Adélaïde de Clermont-Tonnerre joins in Je voulais vivre the provocative project to bring one of the most famous “villains” in French literature back to life: Milady de Winter, the “femme fatale” from Alexandre Dumas’ The three MusketeersHowever, their aim is not a mere remake, but a deliberate revision: the destabilization of a literary condemnation, the deconstruction of masculine attributions, and the redefinition of victim and perpetrator categories. Clermont-Tonnerre reads Dumas critically—and completes his character's work to reveal what Dumas omitted, concealed, or projected. This study develops theses on the function of the character in both novels and compares communicative forms, narrative threads, gender relations, narrative techniques, character constellations, metaphors, and temporal structure; ultimately, it seeks to explain whether and why Je voulais vivre deserves the Prix Renaudot 2025.
Alexandre Dumas establishes Lady de Winter in The three Musketeers as an evil principle, by consistently structuring central episodes of the plot around a single thesis: Woman is the disruptive element of the male order, a demonic force that threatens the honor, duty, and camaraderie of the heroes. This is particularly evident in the seduction of Felton, which Dumas stages as pure manipulation: A pious male virtue succumbs to a female temptation, Buckingham is murdered, and evil appears as genuinely female-initiated. Female sexuality here is not an expression of desire or self-preservation, but a metaphysical threat directed against the male body and thus against the state. This construction of active seduction and passive male corruption serves the total moralization of their actions.
Je voulais vivre This episode is taken up, but the perspective shifts radically: Felton is no longer the innocent, readily available victim of diabolical seduction, but a man who, through religious fanaticism and internalized violent fantasies, could become a perpetrator himself at any moment. The narrative perspective shifts the action inward, into Milady's mind: the decision to instrumentalize Felton is portrayed as an act of survival in a world where all avenues of legitimate protection are closed to women. The seduction loses its moralistic and theological veneer and appears as self-defense in an asymmetrical gender war.
Clermont-Tonnerre takes a similar approach with the murder of Constance Bonacieux. Dumas codes this act as the endpoint of female depravity: the femme fatale destroys the pure woman precisely because she is pure; malice springs from envy and pathological competition. Here, too, the male perspective on the events forces Milady into the mold of an absolute antithesis to the virtuous heroine. Je voulais vivre However, Clermont-Tonnerre's rereading of Dumas avoids this moral binary: the killing becomes understandable within a structure in which women's bodies are constantly declared a resource by male figures – be it in the name of love or politics. The antagonistic construction of female roles in Dumas is revealed as a product of power relations that pit women against each other to secure male dominance. Violence here is not the origin, but the consequence.
Dumas's revenge against d'Artagnan also follows the same paradigm: resentment unleashes malice; the woman, feeling hurt, responds with excess and must be restrained. The fact that d'Artagnan had previously seduced and publicly humiliated her through deception is playfully downplayed in the heroic narrative or dismissed as a legitimate trick of the lover. Clermont-Tonnerre, however, makes humiliation the central cause of a trauma that erupts into violence. In this retelling, Milady does not appear uncontrolled, but rather acts to preserve the remnants of dignity that society has not yet robbed her of. The perpetrator-victim dynamic shifts, without excusing the character's violence, and reveals that male heroism is by no means free from crime.
The treatment of the brand is particularly significant: In Dumas's work, it is made legible as an ontological sign of a past crime; the woman's body appears as a sealed document of her wickedness. The scar legitimizes the subsequent death sentence and irretrievably deprives her of any empathy. Je voulais vivre This time, however, it takes on the exact opposite meaning: the scar does not speak of her essence, but of what was done to her – a corporeal archive of male violence; the preceding act of punishment is recalled in detail and historicized, so that the stigma can no longer be considered a metaphysical sign of evil, but a politically generated inscription of powerlessness.
The most drastic rewriting, finally, concerns the tribunal of Armentières. Dumas stylizes this improvised execution as a moral necessity, indeed as a heroic legal act that heals history of its corrupting influence. The reader is meant to experience the execution as a just retribution in which masculine virtue triumphs. Clermont-Tonnerre, on the other hand, contrasts the scene with the perspective of a woman who finds no voice because her defiance is already considered a crime. The tribunal is revealed as lynching under the guise of honor; where Dumas stages catharsis, Clermont-Tonnerre writes a chapter on femicide in a world narrated by men.
