Marie Lenéru (1875-1918)
was born in France and while she is not a recognized name today, she began to
gain major notice as a playwright in Paris during 1910. Her reputation grew
with each new play and it spread to English speaking countries as well. Her
death in September of 1918 resulted from the Spanish influenza pandemic, but it
did not deter the spread of her reputation since several of her dramas were
performed in major theatres of Paris after the war and her journal was
published posthumously.
Marie Lenéru was a
remarkable individual who surmounted major medical problems during her youth. Sometime
between ten to eighteen years old, she contracted scarlet fever that left her
deaf and nearly blind. These afflictions plagued her for the remainder of her
life. She was frequently referred to as
France’s Helen Keller (1880-1968).
Marie and her mother, her
father died when she was an infant, moved to Paris in 1902. Within a few years, Marie’s writings began to
attract attention. Her first play La Vivante (The Awakening) won the
literary prize, La Vie Heureuse, in
1908. The prize included publication by Hachette, an established publisher. La Vivante was produced in 1910 by the
Odéon theatre. Her second play La Redoutable was produced on the same
stage in 1912, but due to negative responses it was withdrawn after a few
performances.
When Lenéru submitted her
third play, La Triomphatrice (Woman
Triumphant), to the Comedie-Française in 1914, it was reported in many American
and British newspapers that this distinguished French theatre was considering
it for production. The Comedie-Française
had not produced a new play by a women since the nineteenth century when works
of George Sand (1804-1876) and Delphine de Girardin (1804-1855) had been
staged. Lenéru’s play was accepted for
production by the Comedie-Française, but the war interrupted its production schedule
and the play eventually premiered in January, 1918.
World War One changed
Lenéru’s focus and she became an avid, deeply thoughtful pacifist who was
against all wars. She advocated for the
need to ensure a lasting peace through the establishment of a council of international
leaders. She was a follower of the ideas espoused by both H. G. Wells
(1866-1946) and Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924), who was President of the United
States during the war.
Inspired by her strong political
feelings, she wrote her next play La Prix
(Peace). She completed the writing in 1917, but the action of the play takes
place after the war is won by the Allies. The Odeon theatre presented this play
commencing on February 12, 1921.
Peace
is a play in four acts with five to nine French scenes in each act. It
takes place in the autumn of 1918 during the Paris Peace Conference and all the
scenes in Acts One through Three are set in the salon of a chateau. The owner
of the chateau died in the war as had two of his three sons. The wife is
grieving and keeps herself fairly removed from her guests. The older generation
in this play is aged forty-two to fifty five years. Their children are eighteen
to twenty-two years and the house-guest from England, Lady Mabel Stanley, is
thirty-three years old. The ages were
specified by the playwright on the characters list. Lenéru wanted
audiences to identify with the age ranges and to realize that anyone in these
age groups could be involved in another horrific war during their lifetimes.
Lady Mabel strongly
supports the idea that the Paris Peace Conference do more than merely provide a
truce document. She states her vision
during Act One, Scene 4:
.
. . a league composed of men of all parties, who have finally been able to
organize themselves into concern, who are agreed on a program, a sort of
“copybook” of peace, which will impose on their representatives, on Parliament
to begin with and through that as an intermediary to the world leaders at the
Congress.
Mabel believes that “War
must never happen again.” This is her position throughout the play and she has
an ally in Graham Moore, who is a British representative at the Paris
Conference and a visitor at the chateau.
The other men in the play are French as well as professional soldiers who believe in
the nobility of their profession. This is
a play not based on action, but on a thorough discussion of the state of peace
once a truce has been written and accepted.
Act Four is set in Mable’s guest-room in the chateau, Jean Gestel, the
youngest son and only surviving heir of the chateau owner, has just resigned
his military position to join the soldier for peace movement that Mabel
supports. Moore returns to the chateau to tell Mabel that their idea failed to
be ratified at the conference. Mabel knows she will continue to press for her
ideas, but the play concludes with her final thought “Where are those who only
want to live to make peace?”
Lenéru truly understood
the tenuous circumstances and political ambitions surrounding any peace truce
made at the conclusion of World War One.
She believed, without a doubt, that there would be another horrific war
within the lifetime of her characters. She wrote an essay that supported her
reasoning. It is titled “Le Temoin” (The
Witness) and it was published in The Book
of France (1915). The Spectator
reported in its 31 July 1915 issue that The
Book of France was the idea of a British committee who desired to include “contributions
by some first minds of France.” The
profits from the book were “to assist French sufferers from German
barbarity.” The Spectator also mentions that the authors and translators gave
their work without compensation.
La
Paix
was published in French on January 1, 1922 by Grasset. I read the English
translation by Claire Tylee that appears in War
Plays by Women: An International Anthology (published by Routledge, 1999).
The early years of the
1920’s marked continuing interest in Marie Lenéru since several of her plays received
productions in Paris. The Journal of
Marie Lenéru was published in France in 1923 and it was a great
success. It was translated into English
and published in January, 1924 by Macmillan and Company. Announcements about the English publication
of “The Journal” were printed in many newspapers across Great Britain and the
United States. Lenéru was widely known for her literary talents as well as her
courage to persevere despite being nearly blind and deaf.
NOTE: I have briefly discussed the
major theme of Peace, but there are
other significant ideas
beyond the one I
outlined. There is a detailed article about
this play on-line titled
“Women, War, and H.G. Wells: The Pacifism of
French Playwright Marie Lenéru.”
The author is Nancy Sloan Goldberg. The
article appeared in “War Literature,
and the Arts” 2002.
Photo: Modern Drama by Women 1880s-1930s. Katherine E. Kelly, editor. London:
Routledge, 1996.
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