 .
* Jean-Luc Planchais
« Clara : supplices et blandices dans ''Le Jardin'' » ''
Cahiers Octave Mirbeau
''Cahiers Octave Mirbeau'' is a French literary journal founded in 1994 by French scholar and Octave Mirbeau specialist Pierre Michel.
The journal is based in Angers
Angers (, , ) is a city in western France, about southwest of Paris. It is ...
'', n° 8, 2001, p. 47-57.
* Fabien Soldà
« ''Le Jardin des supplices'' : roman d'initiation ? » ''
Cahiers Octave Mirbeau
''Cahiers Octave Mirbeau'' is a French literary journal founded in 1994 by French scholar and Octave Mirbeau specialist Pierre Michel.
The journal is based in Angers
Angers (, , ) is a city in western France, about southwest of Paris. It is ...
'', n° 2, 1995, p. 61-86.
* Arnaud Vareille
« Clara et Célestine : deux prisonnières mirbelliennes » ''Revue des Lettres et de traduction'', Kaslik (Liban), n° 11, Fall 2005, p. 387-410.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Clara
Literary characters introduced in 1899
Octave Mirbeau characters
Fictional bisexual females
Fictional English people
Female characters in literature