Thus, all the key events that Dumas uses to demonize his character return in Je voulais vivre again – but with a crucial narratological and ethical shift: each episode, originally intended to demonstrate moral depravity, becomes, through contextualization, focalization, and trauma narration, a moment that exposes societal violence. Clermont-Tonnerre doesn't write against Dumas, but through him; she takes the literary material seriously, but shifts the power of interpretation to the inner perspective of the character herself. Where Dumas stylizes female evil as natural, Clermont-Tonnerre leads Je voulais vivre The film depicts the social and psychological development of a woman whose agency was first denied, driving her into destructive forms of defense. The intertextual recoding does not demystify, but rather differentiates: evil is not eradicated, but explained – and precisely through this explanation, becomes open to new evaluation.
Content
- Two Miladies: Topos, Icon, Controversy
- Forms of communication: judicial discourse vs. introspective voice
- Narrative threads and temporal structure: Causality vs. Reconstruction
- Gender relations: Representation, power, body politics
- Narrative techniques: focalization, irony, metalepsis
- Character constellation: male networks, solidarity-based divisions, maternalism
- Metaphor: fire, mirror, mask
- How are the novels connected – Intertextual mechanics
- From conviction to plea bargain
Two Miladies: Topos, Icon, Controversy
Dumas' Milady appears as an archetypal antagonist: beautiful, charming, intelligent, and yet profoundly demonic—or rather, demonized. She is the cardinal's agent, a seductress, a poisoner, a traitor; ultimately, the classic "necessary" scapegoat in a group of men seeking to restore their honor. Dumas constructs her as a projection screen for male anxieties and fractures: adultery, betrayal, sexual manipulation. The narrative evokes her "evil" in dramatic tableaux (with beatings, intrigue, trial, and execution) and leaves little room for self-interpretation.
Clermont-Tonnerre, on the other hand, takes this projection surface as the starting point for her novel work: she seeks the person behind the myth, reconstructs childhood, wounds, motivations – and thus achieves a redistribution of narrative sovereignty in favor of the woman, not least in the language of the inner monologue and the first person. Je voulais vivre The author posits that Milady is not merely a "shadow" on a male screen, but a subject that can be read both historically and psychologically; the novel's plot "demands the justice" that literature has denied her. The novel itself announces this programmatically: "It is time to put the legend aside and get to know the woman." 1
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Dumas constructs Milady as a function in a male epic (conflict generator, mirror of male unity); Clermont-Tonnerre deconstructs this function, reconstructs the person and transforms the figure into an instrument of feminist revision.
Forms of communication: judicial discourse vs. introspective voice
In The three Musketeers The forms of communication are predominantly dialogic and scenic: politics, duels, and intrigue are negotiated in direct speech and dramatic set pieces; the narrator appears as an omniscient chronicler who narrates, comments, and makes pointed observations – a feuilletonistic, theatrical mode. Milady is characterized by the reactions of the men; her speech is seen as a manipulative tactic, her inner thoughts often remain decree-like and invisible.
Je voulais vivre The mode shifts: introspection, first-person narration, and multi-perspective flashbacks dominate. Readers experience Milady/Anne through her inner voice, in memories, notes, and psychologically nuanced scenes (childhood in the convent, experiences of abuse, the burning of Sansay). In doing so, Clermont-Tonnerre shifts the communicative authority: not the male court (the Dumas tableau), but rather the self-reflection legitimized by the novel determines perception. Consequently, dialogues in Clermont-Tonnerre often carry male accusations that call the narrative itself into question. Examples include the projection of male judgments onto the woman during the improvised trial in Armentières—while the novel later recounts the other side of the story.
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The shift from dialogic-public to introspective-private communication is a deliberate hermeneutic procedure to give humanity to what was formerly demonic.
