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Sujet d’entraînement de commentaire
Extrait de The Return of the Native (livre II, chapitre III) de Thomas Hardy
That night was an eventful one to Eustacia’s brain, and one which she hardly ever forgot. She dreamt a dream; and few human beings, from Nebuchadnezzar to the Swaffham tinker, ever dreamt a more remarkable one. Such an elaborately developed, perplexing, exciting dream was certainly never dreamed by a girl in Eustacia’s situation before. It had as many ramifications as the Cretan labyrinth, as many fluctuations as the northern lights, as much colour as a parterre in June, and was as crowded with figures as a coronation. To Queen Scheherazade the dream might have seemed not far removed from commonplace; and to a girl just returned from all the courts of Europe it might have seemed not more than interesting. But amid the circumstances of Eustacia’s life it was as wonderful as a dream could be.
There was, however, gradually evolved from its transformation scenes a less extravagant episode, in which the heath dimly appeared behind the general brilliancy of the action. She was dancing to wondrous music, and her partner was the man in silver armour who had accompanied her through the previous fantastic changes, the visor of his helmet being closed. The mazes of the dance were ecstatic. Soft whispering came into her ear from under the radiant helmet, and she felt like a woman in Paradise. Suddenly these two wheeled out from the mass of dancers, dived into one of the pools of the heath, and came out somewhere into an iridescent hollow, arched with rainbows. “It must be here,” said the voice by her side, and blushingly looking up she saw him removing his casque to kiss her. At that moment there was a cracking noise, and his figure fell into fragments like a pack of cards.
She cried aloud. “O that I had seen his face!”
Eustacia awoke. The cracking had been that of the window shutter downstairs, which the maid-servant was opening to let in the day, now slowly increasing to Nature’s meagre allowance at this sickly time of the year. “O that I had seen his face!” she said again. “’Twas meant for Mr. Yeobright!”
When she became cooler she perceived that many of the phases of the dream had naturally arisen out of the images and fancies of the day before.
Analyse du sujet
Résumé de l’œuvre et situation de l’extrait
Grand classique de la littérature anglophone, The Return of the Native a lieu à Egdon, dans le Wessex, une région fictive de l’Angleterre. C’est un endroit très sauvage en opposition à la ville. Clym Yeobright en est originaire et y revient après avoir effectué ses études à Paris. Il a initialement l’intention de devenir enseignant et de faire progresser la société.
À son retour, il rencontre Eustacia Vye, une femme aussi belle que mystérieuse aspirant à une vie aventureuse faite de voyages (elle rêve de visiter Paris). Les deux personnages se marient, mais les idéaux pragmatiques de Clym entrent en conflit avec le désir d’évasion d’Eustacia, et leur relation se détériore. C’est à ce moment qu’intervient Damon Wildeve, qui séduit Eustacia, créant ainsi un triangle amoureux.
Eustacia se sent piégée par son mariage avec Clym, et, regrettant amèrement sa relation ratée avec Damon Wildeve, elle se rend dans une zone marécageuse, pensant à sa vie et à ses regrets. Dans l’obscurité, elle se perd et meurt tragiquement noyée (on ne sait pas s’il s’agit d’un accident ou d’un suicide).
L’extrait proposé ci-dessus se situe au début de l’œuvre, au moment où Clym revient à Egdon : Eustacia a aperçu Clym pour la première fois et rêve de lui.
Vocabulaire utile
A tinker : un colporteur
Crowded : bondé
Commonplace : banal
Amid : au milieu
The heath : la bruyère
Dimly : faiblement éclairé
A visor : une visière
A helmet : un casque
A whisper : un chuchotement
Radiant : radieux
A pool : une flaque
A window shutter : un volet
Meagre : maigre
An allowance : une indemnité
A fancy : une fantaisie
Pistes d’analyse de l’extrait
Analyse thématique
Cet extrait fait apparaître différents thèmes qui peuvent servir à la problématisation et à la constitution du plan. Par exemple, le fait qu’il s’agisse d’un rêve duquel Eustacia se réveille fait intervenir l’opposition entre rêve (ou imagination) et réalité.
La citation « the heath dimly appeared behind the general brilliancy of the action » montre une autre opposition, nommément une dichotomie mettant en regard lumière et obscurité.
Les termes « ramifications » et « maze » rappellent quant à eux le thème du « réseau » (« web ») qui est présent tout au long de l’œuvre, et s’exprime notamment au travers du triangle amoureux liant Eustacia, Clym et Wildeve.
La description du personnage qui apparaît dans le rêve, nommément « the man in silver armour », instaure quant à elle un sous-texte sur le thème de la chevalerie.
Enfin, note le lexique de l’eau évoqué par des mots comme « pool ». Ils contribuent à annoncer le destin tragique d’Eustacia. Il s’agit donc de prolepses (c’est lorsqu’on a un avant-goût de ce qu’il va se passer après, en anglais on appelle aussi ça un « flash forward »).
