Alphonse Daudet - Artists' Wives

To be the wife of an artist must be a trying occupation. There is the constant battle with the husband's muse, the long absences – either physical or mental – and the clawing ambition for greatness that all but guarantees sadness in the bedroom or the heart. Perhaps the same occurs for an artist's husband, but Alphonse Daudet's collection of short stories is concerned with the jilted female, the heartbroken wife, the lonely woman. And, sometime, the bitter and vindictive shrew. Artists' Wives is a very fine, sharply ironic and clearly satirical examination of the trials that artists inflict upon their significant others.

The collection opens with a poet and a painter talking one night of marriage. The poet is interested in finding a wife, but the painter, who is happily married, is firmly against it. They talk a while, with the poet attempting to ascertain his friend's reasons for disliking marriage. The painter decides to loan his friend a little book, saying, “But since, notwithstanding my observations, you seem determined to try marriage, here is a little work I beg you to read. It is written--I would have you note--by a married man, much in love with his wife, very happy in his home, an observer who, spending his life among artists, amused himself by sketching one or two such households as I spoke of just now. From the first to the last line of this book, all is true, so true that the author would never publish it. Read it, and come to me when you have read it. I think you will have changed your mind."

After this the book proper begins. There are eight stories, all of which are good and half, excellent. Daudet is a cheerfully ironic chronicler of these unfortunate marriages, taking sides when needed but mostly staying aloof as an impartial observer, content to poke fun and play with his characters. He has little sympathy for the 'great men' who would neglect their wives, and less for the wives that force their otherwise excellent husbands to prostrate themselves in front of them. There are stories of wives who behave badly, of husbands who behave badly, and of couple where everyone is doing the wrong thing and blaming the other. Each story seems created to highlight the difficulty of one particular aspect of being married to a creative being, at times showing the folly of such endeavour, and at others, the inevitable hardship that comes from imposing one's self in the way of an artists' ego and ambition.

“A Couple of Singers” is perhaps the strongest story in the collection. It briefly chronicles the marriage of two very famous singers, and the jealousy that ensues. The husband begins as the stronger actor and singer, with the younger wife something of a protégé. Daudet writes of them that, “Older and more accustomed to the public, whose foibles and preferences he had studied, he held the pit and boxes under the spell of his voice. Beside him, the other one seemed but an admirably gifted pupil, the promise of a future genius; but her voice was young and had angles in it, just as her shoulders were too slight and thin.” After their honeymoon, the wife's erotic understanding adds a depth to her voice that was not their before, and soon her reputation rises such that she displaces her husband as Paris' favourite singer. He is jealous, unfairly, and seeks to sabotage her success. Daudet's ironic tone is well suited in describing the complexity of their relationship and the entanglement of eroticism, talent, marriage and happiness.

Another story – actually two – is the twinned “A Misunderstanding”. The first story is the wife's version and the second, the husband's. They are the same story, of course, but they highlight remarkably well the difference in understanding that sometimes comes between artistic and non-artistic people. Both the husband and the wife believe they have the best interest of the other at heart, and both are able to justify their decisions. But the way their actions are interpreted by the other means that both end up unhappy. The husband is content to remain poor, for his art is important to him, and nothing else, but he is willing to live anywhere with his wife and do anything as long as they are removed from Paris. His wife, on the other hand, supports this, but she also introduces friends and acquaintances in the hope of broadening her social sphere – which irritates her husband no end.

A few of the stories fall flat. All are good, but the very high quality of at least half mean that the weakest seem quite weak in comparison. “Madame Heurtebise”, though well written, doesn't seem to go anywhere, and is a poor choice to open the collection. Similarly, “The Comtessa Irma”, which closes the work, doesn't hold up much now that matters of hereditary, lineage and class have mostly receded to the background of day to day living.

That said, the collection is strong enough to warrant attention. I was not fond of Daudet's Tartarin de Tarascon, but I suspect that was partly due to my own lack of appreciation for irony at the time. Artists' Wives is a clever little book, written with that particular French ability for playfulness, irony, and art.

Author	Alphonse Daudet
Title	Artists' Wives (Original Title: Les Femmes de Artistes)
Translator	Laura Ensor
Nationality	French
Publisher	Project Gutenberg (Public Domain Text)
Published	1896 (English) 1874 (French)
Pages	91
Availability: ---Amazon (US) ---Amazon (UK) ---Fishpond

See Also

Also by Alphonse Daudet:
---Tartarin de Tarascon

Links

Links kindly provided by The Dalkey Archive Press' anthology, Best European Fiction 2010

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