SOURCE: Bremner, Geoffrey. “Ambivalence in Dominique.” Forum for Modern Language Studies 5, no. 4 (October 1969): pp. 323-30.

In the following essay, Bremner discusses the strengths and weaknesses of Fromentin's Dominique.

Nearly all the critics who have concerned themselves with Fromentin's Dominique, from George Sand to Dr Barbara Wright in her recent edition¹ and D. G. Charlton in his review of it,² have discussed the motivation of Dominique's withdrawal. It seems that the central problem of the novel is the one which Fromentin has been least successful in treating. We know from Fromentin's correspondence with George Sand that he was trying to do two things in his novel; one might call them the moral, or didactic, and the emotional aspects. It seems from the letters that Fromentin was happier about the second than the first. In a letter to George Sand of 19th April 1862³ he says: “Je ne suis pas bien...