“Crois-tu qu’on puisse être bien tendre lorsqu’on manque de pain?”

What has come over the young Chevalier Des Grieux? He is a young, gifted gentleman noted for his virtue and his intellect; yet the moment he sets sight on Manon Lescaut, reason deserts him, and he embarks upon a life as — in turns — a libertine, a cardsharp, a prisoner, a murderer, and finally an exile cast away to the French colonies in America.

L’Abbé Prévost introduces the reader to Des Grieux at a low point in his life: Manon has been sentenced to deportation for immoral behavior, and he is following her – and taking much abuse from her guards while doing it, as he doesn’t have sufficient funds to bribe there anymore. On seeing his state of despair, Renoncour – the gentleman who introduces the story – offers some financial relief which Des Grieux accepts gratefully. They meet again a few years later in Paris: Des Grieux is back from America where Manon died an untimely death, and rewards the generosity of his benefactor with the tale of his life.

Said life appears to be uneventful to the point of blandness until the 17-year old Des Grieux happens on Manon as she is preparing to enter a convent. She too is from a good family, and her parents have decided to shelter her from the worldly temptations she already seems all too likely to succumb to. Des Grieux falls in love at first sight. The pair decides to flee to Paris to get married and start a life together. Alas, they cannot contain themselves and become lovers long before reaching their destination, apparently a major impediment to marriage. They nonetheless decide on living in sin together. It is soon apparent that poverty is threatening, a problem Manon quickly solves by dumping the Chevalier for a richer lover. The Chevalier is betrayed to his father, who arranges to have him kidnapped and sequestered for a while, that he might recover his sense of propriety. The harsh medicine seems to work when Des Grieux takes up studying theology in the hope of a clerical life. Manon however finds him again, and they resume their relationship. This time, Des Grieux realizes how important financial safety is to Manon and stops at nothing to ensure it, becoming a professional grifter. However, when Manon and he get robbed, she once again slips between his fingers to remake their fortune through the generosity of another. The same misadventures is repeated several times, with Des Grieux resorting to more and more dramatic solutions to be reunited with his mistress, until at last Manon is banished and the Chevalier decides to follow her. In New-Orleans, far from the temptations of the world, it seems for a while that they will finally live a life of honor of virtue, but when they seek to crown it with a legal union, the nephew of the governor of the colony seizes the news that Manon is not legally married to claim her hand. Des Grieux and Manon flee, and she dies in the wilderness, finally leaving him free to go back to France, to an honorable life – and to solitude.

Manon Lescaut would seem a fairly inconsequential book but for two innovations in a female character: Manon evolve in the book, and she is a mix of good intentions and weaknesses. That the realization is rather heavy-handed, making her a stilted character, does not alter the historic significance of the intent. Moreover, whether that was the intention of the writer or not, one cannot but be struck by the differences in status of the Chevalier and Manon: despite being of comparable birth (a point one should not underestimate given the casual abuse, including murder, that Prévost, without a second thought, heaps on his less distinguished secondary characters), it is clear at every turn that Manon is lost the minute she flees the convent life, whereas all Des Grieux ever has to do is to give her up to find his old life waiting for him. He is born noble, and is received everywhere and given money and assistance by perfect strangers on this basis; she has nothing but her sexual power, and while she can get extravagantly paid for it, it can just as easily be used to cast her in the worse prisons.

All in all the literary merits of the book are nothing extraordinary, neither in the positive nor in the negative, though I always enjoy a little dose of XVIII century French for sheer exoticism of it, and the morale seems fairly outdated today; it is however a good reminder of where women stood only 3 centuries ago in our very progressive world.