Henry de MONTHERLANT / Autographed letter signed / Theater / Misogyny / Women

  

Autographed letter signed "Montherlant" [to Thierry Maulnier] S. Reaction to Montherlant's bittersweet tone following a critique by Maulnier of his play Celles qu'on prend dans ses bras. Thank you for your stance and your support for my latest play in the Revue de Paris.

This is an opinion that, on its own, should tip the scales in my favor against all others. Your article in Rouge et noir also contained some of those phrases that are like honey to the author who reads them. But I was a bit ruffled by a few others: You say, regarding me, (a data unworthy of you) - [that] I am our national misogynist. From there you write: "Ravier [the antique dealer, 58 years old, in love with Christine, 18 years old, who resists him] has an aversion to women." This character speaks angrily about his Christine, but why?

Out of love frustration, out of rage at not being loved. It’s the opposite of aversion. And I also don’t understand why you call me "a psychoanalyst playwright.

" Certainly, this label will attract some mentions and new sympathies toward me here and there. But why not simply "a psychological playwright"? Believe that I constantly read you as one of the most reliable "values" of our literary life, and please accept, dear sir, my sentiments. While he is keen to deny any misogyny in his play, Montherlant's work nonetheless remains permeated by a form of hostility toward women. Simone de Beauvoir highlights this by dedicating the first part of the second chapter of the third section ("Myths") of her essay The Second Sex (1949) to him. In fact, it is since his cyclical novel The Young Girls, published between 1936 and 1939, that Montherlant has nurtured this negative image of women, which will ultimately persist. Jacques Laurent, however, tempers this character trait: "There is a bit of misogyny in him - but not systematic, without malice. One should not reduce it (as Pierre Sipriot did, for example) to his homosexuality." The three-act play, first performed in 1950 at the Théâtre de la Madeleine, Celles qu'on prend dans ses bras, meets with great success and will be revived, seven years later, at the Théâtre des Ambassadeurs. Of this play, Gabriel Marcel will say, "Nothing, undoubtedly, as Racinian has been written since Racine," in Les Nouvelles littéraires on February 28, 1957.