Narrative threads and temporal structure: Causality vs. Reconstruction
Dumas' novel employs linear, adventurous narrative threads that, in a relatively compact chronological sequence, present large tables of events (missions, journeys, trials, executions). Time is episodic, dramatically condensed – Dumas is a dramatist of suspense.
Clermont-Tonnerre, on the other hand, dismantles the chronology: flashbacks, fragments, dream sequences, traumas, and retrospective accounts create a palimpsest. Milady's biography is laid bare in a non-linear montage—her childhood, the surf at Sansay, the near-execution, her actions in response to the violence she suffered. Importantly, this reconstruction makes visible causal relationships that Dumas suggests but does not explicitly spell out (e.g., sexual exploitation, social powerlessness, economic hardship). This temporal compression serves a moral function: it relativizes "guilt" through contextualization.
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The nonlinear time structure in Je voulais vivre It acts as a rehabilitative procedure: it makes visible causes that appear in the Dumas plot as mere character flaws.
Gender relations: Representation, power, body politics
In Dumas's work, Milady reads as a negative foil to male honor: the threat to male community, the devaluation of male loyalty, the erotic trap. Violence and the court serve to restore male order; the execution is collective catharsis.
Clermont-Tonnerre contrasts this with an analysis of male violence: rape, exploitation, possessiveness; the woman's body becomes a contested zone. Milady does not act out of pure lust for evil, but out of a compulsion to assert herself in a world that has systematically disenfranchised women—from child abuse to forced marriage, from social marginalization to political instrumentalization. The scene of the burning of Sansay, the motif of revenge, the staging of retribution: all of this is interpreted as a logical response to male destruction.
Methodologically, this is not an apologetic whitewash: Clermont-Tonnerre allows Milady to name her violence and addresses the psychological corrosion of the revenge drive. The novel opens up a difficult space: Where does self-protection end, and where does amorality begin? By making this boundary visible, he shifts the responsibility back to society.
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Clermont-Tonnerre's revision is not a mere reversal of the argument ("she was a victim, therefore innocent"), but a complex attempt to historicize gender-specific power relations and thus nuance the moral evaluation.
Narrative techniques: focalization, irony, metalepsis
Dumas employs an authorial distance that simultaneously allows for narrative irony; the narrator comments, fills in gaps, and stages 'tableaux'. Milady's character is marked by the gazes of men.
Clermont-Tonnerre frequently employs direct focalization on Anne/Milady: an insider's perspective, stream-of-consciousness closeness, diary motifs, and sometimes even an ironic distance from the Dumas myth (making it explicit that Dumas "left out an X"). This metanarrative stance becomes explicit: the text refers to Dumas, criticizes his omissions, even names him as a point of reference, reads and corrects him. This creates a literary metalepsis: the later novel speaks into the meaning of the earlier one and asserts that literary truth cannot be concluded.
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Through focalization and metanarrative self-examination, Je voulais vivre an aesthetic task: it redefines literary authority – not by rejecting the canon, but by engaging in productive dialogue with it.
Character constellation: male networks, solidarity-based divisions, maternalism
In Dumas, men are grouped around friendship, honor, and collective loyalty: Athos, Porthos, Aramis, d'Artagnan – their unity legitimizes action and judgment. Milady, in contrast, stands as a disruptive element.
Clermont-Tonnerre dismantles this monolithic masculinity: the men are ambivalent, flawed, often instrumental. Even Dumas' heroes are portrayed in Je voulais vivre I reread it – as someone responsible for experiences of violence and collective blindness. The character of the son, the protagonist's maternal role, and her yearning for care are more strongly emphasized; Milady is both perpetrator and mother, which blurs moral categories and makes the constellation of characters more complex. The former "heroes" appear here as co-producers of evil.
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Clermont-Tonnerre reconstructs social networks, not just antagonistic poles – this leads to a moral complication that resolves Dumas' clear attribution of guilt.
Metaphor: fire, mirror, mask
Dumas works with clear ciphers: the motif of female seduction, the mirror of vanity, the mask of intrigue. His metaphors evoke archetypal images that prioritize functionality over the individual.
