47 pages • 1 hour read
Abbe PrevostManon Lescaut
Abbe PrevostFiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1731A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Pages 83-123Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Pages 83-89 Summary
Manon and Des Grieux are again happy. They have enough money to live on and enjoy each other’s company. Des Grieux returns to gambling “in various less disreputable gatherings, where, since fortune favoured [him], [he] was spared the humiliation of having to resort to cheating” (83). Manon makes friends “with several young women” (83) to pass the time while Des Grieux gambles.
All seems well until one of the servants reports that “a certain foreign nobleman appeared to have taken a great fancy to Mademoiselle Manon” (83). This nobleman, an Italian prince, follows Manon everywhere, trying to find an opportunity to speak to her alone. Des Grieux tries to believe in Manon’s innocence and does nothing more than ask the servant to observe Manon closely and report back to him. A few days later, the servant reports that Manon gave the prince a letter. Manon, however, appears unbothered, complaining only that Des Grieux is not spending enough time with her. She asks him to spend the next day with her.
They spend most of the day with Manon styling Des Grieux’s hair, until the Italian prince visits. Des Grieux is enraged, but Manon “seized with one hand the hair that was floating free on [Des Grieux’s] shoulders” and dragged him “to her door,” where she says to the prince, “Here is the man I love, the man I have vowed to love my whole life long” (87). She asserts that the prince is nothing in comparison, saying, “all the princes in Italy are not worth a single one of these hairs I have in my hand” (87). Manon’s devotion touches Des Grieux, though he does reprimand Manon for going too far with “the joke” (89). Once Manon explains why she played such a joke, Des Grieux, “intoxicated with love, approved of everything she had done” (89).
Pages 90-111 Summary
M. de T… brings G…M…’s son to visit Des Grieux and Manon’s. The younger G…M… assures them that he is very different from his father, and Des Grieux and Manon are both pleased with his friendship. Des Grieux recognizes that G…M… has fallen in love with Manon, but far from being jealous, he is “delighted with the effect of her charms on him, and congratulated” himself “on being loved by a girl with whom the whole world fell in love” (91). However, when G…M… decides to steal Manon away, Des Grieux decides to simply take Manon and move. Unfortunately, they are unable to get away before G…M…’s next visit, so Des Grieux informs Manon of their predicament. Manon wants to trick G…M… in the same way they duped his father, to “take revenge on the father, and not through his son but through his purse” (93). Although Des Grieux believes the plan is foolish, he is incapable of refusing Manon.
On the night the plan is set in motion, Des Grieux waits to meet Manon outside a theater and spirit her away to a new home. He’s instead met by a beautiful young sex worker with a letter from Manon, who claims that she could not convince G…M… to take her to the theater to meet Des Grieux and so sent the young woman in her place “to console [him] a little for the pain she realized this news might cause [him]” (96). Horrified, Des Grieux vows “to try and forget [his] false and ungrateful mistress forever” (96). However, he decides to speak to Manon one last time and catches her alone with M. de T…’s help. Manon explains that she was not betraying him, but only biding her time until she could get away, though it is clear she knew that she would have to be intimate with G…M…. Des Grieux is nonetheless quick to forgive her, believing “[s]he sins, but without malice” (105).
A servant interrupts with a letter from M. de T…, who suggests that Des Grieux hire some men to kidnap G…M… for the night and revenge himself “by eating his supper and sleeping, that very night, in the bed that he was hoping to occupy with [Des Grieux’s] mistress” (106). Des Grieux thinks it is a risk, but Manon considers it a great idea; they “will be avenged on both father and son” (107). Unfortunately, G…M…’s father quickly hears of the abduction and just as quickly has both Manon and Des Grieux arrested and transported to the Petit-Chåtelet, a debtors’ prison, where “the sentences […] were immediate and without right of appeal” (153).
Pages 112-123 Summary
Des Grieux and Manon are devastated. Des Grieux wonders:
Why were we not born, both of us, with qualities consistent with our miserable lot? We have been given intelligence, feeling, taste. But alas, what a melancholy use we make of them, while so many baser souls, who deserve our fate, enjoy all the favours of fortune! (112).
Once at the Petit-Chåtelet, Des Grieux bribes the guards to ensure special treatment for himself and Manon and contacts his father for help. He is visited by the Lieutenant-General of Police, who is “inclined, in view of” Des Grieux’s “youth and […] birth, to do what he could” for him (115). He does not feel the same way about Manon, whom he deems “a dangerous young woman” (115). His father arrives soon after, initially furious but soon moved to compassion once more. He agrees to speak to M. G…M… and ask for leniency. M. G…M… agrees, and Des Grieux is released; however, both M. G…M… and Des Grieux’s father request “that Manon should be shut up for the rest of her days, or sent to America” (118). The Lieutenant-General of Police promises to “have Manon dispatched by the first boat” (118).
Des Grieux collapses upon hearing this news. After recovering, he decides to kill everyone—M. G…M…, his son, even his father—but he soon reconsiders. He instead borrows money from Tiberge, who does not know what has happened, and from M. de T…, who also advises him to hire “some gallant comrades” and “attack Manon’s guards once they were outside the city limits” (121). His only other option, M. de T… says, is to convince his father and M. G…M… to ask for a pardon for Manon. This plan fails, however. Des Grieux’s father angrily refuses to help, condemns Des Grieux’s foolishness, and washes his hands of his son.
Pages 83-123 Analysis
Prévost added the subplot about the Italian prince who becomes obsessed with Manon in 1753, when Prévost released the story on its own; it was not part of the original Memoirs. Prévost explains in the Foreword, through Renoncour, that this addition “seemed necessary for the fuller portrayal of one of the principal characters” (4), most likely Manon. Often called by scholars “the episode of the Italian prince” (152), it is another rare occasion when the reader hears Manon’s voice unmediated by Des Grieux, and it seems intended to convince the reader of Manon’s love for and fidelity to Des Grieux. The ordeal also seems designed by Manon to prove her faithfulness to Des Grieux, who still believes she is only faithful if he has money. Although he at first states the joke went too far, Des Grieux is “touched to the depths of [his] heart by a sacrifice [he] could only attribute to love” (89).
This outward display of love and fidelity explains why Des Grieux allows Manon to play a trick once again, this time on the son of the man who had them both arrested the first time. This is also related to Des Grieux’s arrogance, however. He admits that he was “delighted with the effect of [Manon’s] charms” and “congratulated [him]self on being loved by a girl with whom the whole world fell in love” (91). Much like his careful inventory of the people who find him good and worthy, Des Grieux’s delight in other men’s admiration of Manon is not the innocent admission of young man but blatant pride. Pride, as one with Des Grieux’s education should know, goeth before a fall.
This fall is both swifter and more brutal than the one they experienced previously. Although Des Grieux is quickly released from prison, thanks to his father’s intervention, Manon is sentenced to transportation to the French colony in America, where she will be awarded as a wife to one of the male colonists. Although it is Des Grieux who cheats and steals and kills, M. G…M…, Des Grieux’s father, and even the Lieutenant-General of Police are convinced that Manon is the problem and the one who must be punished. The Lieutenant-General even tells Des Grieux that Manon “was generally considered a dangerous young woman” (116). This is in keeping with 18th-century social mores and beliefs about gender, some of which linger today. Men like Des Grieux can be rehabilitated because they are of good breeding; they are rewarded or escape punishment because of their potential. Manon, already condemned as unworthy by her “humble birth,” is now irreparably damaged by her sexual relationships with Des Grieux and other men. Such women were thought to be capable of deliberately trying to corrupt men like Des Grieux, M. G…M…, and his son.
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