Politics of Hedonism in Françoise Sagan’s Bonjour Tristesse

Politics of Hedonism in Françoise Sagan’s Bonjour Tristesse

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Bonjour Tristesse written by an eighteen-year-old, Françoise Sagan, is a novel about a seventeen-year-old girl, Cécile. She lives with her forty-year-old father, Raymond. Raymond enjoys parties, young women, drink and easy conversation. He, Cécile and his latest girlfriend, Elsa, sojourn on the southern coast of France, where Cécile meets a young law student Cyril. Cécile is mercurial in her thoughts, but once a true rival for her father's affections arrives at the summer house, her jealousy surfaces fully. Anne had been a friend of Cécile's mother, and, unlike Raymond's other love interests, is intelligent and similar in age. Raymond wants to get marry with Anne. Cécile is afraid that their life will be changed completely by Anne. They cannot pursue pleasure any more in their hedonistic way. Although Cécile seems happy living without goal, she still often feels contradictory of her way of life and feels empty. The paper follows Ruut Veenhoven’s researches of “Hedonism and Happiness” to examine the protagonist Cécile’s contradiction of pursuing pleasure and “paradox of hedonism” in Françoise Sagan’s Bonjour Tristesse; hence, it shows that hedonists cannot really relieve from invisible chains of life and have happiness and freedom.

There is a longstanding discussion about the relationship between hedonism and happiness. In the positive view, the reason why people think that hedonism is likely to contribute to happiness is that enjoyment enhances ones capacity to cope with the problems of life and that enjoyment also makes people more sociable (Veenhoven 440). Hedonism is also believed to contribute to happiness by its positive effect on physical health (Warburton and Sherwood, 1996). In the negative view, some people think that hedonism is bad both for our environment and for us as individuals. Hedonism is bad for environment because it gives rise to over-consumption. The critique of hedonism which is bad for us as individual includes that it leads into addiction, undermines health, and reduces ones awareness of danger, because self-indulgences smothers awareness and critical thinking (Veenhoven 438). Moreover, most of hedonists have no goals in their life. In this paper, I would like to focus on the negative view to examine Cécile’s hedonistic lifestyle. In an attempt to discuss the hedonism and happiness implied in Bonjour Tristesse, this paper further aims to question that whether hedonists really have happiness and freedom. According to Veenhoven, several examples of pleasure seekers end up in despair. Paradox of hedonism is that “a hedonistic lifestyle contributes to happiness in the short run, but not in the longer term” (439). In short, it seems that hedonism reduces happiness in the long term.

Bonjour Tristesse displays that both Raymond and Cécile are hedonists. Cécile recognizes that her love of pleasure seems to be the only coherent side of her character (Sagan 15). On vacation in the south of France, Cécile and her youthful, philandering father Raymond are spending a leisurely, hedonistic summer in a rented villa. Raymond enjoys parties, young women, drink and easy conversation. Cécile’s hedonistic characters are deeply influenced by her father. She confesses: “I was going to be for him the dearest, most marvelous of toys. I know nothing; he was going to show me Paris, luxury, the easy life. I dare say I owed most of my pleasures of that time to money; the pleasure of driving fast, of having a new dress, buying records, books, flowers” (Sagan 15). Most of her values are inherited by her father and are carved in her mind. Her pleasure is built on money, stimuli such as driving fast, material enjoyment such as having a new dress and buying flowers. People instinctively have desire to pursue pleasure. I have a question that whether hedonists really have freedom and happiness. In Bonjour Tristesse, many clues shows that Raymond and Cécile cannot really be out of touch with reality, escape from responsibilities, and relieve from complex relationships.

In terms of their father-daughter relationship, Cecile, over-indulged by her father, is enjoying being away from school, where she has flunked a couple of her exams. Raymond is unconcerned with her lack of interest in studying to retake her exams. He acts mostly oblivious to his responsibilities as a father and is more concerned with being his daughter’s “friend” and “companion.” Being in his daughter’s friend and companion seems to be a good thing but he still need some discipline to make his family in good order. Therefore, Anne is the person who brings to the villa a more principled way of living and forces the others to a reluctant awareness of the shallowness of their lives. Anne was a good friend of Raymond’s dead wife and has been part of their lives off and on during the fifteen years since Cecile’s mother died. She is not only beautiful but also cultured, intelligent, and an accomplished and successful fashion designer. Anne’s more conventional way of life and views strike their original life and Anne will do away with their carefree lifestyle.

