The Iron Staircase
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"There were a few others like her, among the housewives streaming up and down the street; middle-aged, well-groomed, self-assured women in good clothes, whom the stall-holders would accost with a coarse jest, if they went past without stopping to buy. Until now, it had never occurred to him, when he had met such women, that they could still have love-affairs. He had pictured them in their gloomy but well-kept homes, with family photographs on the walls and mantelpieces .... Only a short while ago, the idea that such women might have secret lives of their own would have seemed to him ridiculous and shocking. Indeed, he had assumed at their age they had done with lovemaking."-- The Iron Staircase (1953) by Georges Simenon |
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L'escalier de fer (1953, English: The Iron Staircase) is an 'roman dur' by Georges Simenon. It tells the story of a husband who suspects his wife of poisoning him.
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Plot
Étienne Lomel has been experiencing severe stomach pains for some time now, without a disease being able to be determined. He is afraid, he is worried, and this feeling is linked to the person of Louise, his wife, who keeps him under her control and on whom he depends for everything, since, after their marriage, he has in a way become her employee.
Louise has already been married. Étienne was her lover before her husband died. He remembers his fear of the consuming passion she displayed then, and the oaths she demanded of him: he would never give up on her and, one day, he would marry her. Shortly after, Louise's husband dies and Étienne, barely married, overhears a sentence from the concierge saying that Guillaume, at the time of his death, had become so thin that he weighed no more than a ten-year-old child.
Now Étienne wonders if his wife could have killed Guillaume. He starts to suspect her of pouring arsenic into his food. This is later confirmed by medical analysis. He now knows that Louis's former husband was poisoned - in fact, because of him - and understands that their passionate lovemaking is but a way to silence the remorse.
This is also why they live by themselves and have no friends other than Leduc and his wife, who is in the know. With a thousand tricks, Étienne manages not to eat her food for fear that it might contain arsenic, and he closely observes his wife. He thus discovers that she has a young lover, Roger Cornu. Determined to keep his wife and determined not to die, he plans to kill his rival. But at the last minute, he backs off and commits suicide.
Analysis
A story where the main character's interest is directed to another person: his wife. The connections that are established between her past and the present situation constitute a "mise en abyme" which takes on a premonitory value in the eyes of the hero.
The novel is set in contemporary Paris, in Montmartre.
The iron staircase, which gives the novel its title, is the one that connects the stationery to the bedroom where both Étienne and the former husband were bedridden during their illnesses.
Characters
- Etienne Lomel. Commercial traveler. Married, no children. 40 years.
- Louise, wife of Etienne, 46, widow of Guillaume Gatin, heir to the Évariste Birard stationery
- Arthur Leduc, 48, belote player, and his wife Mariette, milliner, friends of the Lomel couple
- Roger Cornu, 26, son of the stationery typographer.
Trivia
Etienne hides his notes in la Vie des Insectes which is located next to "une histoire de Lourdes et la Vie des Insectes, de J.H. Fabre, tout à côté d'un album de gravures érotiques de Rops."
English translation
It was translated by Penguin Books, in their green spines series and had a food still life photo on its cover with a chicken that had a knife plunged into it.
There is also a Harcourt Brace Jovanovich edition which has a man standing against some wallpaper. In front of his face is an oversized fork which gives the impression of prison bars.
Adaptation
See also
