SOURCE: "The Politics of Privacy in the Works of Jules Vallès," in The French Review: Journal of the American Association of Teachers of French, Vol. 58, No. 6, May, 1985, pp. 835-42.

In the following essay, Lloyd focuses on the depiction of space in the Jacques Vingtras trilogy, arguing that Vallès's negative portrayal of private spaces underscores the loneliness and isolation of bourgeois life. Vallès's contrasting views of public and private spaces, Lloyd contends, reveal a sophisticated understanding of the evolution of modern institutions.

The nineteenth century was an age of humanitarian reform of those institutions designed to house the alienated. It was also a period marked by the development of democratic institutions. The former is based on a philosophy of exclusion of unequals, the latter on inclusion of those considered to be the same before the law. The relationship between these two social trends, as paradox or...