André Gide's The Immoralist

André Gide's The Immoralist is a fairly conventionally structured novel, with a concrete beginning, middle, and end. The narrator, Michel, recounts his experiences of the past three years to two of his long time friends and thus discloses what seems to be generally regarded by all as his demise - that is, his struggle with illness, his wife's miscarriage, and her subsequent death from tuberculosis - and of course, the interest and special attention he pays to men and boys during the unfolding of these events.

The first part of the novel begins where Michel parted from his friends after his wedding to Marceline, a girl he knew not very well and married only to please his dying father. Shortly afterwards they begin their honeymoon and Michel slowly realizes that he is in poor health. This culminates in an attack where he spits all night while traveling only to discover it is blood when the light of morning comes. Though he is ashamed by his illness, he finally tells Marceline and the doctor they summon tells them that he has tuberculosis and will most likely die.

Because of this, Michel becomes obsessed with his health, wanting nothing more than to live now that he has had a glimpse of death. Marceline ends up inviting children in to amuse him in his frail state and this is when the "queerness" of the novel starts to become more obvious. The first child Michel meets he describes in great detail, as having "charmingly turned ankles and wrists . . . his gandourah, which had slipped down a little, showed his delicate little shoulder. I wanted to touch it" (p. 29). Later, Michel claims that "the presence of their good health did me good" (p. 53), but more likely it seems their good looks are what did him good.

Although in and of itself, this one passage would not lead the reader to any firm conclusion about Michel's sexuality, time and time again Michel admires boy's or men's bodies and describes them in great and lingering detail. He also expresses the desire to be alone with these males and to be at least temporarily free from his wife: "as soon as we reached the orchards, I would leave [Marceline], persuade her that I was tired . . . so that she would finish the walk without me. I stayed behind with the children" (p. 51).

Indeed, as Michel recovers from tuberculosis, it becomes clear that this recovery is a symbol of rebirth; the old Michel dies and goes about a complete physical and psychological change. No longer is Michel interested in the mind nearly as much as he is the body, saying "I despised the secondary creature, the creature who was due to teaching, whom education had painted on the surface" (p. 62) and "I gave myself up to the luxurious enjoyment of my own self, of external things, of all existence" (p. 63).

Here, from the perspective of a queer studies student, my displeasure with the novel begins to cement into something palpable. To start my objections, I question any book that portrays the stereotype that gay men are pedophiles, notorious for liking young boys. Then I also feel that Gide implies that Michel is turning to the dark, lurid side of life by rejecting what is traditionally viewed as morally superior (the idea of the educated mind) and turning instead to what is traditionally considered morally inferior (the pleasures of the flesh). This makes me feel as though Gide is definitely convicting Michel of being a criminal, as though the title of the book had not made it clear enough from the start.

When Michel's wife becomes pregnant, he feels newly responsible to show her as much love and attention as possible, but all of that is just a guise because, though certainly he cares for her, Michel seems incapable of caring for anyone more than he cares for himself. Back in France, he wastes no time settling in before checking out one of farm manager's sons: "he was a fine young fellow, so exuberantly healthy, so lissome, so well-made . . . I was so busy looking at him that I found nothing to say and let Marceline do all the talking" (p. 90). When Marceline is not around, however, Michel "cease[s] to regret her absence; [he] felt as though she would have spoiled [their] pleasure" (p. 93).

At no point is it unclear that Michel is attracted to males, but the reader never gets to see him act upon his desires. In fact, it is instead clear that Michel struggles in his attempt and constant failure to truly love his wife. He is sure that he "should suppress every vagabond inclination [he] felt - or feared [he] might feel" (p. 109) and yet he does not succeed in doing so, if by "vagabond inclination" he is referring in cloaked terms to homosexual desire, as it seems he must be. The novel never explicitly says that Michel is gay and does not include any homosexual love scenes but this is due to the very nature of the struggle that Michel undergoes.

I believe he wants to reconcile with society (which is not a very queer notion) by doing what is expected of him, but this attempt is doomed from the start: he marries out of duty, rarely has meaningful interaction or intercourse with Marceline, the child he conceives is miscarried and, in fact, it seems as though the child is the catalyst for Marceline's illness and eventual death. Is this dead child a foreshadowing of Marceline's death to come or is it symbolic of the death of Michel's compliance with society?

This could go either way, as we never learn that Michel has accepted his sexuality, but at the end of the novel he finally says of the prostitute sister of a boy who serves as a sort of companion to him: "every time I meet her, she laughs and declares that I prefer the boy to her. She makes out that it is he who keeps me here. Perhaps she is not altogether wrong" (p. 205). That is the most definite and direct statement that Michel ever makes about to his sexuality.

In regards to whether or not this book should be included in a queer literary cannon, I have my doubts. Though I can see that as The Immoralist was originally published in 1921, it could have quite possibly been a ground-breaking novel for its time simply for dealing with the topic of homosexuality, no matter how much it skirts around the issue and refuses to name it.

However, in this refusal to name Michel as anything other than an immoralist, the novel seems infinitely queer in so far that Gide does not seek to classify Michel's sexuality - and perhaps he is even calling Michel an immoralist in a tongue-in-cheek manner, sarcastically, as though that is what society at large would call him. My overall feeling, though, is that Michel is presented in too many negative ways for me to accept this novel as a fair or incredibly worthwhile portrayal of a queer individual.