She has no such power in her own family, but she can exercise this power when with this man.
The two meet on a ferryboat, one of the democratizing and leveling institutions where virtually everyone might be at some time or another. She begins to make her way to the Chinese section of the city to his bachelor quarters for trysts, usually at her instigation and on the basis of what she wants from him. The two go first to "one of those Chinese restaurants on several floors, they occupy whole buildings, they're as big as department stores" (Duras 47), and part of her interest in him is evident: "I ask him to tell me about his father's money, how he got rich" (Duras 47). What he tells her about providing housing for the poor and others and how he views the poor both fascinates and hurts her:
Suddenly I have a pain. Very slight, almost imperceptible. It's my heartbeat, shifted into the fresh, keen wound he's made in me... (Duras 48)
The contrasts between their living conditions are raised again and again, as are various other images that show the contrasts and that also link different time periods and attitudes. The girl may ask the man about how his fatehr's money, but her own situation is not something discussed in this manner: "one of the first things we'd learned was to keep quiet about the ruling principle of our life, poverty" (Duras 60).
Images of water about in the novel, with water representing a sort of timelessness as the river keeps flowing no matter what the human beings alongside it or on it do. The ocean as well is an eternal element that crate a soothing sameness when balanced with the turmoil of human life:
Everything flows toward the Pacific, no time for anything to sink, all is swept along by the deep and headlong sotrm of the inner current, suspended on the surface of the river's strength. (Duras 22)
The river is both a dividing line and a unifying element at the same time:
The...
Just as they both look at the log avenues beside the river, so they are alike in themselves. Both isolated. (Duras 90)
Just as the story of the two loves begins on the river, so does it end there:
Then, very slowly, under its own steam, the boat launched itself on the river. For a long while its tall shape could be seen advancing toward the sea (Duras 109).
The novel also brings out contrasts in culture between the French and the Chinese and also between both these groups and the people of Indochina.
The portrait Duras paints of the region shows a country of great poverty set against an inner world of great wealth. The attraction between the girl and the older man is not unlike that between the Vietnamese people and the wealthier Chinese. The poor people of the area would like to court and control the Chinese the way the girl does this older man, but the reality is different and shows the usual relationship between rich and poor in a society.
The novel evokes a time and place that has experienced a great deal of history since and that passed through a long war and its aftermath. Duras lived there before much of the trouble started in earnest, though some of the sources of the tension between different groups in this society can be seen in this novel. She creates an image of often contradictory and overly dramatic human action surrounded by a sea that is more timeless and continuous. Duras draws on her own story for the details and her memory for the setting and the society of that time, creating a book that is always interesting if somewhat depressing about human nature and human relations.
Works Cited
Duras, Marguerite. The Lover. New York: Pantheon, 1998.
Marguerite Duras (1914-1996)." Books and Writers (2000). December 12, 2006. http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/duras.htm.
