SOURCE: "Fear and Confrontation in Prosper Mérimée's Narrative Fiction," in Nineteenth-Century French Studies, Vol. VI, Nos. 3-4, Spring-Summer, 1978, pp. 213-30.

In the following essay, Sivert surveys the motif of fear, especially the fear of public humiliation, throughout Mérimée's fiction.

Fear, whether from natural or supernatural causes, dominates Prosper Mérimée's narrative fiction. Events tend to become less important than the characters' reactions to those events, which in turn are less important than the reaction of one character to another. Mérimée's use of fear in the master-slave relationship is broad and obvious; yet of even more interest is the extension of this theme into areas of confrontation where no clear-cut role of dominance-submission exists. Through a study of the theme of fear it becomes clear that, rather than present a series of actions which serves to illustrate the personalities of his characters...