“It may be representative, though one hesitates to think so, of an entire social class and period. The exchange of letters covers ten years—1892 to 1902—and considerable territory, from Normandy across to Burgundy and down to the Alpes-Maritimes and the Hérault, but has a single, compelling center of interest, Marthe de Montbourg, the pathological “case” who is causing so much ink to flow among her relations.She is twenty, unmarried, and pregnant when the letters start; it is not clear what obsc...ure male is responsible, only that he is “beneath” her—a pattern we will see repeated. The little particule de noblesse, the significant “de” in her name, makes her delinquency especially painful to her sister, mother, uncle, aunts, godfather, cousins; it means that certain solutions cannot be considered and that all solutions will be expensive. The family’s position rules out marriage to the father, and religion—the inevitable Catholicism transmitted in the blood—rules out abortion.She can be married off to a station-master, a druggist, a postal clerk (the money-order window), a tax collector (among the prospects examined are two of these), providing he does not drink, gamble, neglect his religious duties, or lean to the left politically.MoreLessRead More Read Less
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