She feel struggle between living in her strict lifestyle and living in their carefree lifestyle. She cannot accept that the newcomer Anne takes charge, ordering Cécile to terminate her romance in order to stay indoors and do her homework. Hence, to prevent their marriage the daughter devises an ill-fated plot in which the pretence of an affair between her boyfriend and the father's dumped girlfriend is intended to provoke jealousy of her father and return to his dumped girlfriend. In Cécile’s case, this novel is built on her struggle. Sometimes, she thinks Anne’s lifestyle would turn them into two civilized, well-behaved and happy people (Sagan 45). She writes: “For she would certainly make us happy. How easily, unstable and irresponsible as we were, we would yield to her influence, and be drawn into the attractive framework of her orderly plan of living (Sagan 46).” and “For two hours every day I would concentrate in solitude on my work…I would be intelligent, cultured, somewhat aloof, like Anne” (Sagan 62). These words prove that she is ever attracted to the orderly plan of living. She believes that if she lives that kind of life she would become intelligent, cultured, somewhat aloof. Besides, Cécile is afraid that her father will end up their life lonely. For instance, when they meet and dine with Webb and his wife. Webb is the person who is like Cécile’s father having many affairs. Anne tells Cécile how men like Webb end up:

 A time comes when  they  are no longer attractive or in 

 good form.They can’t drink any more, and they still hanker      

 after women, only then they have to pay and make         

 compromises in order to escape from their loneliness: they 

 have become just figures of fun. They grow sentimental and   

 hard to please. I have seen many who have gone the same way. (Sagan 94)

She also implies that Cécile’s father will go the same way if he still keeps his habits to have affair and uses this kind of attitude to face and deal with his affection. It seems to foresee Anne’s leaving.

However, most of the time, she thinks that Anne intrudes in their lives. Cécile devises a plan to prevent the marriage. She decides that she must take steps to regain my father and our former life at all cost (Sagan 46). She compares Anne with them: “She is cold, we are warm-hearted, she is possessive, we are independent. She is indifferent; other people don’t interest her, we love them. She is reserved, we are gay. We are full of life and she will slink in between us with her sobriety; she will warm herself at our fire and gradually rob us of our enthusiasm (Sagan 52)”. Her fear implies that Anne is cultured, educated, principled, and intelligent. Anne’s strength makes her weakness and emptiness more obvious.

In terms of their attitudes to love, to some extent pursing freedom and happiness is selfish. Raymond refused categorically all notions of fidelity and serious commitments.”(Sagan 8) His father has many affairs. He does not take responsibilities for those relationships. His freedom and happiness are top priorities; therefore, he does not care about others sadness. Cécile can accept his father having affairs and her attitude toward affection is also influenced by her father. Anne tells Cécile: “Your idea of love is rather primitive. It is not a series of sensations, independent of each other…”and “There are such things as lasting affection, sweetness, a sense of loss…but I suppose you wouldn’t understand.” (Sagan 25) She does not know that whether she loves Cyril or not, she still makes love with him. She acknowledges: “I was governed by my instincts like an animal, swayed this way and that by other people, that I was shallow and weak” (Sagan 25). She also confesses that she was not at the age when fidelity is attractive and she knew very little about love (Sagan 8). No one can judge that stable relationship is better than changeable relationship, or vice versa. Nevertheless, even though Cécile and her father would like to change their relationships frequently, they are not able to sit on the sidelines and they are still deeply influenced by their affection and emotion:

       We sat down opposite each other, almost smiling because         

       our preparations had made Anne’s return seem probable. 

       A bat was circling round outside the window. My father 

       started writing. (108)

After Anne leaves them, they are anxious that what they can do to make Anne come back. Cécile proposes that they can “write to her” and “ask her forgiveness. However, that is too late.

She cannot actually relieve from her responsibility such as her exam. Anne tells Cécile: “Do not protest: you are seventeen and I feel a certain responsibility for you now. I’m not going to let you ruin your life. In any case you have work to do, and that will occupy your afternoons.” She also struggle in her contradiction: she is not really happy. She confesses she smoked a good deal and felt decadent, which gave her pleasure. But she was not deluded by this game of pretence: she was sad and bewildered. (76) Many people may think that hedonistic lifestyle can bring them completely happiness and freedom. But we can see that Cécile still feels sad and bewildered sometimes when she is not in the party or spends money.

Veenhoven claims: “Since there is good evidence that enjoyment is a by-product of self-actualisation, it is inferred that the pursuit of pleasure yields less pleasurable experiences in the end than a life devoted to a cause or to self-development” (439). The most important and happiness thing is to set up a goal and achieve it. Usually, those goals cannot be achieved by money. After everyone strives to make their dream come true, it is hard to describe the happiness after people strive to make their dream come true.

Because Raymond and Cécile cannot really be out of touch with reality, escape from responsibilities, and relieve from complex relationships, they cannot really have freedom and happiness. The hedonistic lifestyle seems to avoid great worries in real life. However, it can only make them more empty and lonely.

                                           Work Cited

Veenhoven, Ruut. "Hedonism and Happiness." Journal of Happiness Studies 4: 437-57. Print.

Sagan, Francoise. Bonjour Tristesse. Paris: Julliard, 2008. Print.