488
PARTISAN REVIEW
man's whim"-and see only platitude. But Sarah discovers in Julie not a
banal female martyr but one who chose, though choosing to die seems hard–
Iya very original gesture. We must take the fascination of the Julie legend as
a given- for everyone in the novel soon feels it. To the reader, it must be
said, Julie Vairon's character seems insubstantial. One may wonder not mere–
ly, as Sarah does, whether she might have met Cezanne in Provence, but
also
how she felt about many other things besides new ways of painting. As she
dreamed in her cabin in the woods had this Hester Prynne never a thought
about the social world that punished her for loving too romantically? Lessing
provides no suggestion that Julie's journals expressed anything besides love
and its pangs. She does not choose to burden her image with the ideologi–
cal baggage that once weighed down her former heroines or with responses
to
the reali ties that had shaped such a heroine's short life-the class society
of her day, its view of women, her own mixed racial origins and the society
of her colonial birthplace. When, after Sarah's play has had its success, a
"Miss Saigon" musical version proves even more generally successful. One is
supposed to ,vince-but the original tale, as far as one can tell, is not so far
removed from its sentimental reduction.
The fascination ofJulie's story is fel t powerfully, nevertheless, not only
by Sarah but by Stephen, the show's "angel," who has Ii terally fallen in love
with the dead. To him, Julie is the ideal love object not to be hoped for in
his settled life-as a rich country gentleman and philanthropist, a father
and husband (his wife a good friend, though a lesbian). His strange devo–
tion may be a sign of the mental breakdown which leads, finally, to his
suicide-or else something visionary, even supernatural, a subjection to the
powers of the not-so vanished past from which a ghost can emerge to
become a succubus. There is, in any case, no question of his offering love
to Sarah-or of her finding herself in love with him- though they are
drawn close by the subject upon which they collaborate in creating the
play of
Julie
Vairol1.
Rather, he is a sort of brother, such a brother as Sarah
has rnissed. His impossible dream of love is a bizarre exaggeration of the
fatality of love mania-and a caution to Sarah.
As the play shapes itself in rehearsal, the Julie story distills a sweet poi–
son. Sarah cannot resist the flirtatious attentions of Bill, the handsome
young actor who plays the part of Julie's first lover; she suspects his sincer–
ity (he turns out to be homosexual) yet she is overcome by his golden
youth, his perfect looks, his pleading charm. Recovering, she succumbs
to
the affectionate dependence of Henry, her young American director who
returns her feelings but remains faithful to his wife. Through no restraint
of her own, she remains the celibate aging person she was at the start of
her ordeal; although a third young man, Andrew, who plays Julie's second
lover, offers himself unconditionally, he is simply invisible to her.
