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- Title
Racine in Mary McCarthy's A Charmed Life.
- Authors
Meyers, Jeffrey
- Abstract
Like the pivotal third act in a classical tragedy, everything leads up to chapter eight in Mary McCarthy's A Charmed Life (1955), when the eight main characters read Jean Racine's Bérénice (1670) in French, and all the rest of the action follows from it. Racine's static drama of passion and renunciation, of mythic characters pursuing a seventeenth-century ideal of nobility, elegantly and ironically illuminates her characters. They each take on two roles, in the novel and in the play, each role complementing and enhancing the other. McCarthy blends high tragedy with social comedy to produce a biting portrait of herself and her friends. The dominant themes of Bérénice--love vs. duty, passion vs. reason, egoism vs. renunciation--add depth and meaning to the novel.
- Subjects
CHARMED Life, A (Book); MCCARTHY, Mary, 1912-1989; LITERARY characters; THEATER in literature; DRAMATISTS in literature; NOBILITY (Social class) in literature; ROMANTIC love in literature
- Publication
Style, 2009, Vol 43, Issue 4, p461
- ISSN
0039-4238
- Publication type
Article