Friday, September 07, 2007

The Maias: from the 19th Century

In his novel The Maias, author José Maria Eça de Queirós gives his total attention for over 600 pages to a single character, the nobly born and wealthy Carlos, descendant of the noble Maias family. A number of chapters give his background: the marriage of his father to an unworthy woman, her abandonment of her son and husband, the father's suicide leaving him to be reared by his grandfather, and Carlos's education as a doctor. Carlos and his grandfather, sole survivors of the great family, own and live in grand houses filled with precious art and expensive furnishings. The author seems to love describing the possessions of the family.

Despite his resolve to practice medicine (and maybe even to serve his fellow-humans), Carlos becomes absorbed by possessions, by his shallow friends, by time-wasting activities, and by flirtations with married women. He decides to write a book but never really gets started on it -- it's all talk. Much is typical of the end of the 19th century when the book was written & published (this is a brand-new translation), but I think some of the qualities of the finest 19th century novels are missing.

The Maias is ponderous. Descriptions of houses and gardens sometimes seem endless. Portrayals of Carlos' and his companions' interests constantly refer to works of contemporary music and literature, especially French, and to life in Paris and other centers of sophisticated life. The grandfather is a shadow, living in the same house and rarely making an appearance. A variety of friends, enemies, and rivals come and go, but never become full-fledged characters. At a poetic evening, all the local poets read from their works, but the fragments quoted in the text are not, in my opinion, impressive at all -- not at all like the best works of the century they seem to be echoing.

The spirit of the times -- especially politics in France -- plays a role, but all the characters seem to be posing more than really experiencing anything. Eça is not Zola, he's not Flaubert, his characters don't transcend sordid behavior or shallowness through vivid description and penetrating analysis, at least not for me. They don't quite become parodies or larger-than-life satiric figures like the minor characters of Dickens, either. Oddly, he virtually never portrays local color or lower-class characters; the faithful family retainer and English governess are far from lower class. The author knows Portugal is a backwater, the characters know it, and it's a painful fact for the reader, too.

A plot emerges during approximately the last 250 pages. It involves a love affair, which begins with one more seduction of a married woman. I won't give the details of this final plot-line, which despite copious hints earlier in the book I would say involves an excess of improbability. As revelations pile up, Carlos confides in his friend Ega (a writer that seems to be the author's alter ego: even the names: Eça/Ega) and Ega acts to help him cope with all his pitiful challenges. But it's still all Carlos, all the time: affronts to his honor, threats to reveal his deepest and most embarrassing secrets, fear that his grandfather will find out and the like.

My major response to the book is to how little it engages the reader in any empathy for Carlos, and above all how completely the author fails to develop a convincing portrait of a single one of the women in the book: Carlos' mother, his mistresses, and his friends' mistresses. Women and possessions are handled with exactly the same attitude and love of external details. Signs of emotions may appear on their faces; they may faint; they may fall at the feet of their spurning lovers; they may suffer from rejection -- but these details seem painfully parallel to the changes in the scenery, the light coming through curtained windows, or the atmosphere in a theater.

Carlos sometimes asks himself probing questions, but he quickly goes on with his shallow behavior. For example, discovering that his mistress has never been married to her "husband," he loses all respect for her, as he was really convinced that he had seduced an innocent (or something similar). Then he muses -- "...she was already a woman running away from her husband, which, not to be too harsh, is neither a very pure nor a very dignified thing to do. Such a humiliation [he's humiliated to have seduced an unmarried woman!] was, of course, galling, but no more so than that of a man who owns a Madonna which he contemplates with religious awe, believing it to be by Raphael, only to discover one day that the divine work was painted in Bahia by some fellow..." (p. 419)

As he comes to terms with the new status of his mistress, Carlos goes through many other thoughts, and eventually, they reconcile in a melodramatic scene. But in essence, she seems to mean to him just what possessions mean: a sign of his status and position in life, regarded with deep though melodramatic emotions. I think the role of women as something other than humans is my main problem with this book.

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