Moderato Cantabile 1

The piano lesson that introduces the novel is a frustrating event to analyze. There are three people present. The first is Mademoiselle Giraud, the instructor who tolerates absolutely no incompetence or disobedience. Of the other two present, Madame Anne Desbaresdes and her child, she is clearly the dominant one. She controls the lesson and does not accept Anne's pleas that her child is stubborn. Anne herself is a somewhat weird character. She is not very sure of herself and seems to feel bad for subjecting her child to the strict teaching of Mademoiselle Giraud. For example, she shouts at the child "You've got to learn to play the piano" at one point, yet only a bit later protests that "it upsets me when he does as he's told like that." The lesson would have gone undoubtedly better if the mother weren't there, for she constantly sends both the child and Mademoiselle Giraud mixed signals. She clearly has the best intentions, but has no idea as to how to go about realizing them. The child is the most predictable person present at the lesson. As can be expected of a young child, he is more interested with the motor boat passing in the distance and the loud screaming than learning to play the piano. He even declares at one point, "I don't want to learn how to play the piano." From Mademeoiselle Giraud's complaints that she has explained what "Moderato Cantabile" means countless times, it is safe to assume that the child really understands what it means. He refuses to say it, however, because such an act would recognize the legitimacy of the piano lessons he was receiving.

The situation of the child in this piano lesson reminds me of the plight of women as explained in Maria de Zayas' "Disenchantments of Love." The child has virtually no self agency; he is expected to do exactly as he is told. He attempts to rebel by claiming not to know what "Moderato Cantabile" means, or at least refusing to recite it, and in return, he is chastised. But the greatest connection between these works is the mother. In Moderato Cantible, she plays a similar role as the husbands or fathers of the Disenchantments. She demands that the child conform to the role she has prescribed to him, and he tries to oblige. Such an attempt is impossible, however, for the mother demands contradictory things from him. First she yells at him that he must learn to play the piano, then laments when he actually plays it well, for it upsets her when he "does as he's told like that." The child, like the women of the Disenchantments, has absolutely no chance of playing the role expected of him. Thus, it is no great stretch to say that Duras is protesting the treatment of women in male-dominated societies as that of children.