Résumé
Résumé de Pierre ou les Ambiguïtés
À qui s’adresse-t-il ?
For readers who love tangled families, secrets in old houses, big questions about duty and truth, and a narrator who talks back. Anyone drawn to Melville after Moby-Dick will find a very different, intimate story here.
De quoi parle ce livre ?
Pierre; or The Ambiguities is a novel by Herman Melville, written in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and set in the New York countryside and the city. It follows Pierre Glendinning, a wealthy young heir with a proud mother, a loving fiancee and a spotless picture of his dead father. Melville wrote it as a tale of a young man who tries to live by the highest rule of conscience and finds that the world will not bend to it.
The book begins in a golden country summer, with horses, breakfast jokes and a promised wedding. Then one letter from a stranger who calls herself his sister breaks everything open. You get a story of family pride, secret guilt, a dark city and a young writer who sets out to write a great book. You also get a narrator who stops often to argue, joke and wonder about what he is telling.
In this summary you will meet the main people, follow the story to its edge, and see how Melville tells it. Let us begin on a still June morning at Saddle Meadows, where Pierre stands under a girl's window.
Dans ce résumé
- 1A golden world at Saddle MeadowsFree
- 2Love, a ride, and a haunting face
- 3A letter in the dark changes everything
- 4Hiding the truth, and Isabel's story
- 5Pierre's resolve and the false marriage
- 6The pamphlet and the cold city
- 7Writing a book, and Lucy's arrival
- 8The book, the vision, and the walk
- 9What the story is really about, and how it is told
Point clé 1 sur 9
A golden world at Saddle Meadows
The story opens on a June morning in the country. Pierre, nearly twenty, walks to a cottage where Lucy Tartan is staying with her aunt. A crimson flower rests on her windowsill pillow, and he pins it to his coat like a soldier's colors. Their talk is full of teasing and heartfelt play.
Pierre lives at Saddle Meadows with his widowed mother, Mrs. Glendinning. She is proud, beautiful and wealthy, and the two call each other brother and sister as a family joke. Melville spends whole chapters on the Glendinning past. Pierre's great-grandfather died in an Indian battle on the meadows. His grandfather, a general in the Revolution, held a fort for months and left banners, a drum and a baton hanging in the hall.
The narrator also makes a comic argument that American families can have long pedigrees too, with Dutch manors and their thousands of tenants as proof. Pierre grows up in the country, reads poetry and takes the sacrament at sixteen. He has one lack: he has always wished for a sister. The narrator warns that prayers like that may be answered.
Breakfast scenes show the warm game between mother and son. Pierre fusses over her ribbon, shoots pigeons for her pie and teases the servant Dates. Yet Mrs. Glendinning, watching him leave, wonders whether so obedient a son can also be a hero, and she hopes he will never be called to some dark mission.
That’s 1 of 9 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Questions about Pierre ou les Ambiguïtés
What is Pierre; or The Ambiguities about?
It tells of a young New York heir, Pierre Glendinning, whose life changes when a girl named Isabel writes that she is his father's secret daughter. He gives up his family and bride for her, and the tale follows what that choice costs.
What does ambiguities mean in the title?
It points to the way events and people in the book can be read two ways. A smile, a portrait, a sister or a sacrifice may be pure or flawed, and Pierre can never be sure which he is facing.
Who is Isabel in Pierre?
Isabel Banford is a dark-haired girl who plays the guitar and tells a dreamlike story of a mysterious childhood. She writes to Pierre as his sister and wants to live near him. Her origin is the central puzzle of the plot.
What is the pamphlet Chronometricals and Horologicals?
It is a lecture by Plotinus Plinlimmon that Pierre reads on a coach. It says heavenly truth is like Greenwich time carried to China, where it conflicts with local clocks, and that people should live by earthly rules, not perfect ones.
When was Pierre written and is it based on a true story?
Melville published it in 1852. It is a work of fiction set in rural New York and its nearby city, though it draws on his own life as an author and on his family's history in the Berkshires.