Summary
Summary of The Bewitched
Who it’s for
This book suits readers who like slow atmosphere, dark romance and the French nineteenth century, and anyone curious about the Chouan wars. If you want quick plotting or modern pacing, its long, ornate sentences and winding storytelling may feel heavy.
What this book is
The Bewitched is a novel by the French writer Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly, first published in 1854 under the title L'Ensorcelée. It is set in his native Normandy, in the Cotentin country, in the years after the French Revolution, when royalist rebels known as the Chouans still haunted the memory of every village. Barbey grew up among people who had lived through those wars, and he wrote the book as a tribute to a harsh land and its stubborn beliefs.
The story is a slow, strange tale of a woman, a husband and a priest. A farmer's wife is drawn, against her will and against her own good sense, toward a priest whose past is dark and whose face is scarred. The neighbours whisper that she is under a spell. You get a love story that never speaks its name, a portrait of country faith that mixes church and superstition, and a landscape of empty heath and ruined abbey that feels alive. Let us begin on the wide, wind-blown heath where the tale takes root.
In this summary
- 1A haunted heath sets the stageFree
- 2Jeanne's marriage is calm but hollow
- 3A scarred priest comes among them
- 4Village whispers turn longing into witchcraft
- 5Obsession and faith pull against each other
- 6A tale told in a rich, strange voice
Key point 1 of 6
A haunted heath sets the stage
The tale opens in the Cotentin, the western peninsula of Normandy, where the great heath of Lessay stretches out under a low sky. Barbey treats this ground as more than a backdrop. It is flat, bare and windy, and it carries the weight of old battles and older legends. Travellers cross it with a feeling that something unseen is watching.
The story is passed along as something told, a local history handed from one speaker to another. That gives it the feel of a fireside tale, the kind that people in the villages repeated for years. The narrator seems to know the families and the quarrels, and he draws you into a community where everyone knows everyone's business. Gossip is a force in this world, as strong as the weather.
The period matters. The Revolution has broken the old order, the king is gone, and the Church has been attacked and divided. In Normandy many people stayed loyal to altar and throne, and the Chouan risings left deep scars. Men who fought in those wars now live quietly among neighbours who remember what they did.
So before any single character steps forward, the place itself has set the mood. Faith and fear lie close together here, and a ruined abbey on the edge of the heath, once a house of prayer, reminds everyone that holy things can fall. Into this world comes the first of the people whose lives will tangle, a farm woman called Jeanne Le Hardouey.
That’s 1 of 6 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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