Adrienne Mesurat (French Expressions Series)

Also known, rather pointlessly, as The Closed Garden. In 1908 in a provincial town, 18-year-old Adrienne lives with her selfish 60-year-old father and her old maid, tubercular sister. Their house overlooks a villa, soon rented by Madame LeGras, and a small white dwelling inhabited by an unknown doctor. Her claustrophobic life depresses young Adrienne. When she catches the merest glimpse of the doctor, and then another, she becomes obsessed with him, oh she loves him! She begins to go out each night, compulsively hanging around his home. Her sister, then her father, assume she is actually seeing a man, and put a stop to these mystery jaunts. They are driving her mad. Then her sister flees the stifling home, then the father meets his end. Adrienne is befriended by Madame LeGras, of dubious character. Adrienne's passion for the doctor burns higher and higher, culminating in full-blown hysteria. This 1991 edition carries Green's 1973 Preface, revealing much about his writing of this early novel (1927). He had read Freud's Introduction to Psychoanalysis and found it repugnant, not a tool that Green cared to use. Yet from Green's own psyche, there emerged this "psychological study" of Adrienne Mesurat. I fault this 256-page book for its repetitious overlength--30 or 40 pages worth could certainly go. And as elsewhere, Green magnifies all emotion to an extreme.