Romance of the Forest

One of the things that I noticed in The Romance of the Forest was a pattern of Adeline and other characters being torn between seeking refuge in enclosed hiding places, and wanting to escape from captivity or from suffocating, self-imposed enclosure.

In a similar vein, the characters are also often torn between trusting and fearing others, and between loneliness and desiring solitude. The push and pull between conflicting desires for freedom and independence on the one hand, and safety and connection on the other, helps to create the emotional violence that is part of the the novel's atmosphere.

An example of this is the story that Adeline tells at the beginning of the novel. She notes that part of her reluctance to enter the convent came from her fear of being "excluded from the cheerful intercourse of society--from the pleasant view of nature--almost from the light of day" (37), and when she found herself "beyond the gates of the convent" (38), she was thrilled to see the earth "extended [...] to the round verge of the horizon" (38). She says that when she got to Paris she found it exhilarating and felt that the strangers in the crowd were all smiling and welcoming and that she was "surrounded by friends" (39). However, they left Paris and went to a "lone house on the waste" where "not a human being was to be seen" (40). The man she believed to be her father led her by the hand to a room with bars on the windows, and two days later she was locked in the room and found that her father had left her there. She wondered why he would "abandon [her] to the power of strangers" (42), and she barred the door so that others couldn't get into the room. Her fears turned out to be justified when the two men tried to break into the room. Her fear of captivity and isolation was thus replaced by fear of violation, but the men left and she thanked God for protecting her. While she was praying and thinking herself safe, the two men came in through a closet door in another part of the room. She fainted, was still locked in for a while, and then the two men gave her over to LaMotte, who she has now come to believe is her friend and "deliverer" (43).

The sense of distrust is expressed explicitly in the novel as well, such as when Adeline fears that her father has found her and that LaMotte will turn her over to him. The narrator says, "To discover depravity in those whom we have loved, is one of the most exquisite tortures to a virtuous mind" (118).

However, all of this is countered by the contrived happy ending. Theodore just happens to be the son of Adeline's kind benefactor, the Marquis wills his possessions to her before killing himself, La Luc suddenly recovers his health, and Theodore and La Motte are saved. In the end, Adeline ends up with people who were strangers, M. Verneuil and M. Amand, turning out to be family, and La Luc and Clara become like a father and sister to her so that she is no longer an orphan. (I was actually surprised that the kind physician who treated Theodore didn't show up to testify against the Marquis or to reveal that he was related to someone). It's as if the isolation and fear earlier in the novel was too disturbing and has to be countered by an idea that the individual isn't alone, that family and people who can be trusted are everywhere and that that makes up for the abuse that individuals might face at the hands of their own family members or the outside world.

The isolation and despair expressed by the manuscript writer is also countered at the end by Adeline's discovery that he was her father, as if to say that individuals are not really as alone as they think they are. But, since the coincidences in this part of the book are not really believable, the isolation and anxiety about who to trust and how to deal with others ends up being an equally, if not more powerful message. The happy ending seems to be a fantasy that's like a band-aid on a wound that has been opened up to dig into some ugly, disturbing psychological areas.