SOURCE: Mickel, Emanuel J., Jr. “Narrative Structures in Dominique” and “Characters and Psychology.” In Eugène Fromentin, pp. 88-103; 113-23. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1981.

In the following essay, Mickel analyzes the structure and characters in Dominique.

I the Frame Story

Dominique is the narrative account of selected moments drawn from the adolescence and youth of the book's principal character. Because of the novel's meaning, it is important that this period in Dominique's life not be seen in isolation but rather in comparison to the life being led by the principal character more than twenty years later. Thus Fromentin chose to present the novel in the form of a frame story—one might say, in this case, a story within a setting. The narration of Dominique's youth occupies chapters 3 through 17 and has its own structural unity, since neither the beginning nor the end is chronologically linked to the frame story...