The Lady of the Camellias (La Dame aux Camélias)

La Dame aux Camélias (The Lady of the Camellias) is an 1848 novel by Alexandre Dumas fils. Dumas himself adapted it as a stage play shortly thereafter. In 1853 it became the basis for Verdi's opera La traviata. Both the novel and play were highly successful.

Dumas was the son of the immensely popular and famous Alexandre Dumas. The younger Dumas went on to become a major figure in the French literary world.

He was just twenty-three when he wrote The Lady of the Camellias. It is a semi-autobiographical account of his affair with Marie Duplessis, one of the most famous (and expensive) of all 19th century courtesans. Marie Duplessis died of tuberculosis in 1847 at the age of twenty-three. The heroine of the novel is renamed Marguerite Gautier.

Given that Dumas’ liaison with Marie Duplessis was well known in Parisian society and that readers of the novel were well aware of Marie’s death in 1847 the author’s decision to begin the novel with her death was probably an unavoidable one, and of course it serves to highlight the tragedy. We know the heroine is doomed, and that the love between these two people is doomed.

A young man named Armand Duval becomes infatuated with the celebrated courtesan Marguerite Gautier.

The problem is that he cannot possibly afford her. Armand is by no means poor but he is far from being a rich man. And only a very rich man indeed could afford a woman like Marguerite.

The complication is that they fall genuinely in love. Marguerite does not mind that Armand has very little money, as long as he is prepared to accept that she is being kept by a wealthy duke and that she is accepting money from other men for her sexual favours. Armand struggles to come to terms with all this. He struggles to understand Marguerite.

Both Armand and Marguerite try to find a solution that will be mutually satisfactory.

Dumas had an assortment of mistresses and kept women. The world of decadent excess, of high-class prostitutes, the world of the demi-monde, was his world. His attitude towards prostitutes was extremely sympathetic. That is not to say that he entirely approved of prostitution. His attitudes to this question were complicated and perhaps contradictory. On the other hand he did not believe that such women should be condemned. Marguerite Gautier is a very sympathetic heroine. Dumas does not sentimentalise her. Marguerite is quite mercenary. She has found that the wages of sin are very generous and she is addicted to a life of luxury and excess. She loves Armand but she doesn’t see any reason to be faithful to him.

Marguerite has her flaws, but her love for Armand is genuine.

The novel can be described as a fictionalised account of the life of Marie Duplessis. Just how fictionalised Dumas’ account is remains uncertain.

Dumas was a big name in France but his plays were considered much too shocking to be performed in England. Reading the novel it is certainly evident that there was a reason that French novels were considered scandalous by respectable opinion in England. The novel makes not the slightest attempt to disguise the fact that its heroine is a prostitute and that the relationship between the two main characters is a sexual one. Nor does it disguise the fact that while living as a kept woman Marguerite turns tricks on the side. Dumas avoids moral judgments. Armand has a mistress before he meets Marguerite and during the course of the story he sleeps with other women. He is not the most admirable of men - he fails to trust Marguerite at a time when she needed him to do so. He lets her down.

The Lady of the Camellias offers an extraordinary glimpse into the world of the demi-monde, written by an insider. It can be considered to be a priceless artifact of social history. It is also a great love story. Highly recommended.

It has been filmed countless times,  the most notable adaptations being the 1921 Camille starring Alla Nazimova and Rudolph Valentino, the 1936 Camille starring Greta Garbo and the 1969 Camille 2000.