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Part 2, Chapter 4
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Bonjour Tristesse, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Coming of Age
Love vs. Passion
Decadence and Self-Destruction
Control
Summary
Analysis
Ultimately, the moment on the terrace isn’t enough to resolve things between Anne and Cécile—Anne has “her principles,” after all. A few days later, Anne brings up the subject of Cécile’s studies once more. When Cécile loses her temper and goes off on Anne, even Raymond gets angry at Cécile. Later, after Cécile has retreated to her room, she gets up to grab a glass of water and realizes that Anne has locked her in. Panicked, Cécile slams her body against the door so hard that she bruises herself. She calms down after a while and returns to her bed. Then, she starts to think about “revenge.”
Cécile continues to lash out at Anne and Raymond. In so doing, she only reinforces her immaturity. This becomes abundantly clear as her emotional outburst gets her sent to—and then locked inside—her bedroom, like a child whose parents have grounded her as punishment for misbehavior. When this punishment motivates Cécile to plot her “revenge,” it signals her implicit connection between this punishment and the bourgeois ideology she fears Anne will impose (and is indeed already imposing) on Cécile and Raymond’s home life.
Active
Themes
At 6:00, Raymond returns to “release” Cécile. Cécile smiles at her father, who seems relieved that she hasn’t taken her punishment too hard. He pleads with her to be nicer to Anne. Cécile promises she will—then ironically proceeds to sing Anne’s praises, declaring that “Anne is always right,” and that clearly, Anne’s bourgeois way of life is far superior to Raymond and Cécile’s own. Raymond urges Cécile to be reasonable. Even he can admit that the decadent lifestyle they’d been living when it was just the two of them might not have been appropriate for a girl Cécile’s age. With things somewhat settled between Cécile and her father, the two of them trudge downstairs together, where Cécile apologizes to Anne.
The mature thing for Cécile to do in this situation would be to try to talk with Raymond about what she’s feeling about Anne. But because Raymond and Cécile’s relationship never really involved much introspection or emotional depth—they mainly just prioritized having fun—it’s not something that comes naturally to her. The phony, exaggerated approval Cécile conveys instead just serves to reinforce her immaturity and the underlying superficiality of how she engages with others and with the world in general.
Active
Themes
Later, Cécile meets Cyril in the wood, per their arrangement. There, Cécile tells him the next phase of the plan. Cyril is apprehensive, but Cécile kisses him deeply to calm his nerves. She wants him to spend all night dreaming of her, and she wants to do the same.
Active
Themes