Analyse stylistique
Hardy n’a pas écrit que des romans, il est aussi l’auteur de nombreux poèmes. Ce qui explique l’intérêt porté à la musicalité et aux sons dans cet extrait. Tu peux y trouver de nombreuses allitérations telles que « his figure fell into fragments ».
Dans la même veine, tu noteras des polyptotes (« She dreamt a dream »), qui, en plus d’apporter une harmonie musicale à l’extrait, constituent une figure d’insistance parmi les nombreuses autres que tu peux trouver dans l’extrait. Je pense notamment aux accumulations au début du passage. Par exemple : « It had as many ramifications as the Cretan labyrinth, as many fluctuations as the northern lights, as much colour as a parterre in June, and was as crowded with figures as a coronation. »
Une fois que tu as noté tous ces éléments et travaillé sur l’interprétation que tu en fais, tu peux commencer à mettre en place ta problématique et ton plan de commentaire.
Proposition de corrigé
La proposition de corrigé suivante suggère que bien que l’extrait semble initialement constituer une pause escapiste dans le récit, le symbolisme du rêve n’est rien d’autre qu’une prolepse du destin tragique d’Eustacia.
Une première partie montre comment le contraste entre l’imagination et la réalité définit ce rêve comme une échappée fantastique au monde matériel. Cette idée est accompagnée d’une emphase portant sur le caractère extraordinaire du rêve, comme l’avance la deuxième partie du commentaire. Enfin, une dernière partie s’attache à démontrer que le rêve d’Eustacia est moins une échappatoire qu’une prophétie annonçant sa mort. Somme toute, il s’agit moins d’un rêve que d’un cauchemar…
Voici le commentaire complet en anglais
At the end of Book I, the narrator of The Return of the Native declares: “To be conscious that the end of a dream is approaching, and yet has not absolutely come, is one of the most wearisome as well as the most curious stages along the course between the beginning of a passion and its end.” This gnomic quote highlights the importance of dreams in the novel while suggesting that oneiric passages are deeply tied to passion. Eustacia’s dream in Book II, Chapter III indeed illustrates this declaration as her dream is described through various meliorative adjectives such as “exciting”, “wonderful”, “fantastic” and even “ecstatic”. This impassioned fantasy appears to have been triggered by the return of Clym, a native who had left Egdon Heath for Paris. Before her dream, and out of curiosity, Eustacia snoops around the Yeobright house in the hope of having a glimpse of this intriguing man. Yet, as the house is dark, she decides to abandon this design right before hearing Clym’s voice in a highly synesthetic passage: “She strained her eyes to see them, but was unable. Such was her intentness, however, that it seemed as if her ears were performing the functions of seeing as well as hearing.” These overflowing sensations not only lead Eustacia to daydream about Clym all evening long but account for the dream evoked in the passage under study where she imagines a dance with an anonymous knight. This excerpt can be divided into three parts: the first paragraph, full of metaphors and comparisons, introduces the reader to the fantastic as well as delightful aspect of the dream. The second paragraph details Eustacia’s dance with the knight before they fall into a pool and end up into an “iridescent hollow” where the knight shatters when she tries to remove his helmet. The last paragraphs describe Eustacia waking up, persuaded that the knight was Clym. Such an interpretation makes sense as the excerpt contains some analeptic elements that are reminiscent of Eustacia’s first encounter with Clym such as the whispering or her inability to see his face. The structure of the passage thus follows a movement from imagination to reality in which the narrator’s descriptive voice disappears in favor of Eustacia’s interpretative exclamations (“Twas meant for Mr. Yeobright!”) while the anonymous knight is attributed an identity. As a result, the passage appears as an escapist pause in the diegesis, yet this paper will show that the dream’s symbolism is nothing but a prolepsis of Eustacia’s fate, thus oneirically accelerating the narrative. Firstly, the contrast between imagination and reality defines this reverie as a fantastic escape from the material world. Such escapism is accompanied by an emphasis on the extraordinary aspect of the dream. Yet, this dream is less an escape from reality than a prophecy as it constitutes a prolepsis of Eustacia’s tragic fate.
The material world of the heath and the immaterial imagination of Eustacia are described as dichotomous, thus emphasizing the escapism at stake in the passage. A first temporal contrast between “night” and “day”, or sleep and awakening, is established, yet, the comparative structures at stake in the excerpt best illustrate the opposition between the heath and oneiricism. Comparatives of superiority (“few human beings, from Nebuchadnezzar to the Swaffham tinker, ever dreamt a more remarkable one”) as well as comparatives of equality are used: “it had as many ramifications as the Cretan labyrinth, as many fluctuations as the northern lights, as much colour as a parterre in June, and was as crowded with figures as a coronation.” In this quote, the mention of “June” differs from the plot’s temporality as Clym does not return during summer. More importantly, the chromatic intensity of the dream (“much colour”) contrasts with the “dim” appearance of the heath, an idea moreover confirmed by the antinomic characterizations of the heath and the brilliant dream: “a less extravagant episode, in which the heath dimly appeared behind the general brilliancy of the action.” As a matter of fact, the only comparative of inferiority is used in the latter quote, when the heath emerges within the reverie. This quote is moreover introduced by the contrastive adverb “however” which conveys a sense of dissonance between the first and second paragraphs. All these examples relying on comparative structures are aimed at creating a contrast between reality and imagination, placing Eustacia’s dream on a pedestal in comparison with the monotony of the heath and allowing her to escape reality.
