The Adulterous Woman
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"The Adulterous Woman" is a short story written in 1957. It is the first short story published in the volume Exile and the Kingdom by Albert Camus.
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Characters
The story concerns a childless, married, Pied-Noir couple, Janine and Marcel, living in Algeria. The story is written in the third person perspective following events in the life of Janine. Marcel is a merchant and Janine is his assistant. Assumed French by birth or descent, the couple live an isolated life in Algeria, neither of them speaking the native Arabic language.
Plot
The story begins with the couple on a business trip through Algeria by bus. It is here that we first learn of the strained relationship between Marcel and Janine. In her thoughts Janine portrays a negative image of her husband who she sees as inert and tied up with his work, having relinquished the passions and ambitions that he possessed as a youth when they met. Janine sees herself as still being attractive in a mature way and reminisces about her adolescence.
Also on the bus is a French Algerian soldier. The soldier seems interested in Janine, letting it be noticed that he is looking at her and offers her a lozenge from a box in his pocket. Janine welcomes the soldier's attention and this reinforces Janine's opinion that she can still be attractive to men but feels dejected when later nothing comes of it.
The couple stop at a hotel for the night and decide to visit a nearby fort. At the fort Janine feels inspired and is excited by the experience. Marcel contrastingly is totally unmoved and convinces his wife that they should get out of the cold.
Once back at the hotel, Marcel falls asleep in their room after making love to Janine. [The Justin O'Brien translation of this story reads: "She dragged herself . . . to the restaurant with a husband suddenly taciturn unless he was telling how tired she was, while she was struggling weakly against a cold, aware of a fever rising within her. Then she dragged herself towards her bed, where Marcel came to join her and put out the light at once without asking anything of her." There follow several sentences of a total of about 50 words in which the coldness of the room is mentioned along with an intimating description of Janine's possibly impending illness. This is followed by the words: "Her husband was already asleep." The mention of "her bed" might lead some readers to suppose that there are two beds in the room, the other being "his," and that Marcel joins his wife in "hers" for the purpose of lovemaking. But there are at least two bits of text that belie this supposition. One is the initial description of the room, "which seemed to have but an iron bed." The other appears in the quotation already given, which indicates that Marcel did not ask "anything of her." The supposition that Janine lies in bed "unsatisfied" in the wake of sex, reflected in the material after the close of these brackets, would seem false, given the narrative material pertaining to the "creeping" cold connected both to the room and Janine's potential fever.] She lies in bed unsatisfied and cannot sleep. After consideration, she decides to sneak out of their room that night and return to the fort alone. Once at the fort Janine is overcome with an even stronger feeling of excitement and freedom than when she visited with her husband. At this point the narrative becomes increasingly dramatic and sensual as Janine runs around the fort feeling charged with life, eventually ending up lying on her back beneath the stars.
Back at the hotel, Marcel wakes up and Janine breaks down in to tears. Janine insists that it's nothing and never tells her husband about her frustration or her trip to the fort.
Motifs
Biblical reference
The title of the story is taken from John 8:3-11 - The Adulterous Woman, in which a mob brings an adulteress before Jesus for judgment, the usual punishment for adultery being death by stoning. Jesus decrees that the first stone be thrown by one who is free from sin; until eventually no one remains. This story from the bible parallels Camus' thinking on Capital Punishment as outlined in Reflections on the Guillotine. Namely, that no authority exists which is capable of passing judgment on another human being because no person possesses absolute innocence.
Intent vs. act
Contrary to the title, at no point does Janine commit any physical act of adultery. The adultery in question is symbolic and in her own mind. By the end of the story, Janine is only guilty of the thought but it is not clear if she will take further action on her frustration or if she is prepared to go back to how things were before and accept her life. The title could be read as implying that the will to commit the act is equal to the act itself.
Lost youth
Early in the story, Janine reflects on her adolescence and the period when she met her husband and the choice she had at that time between security and independence. Reacting to various events in the story, Janine's perception of herself changes from awareness of her weight and poor physical condition to pride in still being attractive to other men. The story could be seen as being more about regaining lost youth than adultery itself.
Power
Throughout the story, Janine is recurringly repelled by her husband because of his inherent inertness, advancing age and lack of vitality. Similarly Janine is attracted to notions of primal vigor and power. The man on the bus whom she is briefly fixated by is a soldier and the place where Janine is reinvigorated with a sense of youth is a fort. Janine did not make love to her husband before visiting the fort. On the other hand, she experienced excitement from gazing at the starry night sky at the fort. This is described in an erotic manner, as if her adultery took place not with another man, but with the night itself in a temporarily empowering liberation from her constricting, married, subservient, and following life.
Pied Noir and the Arabs in Camus' Algeria
As with other works of Camus, "The Adulterous Woman" is set in Algeria but native Algerians play no significant part in the story. Marcel especially, displays disdain and distrust for the Arabs; neither he nor Janine have bothered to learn Arabic and whenever Marcel speaks to or about a native Algerian it is to express his disapproval.
One novel which is not set in Algeria, The Fall, set in Holland and initially intended as another story in Exile and the Kingdom, is similarly lacking in any native Dutch characters. Both of the main characters in The Fall are French, while Dutch citizens having no dialogue and never being referred to by name.
Source
- The Plague, The Fall, Exile and The Kingdom and Selected Essays (Everyman's Library Contemporary Classics) (Hardcover) by Albert Camus (Author), David Bellos (Introduction), Stuart Gilbert (Translator), Justin O'Brien (Translator) ISBN 1857152786, ISBN 978-1857152784
See also
- Exile and the Kingdom
- "The Renegade"
- "The Silent Men"
- "The Guest"
- "The Artist at Work"
- "The Growing Stone"
