Dishonor, Fear & the Elite Class: Pages 56-69

In pages 56-69, the dilemma of the two lovers continue in the frequently alternating narration of The Lover. More specifically, there is more emphasis of dishonor and a continuation of fear in the relationship between the fifteen-year old girl and her Chinese lover. Her mother's suspicion and fear of her daughter's relationship was actually surprising to me because so far her mother has been portrayed as oblivious in her own despair and depression to even care for her family, let alone her daughter.  "She weeps for the disaster of her life, of her disgraced child. I weep with her. I lie....How could I, I say, with a Chinese how could I do that with a Chinese, so ugly, such a weakling?" (59)  Her mother has been described as "weeping" in numerous events in The Lover and it's almost expected of her, but the way that it's described as "the disaster of her life" draws references to the death of her father and the their poverty and monetary issues. In this quote, it does seem like her mother particularly cares for her only daughter, but at the same time looking down upon her as the "disgraced child", the dishonor of the family. The daughter herself agrees with the mother, calling the Chinese lover as ugly and a weakling, so does she blame this on herself or is she blaming it entirely on the Chinese lover?

There's an indication of the fleeting nature of happiness because in The Lover the plot is constantly shifting from temporary euphoria and back to the  long-term darkness and despair. "And everyone thinks, and so does she, that you can be happy here in this house suddenly transmogrified into a pond, a water meadow, a ford, a beach.....They suddenly stop laughing and go into the darkening garden." (62) The narrator (who may or may not be Duras) also recalls for the first time of the abundance of laughter she experienced in her childhood when with her brothers, but once again the memory recedes inevitably to a dark memory.
It is for a fact that the girl is always underestimating the Chinese lover. She thinks of him as an inferior in terms of race and also an inferior in terms of his fear of the superior. "Laughing" also appears again, but in a darker context as she laughs at the Chinese lover's fear, almost like she's belittling him for such a foolish fear."I go on lying. I laugh at his fear." (63)

Source: http://www.landofthebrave.info/images/izard-family-john-singleton-copley-1775.jpg

My view of the colonial upper class individuals

Duras begins to speak in more detail of the elite class in which she actually names these elite individuals (which is rare since very few random names have appeared in the novel). There are three different elite individuals introduced in section, all described with personality traits that haven't appeared in the novel; she speaks of them with higher respect and more positively than she does with previous characters in the novel.

 Marie-Claude Carpenter- "No one spoke about her when she wasn't there. I don't think anyone could have, because no one knew her." (65)  She admires her and regards highly of this mysterious quality she possesses, something which I think she wishes she had.

Betty Fernandez - "My memory of men is never lit up and illuminated like my memory of women." (66) She loves the way she dresses, nothing really fits her but at the same time she looks marvelous, it's reminiscent of her wearing the fedora and the gold lame shoes.

Ramon Fernandez -"He spoke with a knowledge that's almost completely forgotten, and of which almost nothing completely verifiable can survive. He offered opinion rather than information. He spoke about Balzac as he might have done about himself, as if he himself had once tried to be Balzac." (67-68) This is more of a criticism of his intellectual thinking and I think Duras is trying to convey of how she dislikes the concrete black and white knowledge that people speak highly of when discussing classic literary writers.