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Le Calvaire is a thinly veiled autobiographical novel, which recounts the tortured and traumatic coming of age of the narrator Jean Mintie. It paints a nightmarish picture of late nineteenth century French society: from the stultifying boredom of bourgeois provincialism, to the horrors of the Franco-Prussian war, the grotesque avarice of shameless women and the moral bankruptcy of their compliant victims.
Mintie's progress through life is a descent into Hell, a plumbing of the lower depths, the martyrdom of a godless man in a godless age. The publication of Le Calvaire in 1886 marked a brilliant beginning for the Angry Young Man of the Age, who went on to flay the Establishment in Torture Garden and The Diary of a Chambermaid.
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Despite a troubled youth and harrowing experiences in the Franco-Prussian war, Jean Mintié is on the rise in Paris. He mingles in artistic circles and has modest success with his first writings.
That all changes when he meets socialite Julie Roux. Feeling both intrigued and unsettled by her extravagance and outspokenness, he can’t shake her from his thoughts. Their ensuing affair, initially captivating, takes a sharp turn as other aspects of Julie’s personality come to the fore.
Calvary, also commonly referred to by its French title Le Calvaire, is a tale of ruin, obsession and redemption. It marked Octave Mirbeau’s debut under his own name, after he anonymously penned no less than ten works for others. He didn’t have to look far for inspiration: the novel’s portrayal of Jean and Julie’s relationship parallels Mirbeau’s own disastrous love affair with the notorious Judith Vinmer. He would later revisit this exercise in “writing as trauma therapy” in his third book Sebastien Roch, a novel about sexual abuse at a Jesuit school for boys.
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