Jacques the Fatalist: And His Master Read Free Page B

quarrel (which as the Narrator points out has occurred a hundred times before) is just as significant. The intervention of the innkeeper’s wife restores the equality between Jacques and his master which constitutes the
de facto
reality of their day-to-day existence. Indeed equality is perhaps too mild a term since, as Jacques points out, he exercises effective control in the relationship, while his master has a merely titular authority. This pragmatic solution (by no means the only one of its kind in Diderot’s works) leaves certain fundamental contradictions unresolved, but it does have the virtue of effectiveness; it works. It also underlines the fact that while the master/servant relationship is, in some respects, a conflictual one, it is also a profoundly symbiotic one. Much has been made by some critics of the ineptness and stupidity of Jacques’ master, who appears to them the embodiment of an effete and parasitic aristocracy, while Jacques is the symbol of the valorous Third Estate. This is an exaggeration and a simplification: Jacques’ master, for all his limitations, is presented as an amiable and good-natured man, genuinely fond of his servant, and capable, for most of the time, of recognizing Jacques’ peculiar gifts and accepting his natural superiority. Indeed, as their relationship of story-teller and listener illustrates, each man needs the other. What characterizes Diderot’s treatment of the master/servant theme is the subtlety with which he brings out both the inevitably exploitative side of the relationship and its profoundly symbiotic nature.
    Jacques is the hero of the novel not simply by virtue of his dominant position in his relationship with his master, but also by the fact that it is his past, the story of his loves, that provide the principal element of continuity in the work. This means that a considerable part of the novel focuses on a social setting that was comparatively rare in the French novel of the eighteenth century, the village and the countryside. Diderot had read extensively the work of English novelists of the century and had been struck by the relative broadness of scope the English novel allowed. Defoe, Fielding and Richardson could paint on a wider canvas and represent a greater variety of manners, customs and classes than could their French counterparts, who were bound, Diderot felt, by the rather restricted range of their public’s taste. In this respect
Jacques
is one of the most adventurous French novels of the century in its insistent reference to what might be termed scenes of everyday life in the village and the countryside, the traditional domain of the peasant, a social setting found only rarely in the French novel of this time. Often the episodes recounted come from an old stock of popular images and references – the farcical scene with the little village priest, the bawdy episodes of sexualinitiation and the career of Brother Jean – which cannot be said to be of Diderot’s invention. They belong to a popular tradition of tales, fables and jokes which after a considerable period of absence come back into the mainstream of prose fiction through
Jacques
. Indeed, it is arguable that
Jacques
is truly Rabelaisian not in its rather clumsy attempts at a literal reworking of Rabelais (as in the reference to the sacred gourd) but in a much more fundamental sense. With
Jacques
, Diderot reintroduces popular elements into the serious novel with an effect that is as liberating as it was in Rabelais’ time. The egalitarian message of
Jacques
lies as much in its re-introduction of popular forms into the novel as in its celebration of the clever servant.

JACQUES THE FATALIST
    The title tells us that Jacques is a fatalist, but what does this mean? Many critics have assumed that
Jacques
is about fatalism, that it is an exploration in fictional terms of philosophical issues raised by Diderot’s materialist view of the world – a view which requires the universe to be