Mireille's motive in killing Marat is one of the most important
questions raised in THE EIGHT. There are two points to consider:
-The real Marat in real life was assassinated by the real Charlotte
Corday who had a real motive for killing him. The real Charlotte's actions
--coming down to Paris, buying the new dotted-swiss dress, purchasing the
whetted knife, writing the letters, taking the carriage to his place,
talking her way in, locking the door--indicate that her act was not only
premeditated but orchestrated well in advance. At her trial she confessed
she'd been planning her actions for weeks, that she had interviewed the
fleeing Girondins passing through Caen and learned that Marat was the key
figure behind the Terror. Unlike Mireille, the real Charlotte's motive was
idealistic rather than personal. Mireille however is not Chartlotte Corday
but a fictitious character.
-The fictional Mireille is wholly a product of the author's
imagination. Her motives can only be established in what is specifically
revealed through her own words and actions, and what we are told about her
on the printed page. Most people first begin to focus on Mireille only when
she assumes her role as chief protagonist, just after Valentine's death.
However, at that point Mireille has already been present throughout half
the book, and we have some clues about her life even before the beginning
of the story. It is the first half of the book, not the second, that
reveals Mireille's motives for killing Marat.
When we first see Valentine and Mireille we're told they are novice
nuns, orphans, cousins on their mothers' side (their mothers were sisters)
and they're supported at the abbey by Valentine's paternal family money,
which suggests Mireille's father had neither money nor title. Though it is
not spelled out that charity cases in convents were treated differently, we
do know that Mireille's position whether at the convent or outside is
wholly dependent on Valentine, who is her only family and also her total
means of support.
Valentine is whimsical and rebellious, doesn't want to be a nun.
She wants romance, champagne, the opera. She seems the heroine, not
Mireille who is described as big-boned, like a farm girl, constrained with
hair tucked up. She corrects Valentine, moralizes, acts bossy, suppresses
her own stirring feelings. Maybe Mireille is the sensible one as the abbess
says, but her obsession with upbraiding Valentine continues even after they
leave the convent and the rules have changed. Though only one year older,
Mireille acts like Valentine's mother or governess.We never hear an opinion
that doesn't relate to mores, appearances: What will people think?
In their interview with the abbess, Mireille doesn't speak or ask
questions, even when she learns Valentine's godfather will be her own
guardian in Paris. When Talleyrand tarts them up for the opera, she's only
worried if their dresses "please" Mme de Stael; later at Talleyrand's she
protests the "propriety" of Valentine's remarks about his age and
deformity. Valentine bursts with life, curiosity, compassion. Mireille is
filled with textbook views of right and wrong. As we soon see, Mireille has
no persona at all, no life of her own, no charisma: she's a mirror of other
people's views, she never acts but reacts to what others do around her.
Until the moment when Valentine is dead.
Valentine's death throws Mireille into a major quandary. Her life
is so inextricably the mirror of her cousin's that she literally cannot
visualize life without her. This is vividly demonstrated in the scene where Mireille realizes she cannot save Valentine: as the axe is falling, she
throws herself across her cousin's body! This is more than deep attachment
or girlish hysteria--it's attempted suicide! All of her actions and words
just after Valentine's death reveal what is going on: when she rescues the
pieces, she takes them to Talleyrand, a person she mistrusts. Why? The next
morning she takes off her clothes on the terrace, makes love with him, then
shows him the pieces. Why? We can only view their love scene through HIS
eyes, not through hers. So the only clue to what she feels is in the words
she herself speaks to Talleyrand: IT'S WHAT VALENTINE WOULD HAVE DONE IF
SHE WERE ALIVE, she says--and further, it made her HAPPY that he called out
Valentine's name INSTEAD OF HER OWN! Because for a moment it made Mireille
feel that VALENTINE WAS STILL ALIVE! Maybe Talleyrand is too befuddled by
emotion to get the message, but we shouldn't miss it. With Valentine's
death, Mireille has one reason and one reason only to go on living: to
prove that Valentine's life and death were not in vain. To do so, she has
to take Valentine's role (as she perceives it) in the game completely.
Throughout the story, Mireille never expresses her love for
anyone--for Talleyrand, their children, her great-grandchildren Sascha and
Slava,their mother--only for Valentine. A more important ethical question
than Marat is why she lets Charlotte Corday sacrifice her life for her?
Here again the clues point back to Valentine: Mireille wishes she had died
in Valentine's place. Now that she's dead, everything in Mireille's life is
geared toward pretending she isn't. Mireille seems obsessed with the game:
but in fact, she's obsessed with Valentine. Imagine her bitterness to learn
that the abbess tricked her into thinking Valentine had the pivotal role in
protecting the pieces, hence snagging Mireille herself through her
attachment. Imagine her horror when she SEES the White Queen, Catherine
Grand, who looks exactly like Valentine, and later LEARNS that she has
usurped Mireille (hence Valentine's ghost) in Talleyrand's bed. It is after
this revelation that Mireille says she'd sell her own soul and Talleyrand's
too for the game.
Throughout THE EIGHT, from the opening scenes to the very end,
Mireille's actions are driven by two things:
-She's a pawn of others, like the abbess, Napoleon's mother, even
Shahin, who want her to reach the Queening Square, slay the king, win the
game;
-She's the victim of earlier established preconceptions, she
confuses ethics with morals; equates right and wrong with good and evil,
black and white, never sees shades of grey between, where all the
characters fall at one time or another. (See Northrop Frye quote at
beginning.) But Mireille's killing of Marat is neither premeditated nor
self defense for the following reasons:
It's far too much of a stretch to view the act of stabbing a naked,
unarmed (dying) man in a bathtub within a locked room as self-defense,
regardless what you think his sister or girlfriend might do once they broke
down the door. Besides, murder is hardly a prophylactic to retaliation:
they could do it just as easily even after she stabbed him.
Nor is the killing premeditated. To all appearances, Mireille is
completely unaware of the fact that she's going to kill Marat until the
very moment when she does it. She often denies she could kill a man; and
though she does buy a knife it is for protection and to warn him off
against any actions like those the previous time she met him. But Mireille
herself shrinks at the sight of blood, not only in the butcher stalls at
les Halles, but earlier when Sister Claude, the carriage driver and priests
were brutalized. Though Mireille definitely wants revenge, and to stop the
game, it is inconceivable to her that this might reduce her to Marat's
level of retaliation.
But from the moment of Valentine's death, Mireille has been a dazed
shell-shock victim. The only times she focuses and takes command are when
she's after the pieces, later the formula--that is, during those precise
moments when she's acting out her role as Valentine's champion in the game. Given her obsession with Valentine, and in view of the two forces operating
on Mireille above, there is only one person who does NOT anticipate that
Mireille will take the reins, slay the king and grab the pieces. The person
not fully aware of her potential for such action is Mireille herself.
After the storm at sea when Cat makes love with Solarin, she sees
the grave error of her predecessor Minnie, the Black Queen: she didn't
"factor love into her alchemical equation." Cat says this when she learns
Minnie tried to keep her and Solarin from getting attached, hampering the
game. In hindsight, we realize this rejection of love affected Mireille all
her life, and everyone she touches. Her obsession with Valentine, the only
person she truly loved, drove her inadvertently to murder, and also to harm
all those who loved her: witness Talleyrand's last meeting with her, toward
the end of the book, in Bourbon l'Archambault. This conflict will
definitely be explored in the sequel. Some of my own views are already
expressed in THE MAGIC CIRCLE. Thanks!--Katherine
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