Clermont-Tonnerre recombines these metaphors: fire becomes a motif of both purification and destruction (the burning of Sansay as a cathartic and traumatic moment), masks acquire ambivalent meaning (survival strategy, protection, identity play), and the mirror functions not only as a mirror of male desire but also as an instrument of female self-knowledge. Linguistically, this creates a density in which imagery is psychologically grounded: the metaphors serve both narrative and ethics.
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The metaphor in Je voulais vivre is reflexive: images serve not only for representation, but also for revision..
How are the novels connected – Intertextual mechanics
The relationship between the two novels is not one of mere quotation; it is dialogical and corrective: Clermont-Tonnerre uses Dumas's constellation of characters, central motifs (adultery, Buckingham, Felton, the trial in Armentières), and narrative turning points as a framework; she fills this framework with context, inner life, and historical backstories—and explicitly refers to Dumas, praises him, criticizes him, and takes him seriously. This form of intertextual dialogue is productive: Dumas remains a point of reference, but not a judgment; Je voulais vivre She reads the classic critically. The author herself writes: Dumas outlined "a continent of the unknown," hinted at the character, but did not "touch" it – this is programmatic for the entire project.
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The novels exist in an asymmetrical interdependence: Dumas provides the dramatic setting; Clermont-Tonnerre provides the historical psychology and ethical re-evaluation.
From conviction to plea bargain
Why do you earn Je voulais vivre The Prix Renaudot 2025? In my opinion, three reasons are key:
Formal boldness and virtuosity of craftsmanship
The author seamlessly blends historical novel, psychological portrait, and intertextual critique without fragmentary digressions; the narrative is coherent, and the montage of seemingly arbitrary episodes is aesthetically grounded. The novel reconstructs literary traditions and reshapes them.
Ethics and the Present
Clermont-Tonnerre brings the issues of violence against women, ownership, and narrative ascription into a literary discourse—a political concern that remains literarily coherent. Especially in a time when cultural narratives are being renegotiated, the literary reconstruction of a marginalized voice is culturally relevant.
Intertextual reflexivity
The novel doesn't let the classic disappear; it reads it, corrects it, and engages in an illuminating dialogue. In doing so, it expands the canon; it is not attacked, but productively reread – an act of literary humanity worthy of an award.
These three dimensions – aesthetic craftsmanship, contemporary relevance, productive intertextuality – are criteria that appeal to the jury of a major prize. Je voulais vivre It is not only an original literary achievement, but also a cultural contribution to the revision of narratives about gender and violence.
The comparison reveals that Dumas used Milady as a dramatic principle; Clermont-Tonnerre transforms her into a historically situated, psychologically coherent figure. This is not a mere update, but an ethical and aesthetic intervention: it demands that literature take responsibility for its projections. Je voulais vivre It poses questions that Dumas anticipated but did not answer—and does so in a literary language that does justice to both the historical novel and feminist revision. In this sense, the new Milady is neither merely a heroine nor merely a victim: she is a touchstone for interpretations and a mirror to our literary culture.
The title Je voulais vivre In Clermont-Tonnerre's novel, the title is not merely a formula of existential longing, but rather a character's condensed protest against her literary annihilation. It can be read as a direct quotation from the very core of the text: shortly before her death, Milady herself takes stock of the forms of life that were taken from her—pleasure, motherhood, political engagement—and concludes this indictment with the simple sentence: "I was a woman. I was a mother. I served France. And I wanted to live." At this moment, she emerges for the first time as a subject not filtered through the perspectives of D'Artagnan, Athos, or Richelieu, but rather transforming her own silent past into language. The title is thus performative: it speaks in place of the character denied speech within the canon, and rehabilitates her even at the very moment of the narrative's final conclusion. He identifies a paradox omnipresent in the novel – Milady is both glorified and executed by literature; her physicality is both possessed and obsessed by male gazes. Her "I wanted to live" therefore also means: I wanted Different to be told. The book itself becomes the answer to this desire by rewriting the canonical narrative and transforming the character from the object of judgment into the subject of memory.
This article is written in German and can be found at https://rentree.de. Automatic translations into English and French are available. English, French.
Notes- “Voici venu le temps d'écarter la légende pour rencontrer la femme.”>>>
