Moderato Cantabile, P. 3

The following passages I chose come from chapters 6,7, and 8.

“Really, I know very little about it. But I think that he couldn’t make up his mind, couldn’t decide whether he wanted her alive or dead. He must have decided very late in the game that he preferred her dead”(102). Anne and Chauvin are speaking of the ill-fated couple again. But as they do this, we see how they are also discussing their own situation indirectly. It seems as if, like this couple did, Anne and Chauvin are heading toward that point in which he will kill her. They have been meeting regularly, but in that time, they haven’t yet figured out why the woman would want the man to kill her, nor why he would want to do it. This bit represents how Anne and Chauvin begin to understand this. Soon after this, the nature of their interaction changes. Chauvin no longer wants Anne to speak, and even acts cold toward her. It appears that he is trying to drive her away so they don’t end up like the other couple. 

“Tonight one of them does not share the others’ appetite. She comes from the other end of town, from beyond the limits imposed upon her ten years before, where a man had offered her more wine than she could handle”(108). In this part about the dinner party, Duras goes to great lengths to describe the ritual in consuming food at this type of event. During any normal party, Anne, like the other women, would be eating the food offered her. However, Anne refuses to eat, and draws negative attention from the guests in the process. It seems consuming food takes on the symbolic meaning of taking in values of society, which are served to you in a sense. Accepting these values, like eating, represents a sort of fulfillment. So basically, Anne is finally refusing to take on these values, and refusing to do so in front of others. Until this point, she had tried to fit expectations that determined how she should behave and what she should want out of life. But now, she is trying to resist. The only thing she has consumed, the wine, is too much for her. This wine can also be thought of as the values Chauvin represents, that her poured for her to drink. It is the idea of freedom, and she is left literally, and figuratively, drunk from it. 

“She arrived only slightly later than usual. As soon as Chauvin saw her… he went back into the café to wait for her. The child was not with her”(113). This is the first time that Anne has not had her son with her at the café. It seemed that before her son represented her own desire to be free of her society, and to rebel against it. So, by showing up at the café without him, it is as if Anne doesn’t need him to be that part of her anymore. Because of what she did at the dinner party a few nights before, she might have finally freed herself from the social conventions that had so long repressed her. Anne has changed. However, being alone feels pretty unnatural to her, as the dialogue following this quote reveals. But just because she is alone and has denied the expectations that society has imposed on her doesn’t mean that knows how to fulfill her desire with Chauvin. At this point, Duras makes desire seem confusing.