She acts more like a moral gatekeeper than a translator.

The novella becomes an internal battle of what she needs versus what she wants: a Freudian dialogue between the Id and the Superego. By choosing her father, she would get to keep the only meaningful relationship she’s ever had. By choosing Anne, she would lose this hedonistic lifestyle and her close relationship with her father, but would gain guidance, discipline, and the maternal figure which she had previously lacked (her mother being dead). Cécile repeatedly finds herself caught between the prospect of stability and motherly love that Anne offers, and her existing life of boundless revelry. The radical new ideas these philosophers proposed were central to Sagan’s novel and helped to shape a sexually-liberated, intelligent, and complex female protagonist: Cécile. She had been skipping school and getting stuck into French café society, where she became acquainted with the existentialist writers Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. Francoise Sagan was 19 at the time of publishing. That is until the arrival of Anne, a highly accomplished and educated woman in her 40s who charms Cécile’s father with her beauty and intelligence. Set in the French riviera, the 17-year-old Cécile, her debauched father Raymond and his 20-something mistress Elsa enjoy a summer holiday full of hedonistic pleasures, encountering casual sex, fast cars, and heavy drinking. The whole setup was ultimately a recipe for misogynistic disaster.įrancoise Sagan’s debut novel Bonjour Tristesse made her an overnight sensation in 1950s France, where she sold over 500,000 copies within 12 months.

Sagan novel bonjour