The Trial of Bébé Donge  

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La Vérité sur Bébé Donge (1942, English title The Truth About Bebe Donge) is 'roman dur' by Georges Simenon. It is one of those rare Simenon novels of which no 'enveloppe jaune' (yellow envelope) is known

Contents

Summary

One afternoon during a family Sunday lunch, François Donge, a businessman from a small provincial town in the Aube region, is taken by violent stomach pains some time after drinking his coffee. A chemist by training, he immediately recognizes the symptoms of arsenic poisoning and understands that his wife Eugenie, known as Bébé, has just committed the act. With the help of his brother Felix, he calls the doctor who succeeds in curbing the intoxication with emergency washings and sends him in time to the clinic where he is treated for his multiple hemorrhages. Baby Donge is immediately arrested and, in the greatest calm, confesses her crime and the premeditation of the act, upsetting the rest of the family.

As François recovers in the hospital, he tries to understand his wife's motivations and mentally retraces the course of their life together, since their meeting in Royan a decade earlier, the quick marriage that followed and his sad wedding night, and their move to the provinces. François realizes that he has been a husband entirely focused on his work, his bourgeois social success, and the satisfaction of his sexual desires with his numerous mistresses from the beginning of his marriage. They decided to have a child, but this did not fill the void in Bébé's life. Only the company of Mlle Lambert had seemed to enjouer Bébé Donge, until the day when François, exasperated of his omnipresence around his wife, sends her away from their residence. A decisive moment which appears to him as the crystallization of the resolution taken by his wife to kill him.

On his hospital bed, he gradually comes to understand the unbearable confinement, the "moral cruelty" in which he has kept his wife and forgives her for her act: he feels in reality the only culprit of this situation. His entourage does not manage to understand this reversal and the deep anguish in which he falls at the approach of the trial of Bébé. Justifying her act in court by the situation in which she found herself and the feeling that in order for it to stop "it was she or he who had to die" - and considering however that a young child needs a mother more than a father -, she is finally condemned to five years of hard labor. François manages to see her after the trial and Bébé coldly declares all the hatred she feels for him. More loving than he ever was, he decides to wait for her release from prison.

Analysis of the novel

The novel is situated on two constantly intertwined planes: one refers to the "real" time of the novel (one season), the other, through a series of returns to the past, covers the ten years of marriage of the Donge couple and explains the current events. The trial is evoked in the form of a transcript of the questions and answers.

Characters

  • François Donge, a well-to-do industrialist in various interrelated businesses (tannery, plastics, cheese, pig farming). He is about thirty years old.
  • Eugénie "Bébé" Donge, born in Onneville, sister of Jeanne, wife of François.
  • Félix Donge, brother and partner of François.
  • Jeanne Donge, born in Onneville, sister of Bébé, wife of Félix.
  • Jacques, son of François and Bébé.
  • Jeannie and Bertand, son and daughter of Félix and Jeanne
  • Widow Mrs of Onneville: mother of Bébé and Jeanne.
  • The household staff: Marthe the maid, Papau the gardener and Clo the cook
  • Inspector Janvier of the mobile brigade
  • Doctor Pinaud, the family doctor
  • Mr. Giffre, the investigating judge

Éditions

Adaptations

Le roman a été adapté à l'écran par le réalisateur Henri Decoin dans un film homonyme sorti en 1952, avec Jean Gabin et Danielle Darrieux dans les rôles principaux.

Source

  • Maurice Piron, Michel Lemoine, L'Univers de Simenon, guide des romans et nouvelles (1931-1972) de Georges Simenon, Presses de la Cité, 1983, p. 110-111 Template:ISBN

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