The morality set forth in this passage is not stringent.  Attention has already been called to the leniency of Marivaux with regard to weaknesses of a certain type, and to his confession of his own shortcomings.  When we consider the extreme immorality of French society in the eighteenth century, to which taste Crebillon fils truckled, as did most of the dramatists and novelists to a certain degree, to which even Montesquieu in the Lettres persanes paid his tribute, we can esteem at its full value the “chaste pen” of Marivaux, in whose theatre the dignity and sacredness of marriage is never once abused, the moral tone of whose journals and of Marianne is uplifting, and even in whose Paysan parvenu the tone stops short of license, and illegitimate love is left unsatisfied.[92]

Mention has been made of the feminine side of Marivaux’s writings, but the Paysan parvenu, published in 1735, some six years before the last publication of Marianne is of an entirely different type.  Its principal character is not here a woman, but a young man, Jacob by name, a peasant boy, who, finding provincial life distasteful to him, comes to Paris, and, by the aid of his good looks, loose morals, self-assurance, adaptability, ambition, and a peculiar power over women, succeeds in gaining for himself an enviable position in the upper circles of the bourgeoisie, as well as the hand and fortune of a rich and pious old maid, Mlle. Habert, whom his youth and charms entice.  Quite another Bel Ami, as Jules Lemaitre[93] remarks; but the dissimilarity is no less striking than the resemblance.  While the hero of Marivaux yields easily to temptation, we feel that it is due to youth, a lack of moral training and a desire to please, along with a shrewd ambition, to be sure, and after each step upward in the social scale a moral development takes place, rendered possible by a natural sentiment of honor, which was with him from the first, so that though the story has been left unfinished by Marivaux after the fifth part, we are led to expect at least a complete emancipation from the sins of the flesh, if not a high ethical status.  The hero of Maupassant, on the other hand, is basely sensual and cruelly self-interested from the first, and totally lacking in those heart-qualities which, in spite of his vices, gain our sympathies for Jacob.

The style of the Paysan parvenu is simpler, less diffuse, bolder, and more virile, than that of Marianne; but its characters are uniformly less noble, and, if its general intent is not immoral, at least many of the scenes verge upon the risque.  What is the cause of this digression from a style of writing so much more natural to Marivaux?  Fleury attributes the reason to his pique with Crebillon fils and his desire to prove to him “that in a work that borders upon license, brutal license is not enough; that it must be presented in a delicate form, and seasoned with wit and observation."[94] Certain it is that les Egarements de l’esprit et du coeur, published the following year (in 1736), shows the least immorality, as well as the most talent, of any of the works of this author.