Camille: The Lady of the Camellias

Camille is that rarest of all literary creations: a readable, enjoyable classic. This novel tells a good story about the sometimes tragic and scandalous and sometimes joyous life and fortunes of one Marguerite Gautier, a Parisian courtesan, and her lover Armand. The pace in this book doesn't drag, isn't too long, and rises well to the exact conclusion a reader anticipates. This is a frank, even sexually bold sort of novel for its period, and demonstrates again that the nineteenth-century French were willing to delve into subject areas their English counterparts were not. The avenues the romantic entanglements in Camille take combine with other elements to give this tale a more modern feel than most novels of two centuries ago. It's not great literature (in fact it's barely above a well-written romance novel) but it's definitely not bad reading material, either. Three and a half stars is what I'd plant on this work.

As a learner of Spanish, I listened to the book on tape in Spanish as part of a class assignment. To enhance understanding we were assigned to read along in English from a copy the instructor had reserved in the school library. I loved the story so much and it increased my understanding of the Spanish audio. So, with 8 of us sharing the same copy, I decided to purchase my own copy which I have proudly added to my library. It is well written, the characters are interesting and the plot is terrific. A must read.

I picked up this book on the assumption that it was written by one of my favorite authors: Alexandre Dumas, the author of the Three Musketeers, Count of Monte Cristo, etc. My copy of this book even lists these books as "other books" by the author. Well, I started reading it, and it was terribly boring and not similar at all to other Dumas books I had read. I found myself profoundly disappointed that Dumas would release a book of such poor quality. I was so displeased with it that I didn't even finish the book. It is nothing more than a normal "romance" novel, which has been deemed a classic simply because it is old.

I then turned to Dumas' The Vicomte de Bragelonne, and lo and behold, it mentions in the introduction that Alexandre Dumas had a son who was also named Alexandre Dumas, who wrote Camille. I'm sorry to say that the son does not even come close to living up to the literary ability of the father, and is in fact a quite poor author. Don't be fooled by the name of Alexandre Dumas on this book: it is far worse than any of the hundreds of novels the real Dumas wrote.

Overall grade: F

I found myself sympathetic to Mr. Hugo-Fils because he was apparently born to such a woman, and I guess he also had an affair with such a woman as well. His point that we ought to love all people and "have a heart" is well taken, and in our generation, while the dominant modern view of morality (relativistic subjectivism) prevents us from even feeling any disdain, violence on TV and in movies has cauterized our natural empathy to the point that we tend to ignore anyone not like us rather than wishing them well or even helping them in their distress. The moral development of the main character (if she is the main character, and the narrator or his co-narrator the male lover of the story are not, which is a bit murkey since we go back and forth between their perspectives a lot) is at first a good thing to see, but devoid of "the permanent things" such as placing an importance upon God and/or why we exist, which might have given her the insight to see that her final decision to go back into the life of prostitution was wrong. The character who relates most of the story, the male lover, is so bent by infatuation that at one point he contemplates killing Camille so that no others may have her. That's true love. This point of view seems unreformed throughout the book with his constant digging at her when he doesn't get what he wants, and what he wants is not only faithfulness but real domination. In the end, it certainly may have been him who did kill her, albeit of natural causes. I found this book dark, disturbing and depressing, and did not see in it the redemptive quality that Verdi gave it in the opera La Traviata.

This is the most interesting book! Written so amazingly. I loved the story of obsessive love! A marvelous read! Buy it!

The "real" Lady of the Camellias (mistranslated into English as Camille--but, there you have it, the name stuck) was Rose Alphonsine Plessis, who as a child was a street beggar, abandoned by her mother and, at the age of twelve, sold by her alcoholic father to an older man. She eventually moved to Paris and became a courtesan by the name of Marie Duplessis. She attracted the attention of a prominent duke, who taught her to read and write and hold her own among members of the upper class. At the age of twenty, she was, for a year, the mistress of Alexandre Dumas (the illegitimate son of the famous novelist), who would eventually become one of the most prominent French playwrights of his generation. She is also believed to have been, soon thereafter, the mistress of the composer Franz Liszt. By the time Dumas met her, Duplessis was already suffering from tuberculosis.

Lovelorn and heartbroken for years, Dumas would base his most famous play on their affair, but the story of the fictional Marguerite Gautier was originally a novel, written in three weeks and published in 1848, less than a year after Duplessis's death. The prose version didn't really become well known until four years later, when the play became a hit--and a scandal du jour. In its time, such famous actresses as Sarah Bernhardt and Helena Modjeska performed the lead role, and both the novel and play became internationally famous.

Yes, this "autobiographical novel" is often treacly and predictable; yes, the portrait of Marguerite borders on hagiographic; yes, the stage version is today virtually unwatchable without taking serious liberties with the overly sentimental dialogue. (Charles Ludlam, in drag, did a famously hilarious and appropriate send-up in the 1970s.) But, nevertheless, this relatively slim novel has taken on a life of its own, and if you're willing to wear your heart on your sleeve for its duration, it is oddly, unexpectedly powerful. Dumas's stroke of genius, which minimizes the over-romanticizing that usually results from depictions of improbable love affairs, is to create an additional character, the unnamed narrator who tells the story secondhand, removed one step from Armand Duval's affair with Marguerite.

"Camille" is a quick read and is relatively slim (by the standards of Dumas's father, anyway), and its influence on subsequent literature is vast. Dumas fils may not have invented a new archetype, but he surely resuscitated it: the street prostitute with a heart of gold, the sympathetic Magdalene type. "Camille" would become a famous opera (Verdi's "La traviata") and ballet (by Neumeier and Chopin) and would inspire any number of imitations and parodies of the "tart with a heart" storyline during the second half of the nineteenth century. Henry James defended Dumas in a letter to a friend, "he is detestable & a childish charlatan: but as a dramatist, I think he understands the business like none of the others." James, who originally saw the play in Paris as a teenager (to the shock of his family), would also write of the book's influence, "Some tender young men and some coughing young women have only to speak the lines to give it a great place among the love stories of the world."

Classics are my favorite books. Their wordy, sometimes roundabout, but nevertheless substance-filled sentences make for satisfying, but not necessarily quick reading. This book, however, was as close to a "quick read" as any classic I have ever read. But the story could have been told in an even shorter novel. The narrator recounted his love again and again and made several actions numerous times. The novel felt empty and impersonal, the actions of the main characters and the "love" they felt for each other, based on superficial whims. If written in modern-day prose, this novel would not have been nearly as notable. Nevertheless, because I have a soft spot for classic literature, I enjoyed this book.

its a classic, how much better can it get...
I bought it for my daughter. I read it years ago. Very sad

beautiful classic love story.

One of my long time favorites!!!