"La souris japonaise : roman" by Rachilde is a novel written in the early 20th century. It presents a first-person confession by a young bourgeois man, Henri, who frames an eventual “crime” as a moral act while recounting his formation between an exalted, chaste bond with his Jesuit tutor, Abbé Armand de Sembleuse, and a clandestine, troubling entanglement with his cousin, Lucienne Morin. The story probes desire, purity, and bourgeois hypocrisy through
a psychological lens. The opening of the novel finds Henri addressing his lawyer, insisting his “crime” is a useful, logical outcome of his life, then retracing his upbringing: distant, respectable parents; a corrosive household atmosphere; and the arrival of the elegant Abbé Armand as preceptor. As Lucienne imposes herself on him, Armand disapproves and gradually binds Henri to a demanding ideal of purity; their intense, platonic attachment culminates in an Italian journey that heightens both devotion and perilous jealousy. Back home, amid a provincial ball and family expectations of marriage, Henri grows more alienated; ill health follows, and his parents push for a prudent future. The section ends with a confrontation in which Henri’s father announces Lucienne’s pregnancy and implies Henri is responsible, while Henri flatly denies it, invoking what Armand knows of the truth. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
Laurent Vogel and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF/Gallica))
Reading Level
Reading ease score: 80.9 (6th grade). Easy to read.
