Reading Order
Margot Reading Order
Margot (1838) by Alfred de Musset is one of the shortest and most charming of his prose stories — a brief tale set in the Vendée during the Revolutionary Wars, in which a young royalist soldier finds himself sheltered by a peasant girl named Margot, whose simple-hearted loyalty and warmth provide a moment of grace in the middle of a brutal conflict. The story is unusual in Musset's prose fiction for its historical setting — the other prose works are set in contemporary Paris — and it shows a different range: the story of Margot and the soldier is written with the same economy and direct feeling as Mimi Pinson and Frère et Sœur, but the historical backdrop gives it a different quality, something between a short story and a prose poem. Margot herself is one of Musset's most likeable minor characters — practical, warm-hearted, unself-conscious — and the story's brief glimpse of human warmth against a background of violence is the kind of effect that the best of Musset's minor prose achieves.
Where to start
Margot is very short (under 30 pages) and can be read as part of any collection of Musset's prose fiction. It pairs naturally with Mimi Pinson and Frère et Sœur as one of the later, simpler prose stories — a relief from the psychological complexity of Les Deux Maîtresses or the self-analysis of the Confession.
Complete Margot Book List
- 1Buy
Margot
Alfred de Musset·1838·Available in French in collections of Musset's prose (Nouvelles, GF Flammarion). Often collected with the other short stories of the 1837-1838 period. - Buy
Mimi Pinson
OptionalAlfred de Musset·1845·The closest companion in tone and register — the same warmth, simplicity, and directness in a contemporary rather than historical setting.
Margot — Frequently Asked Questions
What does Margot say about Musset's historical imagination?
Margot is one of only a handful of Musset's works with a historical setting — the others are largely set in contemporary Paris or in an indefinite Romantic landscape. The Vendée setting (the region of western France where royalist peasants fought a brutal guerrilla war against the Republican armies in the 1790s) gives the story a particular resonance: the conflict between royalist and Republican, between the old world and the new, between rural tradition and urban revolution, is the largest version of the Romantic tension between the past and the present that runs through all of Musset's work. Margot herself embodies the old world — peasant, practical, warm-hearted, loyal — and the soldier she shelters is the young man who has been caught up in a conflict he didn't choose. The tenderness of their encounter is a small human moment against the backdrop of historical violence, which is perhaps the most that Musset's Romantic world view could hope for from politics.
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