The Individualist Approach: Marivaux (1688–1763)

Abstract

Marivaux’s position in society was less assured than Montesquieu’s. The latter was born into the noblesse de robe and retained a secure position in it all his life. Marivaux, by contrast, though no déclassé, came of less distinguished parentage. His father belonged to the ranks of royal administrators, rising eventually to the Directorship of the Mint in Riom in 1701 (when his son was thirteen years of age) and remaining there till his death. He felt frustrated by the cramping mediocrity of his situation,¹ which, furthermore, was so ill-paid that the family could apparently afford neither servants nor property.² This atmosphere of constantly renewed struggle against financial hardships while keeping up respectable bourgeois appearances must have been the climate in which Marivaux spent his formative years, which should in itself give pause to those who would see his work as composed of aristocratic arabesques unrelated to the world of real events. Yet he managed to escape from this provincial drudgery, perhaps because of help from a well-connected maternal uncle, the architect Pierre Bullet.³ The other extrinsic event of significance for an understanding of Marivaux’s work occurred in 1720, when John Law’s financial system collapsed and with it Marivaux’s investments, which well-meaning friends had prevailed upon him to commit to Law’s speculations in hopes of a quick profit.⁴