This movement out of reality is accompanied by an emphasis on the extraordinary aspect of the dream. The fictitious dimension of this reverie is hinted at by intertextual references to both folklore, namely to the Swaffham tinker, and fairy tales through the orientalist figure of the storyteller named Sheherazade. Various accumulations (“an elaborately developed, perplexing, exciting dream”) as well as iterative tropes such as polyptotons (“she dreamt a dream”) indeed highlight the extraordinary aspect of the protagonist’s reverie. The two dancers actually “wheeled out from the mass of dancers”, their escape from the crowd being thus evoked through a verb associated with speed and modernity hinting at Eustacia’s romanticized and idealized vision of the city. More than contrasting with the rhythms of nature, this speedy movement disrupts the senses and Eustacia’s perception as she is unable to identify where she stands as illustrated by the indefinite pronoun “somewhere”. As a result, the protagonist senses mingle as epitomized by the synesthesia on which this excerpt relies: the senses of sight (“colors”, “iridescent”), hearing (“whisper”, “voice”) and touch (“kiss”) are juxtaposed, illustrating Deleuze’s idea according to which Hardy’s characters are “collections [of] intensive sensations” [1] whom subjective senses make them escape reality. The dream’s sensory dimension is even textually rendered through the prosody of the passage, notably in a simile at the end of the second paragraph when the knight’s “figure fell into fragments like a pack of cards”. In this quote, the binding alliteration in /f/, a voiceless consonant, mirrors the disappearance of the sounds produced by the “murmuring” knight while the alliteration in /k/, a plosive, reflects the “cracking noise” that wakens Eustacia. Such a sudden return to pragmatic considerations cuts off Eustacia’s escapist reverie, suggesting that she is bound to the reality of the heath.
This abrupt awakening presupposes that the dream is less an escape from reality than a prophecy as it constitutes a prolepsis of Eustacia’s tragic fate. The symbolism of the “maze” made out of numerous “ramifications” echoes the theme of the web present all along The Return of the Native and in which Eustacia is trapped. The mythological reference to the Cretan Labyrinth moreover highlights the theme of imprisonment: the maze was built by Daedalus, who, given the complexity of his construction, could barely escape it after he built it. Therefore, if Eustacia interprets her reverie as a dream, it might as well appear as a nightmare. This hypothesis is confirmed by the numerous other intertextual references present in the excerpt: the Biblical Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, had a prophetic nightmare hinting at the fall of empires. Similarly, the fact that Eustacia “felt like a woman in Paradise” has to be read as a reference to Milton’s Paradise Lost, which strongly inspired Hardy. In Paradise Lost the story of Adam and Eve is rewritten in an epic tone which mirrors the epic, chivalrous description of the knight in armor in Eustacia’s dream. In Milton’s work, Adam and Eve have terrible nightmares after eating the apple and argue with each other, which foreshadows the upcoming conflicts between Clym and Eustacia in The Return of the Native. Finally, the autotextual references sprinkled in the excerpt constitute prolepses: when they “dived into one of the pools of the heath, and came out somewhere into an iridescent hollow, arched with rainbows,” it announces the death of Eustacia, an analysis reinforced by the paronomasia between “rainbows” and “Rainbarrow”, the place where Eustacia dies.
All in all, rather than being a dream, Eustacia’s reverie appears as a foreshadowing nightmare proleptic of her fate. If some elements initially hint at the dream’s escapist dimension, they are indeed overturned by the uncountable symbols announcing the protagonist’s death. The deceptive aspect of this passage is furthermore emphasized by the unreliable narrator who resorts to epistemic adverbs and modals to describe the dream: “certainly never dreamed by a girl in Eustacia’s situation before”; “To Queen Scheherazade the dream might have seemed not far removed from commonplace.” These quotes highlight the complexity of the narrator: despite his omniscience, he remains detached from the action and plants seeds of doubt as well as irony in the narrative. Indeed, a few lines after the passage under study, the narrator declares that such a dream “occurs once in the history of the most gigantic passions, and it is a period when they are in the hands of the weakest will”, both suggesting that Eustacia’s nascent attachment to Clym constitutes the source of her tragic flaw and building the foundations of the novel’s dramatic irony.
[1] Deleuze, Gilles, and Claire Parnet. Dialogues. Trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. London: Athlone, 1987, p. 3
Voilà, tu connais maintenant les principaux enjeux de ce grand classique de la littérature anglophone. Garde à l’esprit que même s’il s’agit d’un commentaire sur un passage spécifique, les mêmes thèmes peuvent être mobilisés pour parler d’un autre extrait du roman ou encore d’autres œuvres de Thomas Hardy. Et si tu souhaites continuer de t’entraîner en littérature anglophone, consulte cet article.
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