Jacques the Fatalist: And His Master Read Free Page A

himself even. These figures, whose counterparts can be found in other works of Diderot, are distinguished by their unity of character, a hardness and autonomy which separates them from their fellows. They are those whose control over their fiery nature allows them to channel their exceptional energy into far-reaching and ambitious designs. It is not so much their contradictoriness that seems to fascinate Diderot as their irreducibility to any easy moral judgement. Admirable in certain respects they are also marked by a certain amoralism, often made manifest in their ruthless destruction of those who cross or oppose them. In the end, as in the case of the duellists, it is to the acceptance of the diversity of human nature that the reader is led.

4. Deceit and Duplicity
    Hudson himself is the supreme deceiver, who manages not only to sustain an image of industry, piety and austerity while leading a life of debauchery but also manages to turn the tables on those sent to establish his guilt, to such effect that they, and not he, end up accused and punished. Hudson’s tale is only the most striking and elaborate illustration of a theme which pervades the novel. The deceiver may end up deceived, as in the case of the Steward who sleeps with the pastry-cook’s wife and ends up suffering the fate he hadhimself intended for the pastry-cook. Jacques’ love life and that of his master offer other examples of complex permutations of deceit. This group of themes is particularly recalcitrant to explanation and interpretation. It offers recurrent images of reversal, of artifice, of the opposition of appearance and reality. It may also perhaps offer a loose symbol of the opposition of truth and fiction so insistently referred to by the Narrator throughout the novel.

SERVANT AND MASTER
    The importance of the central relationship of the novel is signalled in the very title of the book,
Jacques the Fatalist and his Master
, as are its subversive implications: Jacques takes precedence over his master, Jacques has a name and his master has none. This reversal of the usual social order relates
Jacques
to a long tradition stretching back at least as far as Latin comedy, which explores the dramatic possibilities offered by bringing together two individuals, one the social superior, the other the intellectual superior. The literature of the French eighteenth century explores this relationship with particular zest and constitutes a veritable ‘Golden Age’ of the clever servant, whose two outstanding figures are Jacques and his first cousin and near contemporary, Beaumarchais’ Figaro. The similarities between the two are numerous and significant. Like Beaumarchais’ hero, Jacques is conscious of his worth and ready to assert his conviction that he is the equal, if not the superior of his master. More importantly, Jacques and Figaro both demand out of self-respect that this equality be recognized. It is no coincidence that for both men the cause of outright conflict with their master should be sexual rivalry. When Jacques’ master expresses his disbelief at the idea that a woman could prefer Jacques to himself, he formulates this in a particularly offensive manner, referring to Jacques as ‘A Jacques’, a contemptuous and dismissive term for a peasant. What he is saying is that Jacques is not an individual and cannot be taken seriously even in something as fundamental as his sexual aspirations. A servant, a peasant, is not a man. Jacques’ response is to assert the contrary, to claim equality and demand to be treated with appropriate respect. The context may seem trivial but the issue is not, and the figure of the servant asserts (as does Beaumarchais’ Figaro) a rejection of any social order which defines an individual’s worth by his social position.
    This quarrel between Jacques and his master constitutes a high point in the novel, where the fundamental rejection of the
ancien régime
is mostapparent. The subsequent patching up of the