igenlode | 'tu' and 'vous' in Leroux (Reply)

Archived for my reference, so I don't have to go looking all this stuff up again...

Interestingly, 'tu' does get used in Leroux -- Christine and Raoul are both very well-brought-up, but they occasionally slip when yelling at/to each other: "tais-toi donc, Raoul!" "Eh bien, dis, maintenant!" "Christine, aie pitié! Je vais mourir dans la forêt... loin de toi!" "Raoul! souffres-tu?" "va donc, Christine, ma femme adorée!"

Erik calls Christine 'tu' contemptuously from the moment she unmasks him, having been very respectful before (but on isolated occasions 'the Voice' declares "Va maintenant, Christine Daaé, tu peux apporter aux hommes un 'peu de la musique du ciel'!" and "Ton âme est bien belle, mon enfant, et je te remercie"): Christine mostly calls him 'vous', but in the final moments she descends into yelling at him: "me jures-tu, monster, me jures-tu sur ton infernal amour..?"

Erik and the daroga call each other 'tu' throughout. Christine addresses Maman Valérius as 'vous', but seeks and delivers comfort with 'tu': "Tu sais, la Voix est partie!" "Ne le crois pas, bonne maman, ne le crois pas..." Maman Valérius calls Christine 'tu' and Raoul 'vous' (though she addresses him as "monsieur Raoul" rather than "M. le Vicomte"). Philippe calls his little brother "tu"; Raoul calls the Comte 'vous'. The directors appear to call each other 'tu', somewhat unexpectedly.

Edit: (from comment on Phantom Thoughts Part 8)

Erik uses both to Christine, for example: in the scene overheard by Raoul he initially says Vous devez être bien fatiguée? (You (vous) must be very tired?) and then, momens later, Ton âme est bien belle, mon enfant, et je te remercie (Your soul is a beautiful thing, my child, and I thank you (tu)).
I'm sure the deliberate switch here is supposed to be conveying all sorts of overtones, but I don't know what... At a guess, he is switching to a more 'paternal'/priestly form of address, but that's a fairly wild stab in the dark.

He uses 'vous' to her after he reveals himself up until the unmasking, when he starts yelling at her with 'tu': "Tu as voulu voir! Vois!" (So this is what you wanted to see -- then look!)
He continues to do so during their next directly reported conversation, after he has kidnapped her and tied her up, but when she quotes him as saying 'I restore you your liberty on condition you wear this ring' he is using 'vous' in the interim, and I'd guess he probably reverts at the point where he is weeping and clutching the hem of her skirt; at this point he is once again treating her with respect.

And then there is another sudden mid-scene switch at the point where she attempts to get the bag with the keys to the torture chamber: at the start of Chapter 11, he is addressing her as 'tu' ('Veux-tu bien me render mon sac?'; give me back my bag)
Then for some reason completely unclear to me he abruptly switches to 'vous': 'Vous savez bien qu'il n'y a là-dedans que deux clefs' (you know very well that there is nothing in it but two keys). And we get 'rendez-moi mon sac' (using the vous-form of the verb) imediately followed by 'veux-tu laisser la clef' within the same set of quotation marks.
I really don't know what's going on here, other than that Erik is probably trying to make some kind of point; 'vous' equals sarcastic politeness?

And he reverts to 'vous' again for his speech about the scorpion and the grasshopper, at the point where he is calling her 'mademoiselle' and obviously making a point of addressing her with icy politeness, then back to 'tu' when he returns ("Tu ne veux pas du scorpion?": so you don't want to turn the scorpion?)

And, oddly, he apparently uses 'tu' to her after he kisses her forehead: "Je sais que tu l'aimes, le jeune homme"... "prends ça pour toi... et pour lui" ("I know you love that young man"/"take [this ring] for you and him").

So he clearly means all sorts of different things by it in different contexts; we can't say that he uses 'tu' when he wants to be intimate and 'vous' when he wants to be distant, for example.

The managers address one another as 'tu', which to me is unexpected; unsurprisingly, Erik uses 'tu' with the Daroga. Raoul and the Daroga use 'vous' in their conversations with one another.

Philippe uses 'tu' to his baby brother and Raoul uses 'vous' back to him in return, which for some reason I find rather endearing as a reflection of their relationship ;-)

Christine calls almost everybody 'vous' almost all the time, like the well-brought-up young lady she is, but there are a couple of points where she uses 'tu' on Raoul in a reversion to childhood, not because she is expressing love for him (she mostly seems to call him mon ami (literally 'my friend') as a term of affection, which really doesn't translate, particularly when Raoul is using it to implore her in tones of despair...) but because she is annoyed with him: "tais-toi donc, Raoul!"

But she also uses it in her relief to find that he is still alive after his sojourn in the 'torture-chamber' ("Raoul! souffres-tu?") where it's clearly from very different motives.

Raoul uses 'tu' to Christine in pathetic appeal during his hallucinations about her in the torture-chamber ("Christine, arrête-toi!... Tu vois bien que je suis épuisé!": Christine, wait! Can't you see I'm exhausted?)

On the other hand, he also does so when he is yelling that he wants to kill Erik when they are on the roof: "Au nom de Ciel, Christine, dis-moi où se trouve la salle à manger du lac! Il faut que je le tue!... oui, je veux savoir comment et pourquoi tu y retournais!", and it is to this that she responds by snapping "tais-toi donc, Raoul" and "puisque tu veux savoir... écoute!" (shut up and listen if you want to know the answer) :-p
But after she resumes her account they are mutually back to using 'vous' again, even when some minutes later she asks him to kiss her: "si je ne vous aimais pas, je ne vous donnerais pas mes lèvres... les voici".

In the final scene I think Raoul uses 'tu' to Christine just once, in the line when he tells her that she should turn the scorpion and save the Opera. 'Va donc, Christine, ma femme adorée': 'go on, Christine, my darling'. But that's about the only time he gets to address her directly; he doesn't call her 'vous' in that scene either ;-)

I think Christine calls Erik 'tu' just once, at the point where she is begging him to swear that it really is the scorpion which will avert the explosion: 'me jures-tu, monstre, me jures-tu sur ton infernal amour' (you monster, will you swear by your hellish love) -- here she is clearly insulting him rather than attempting to appeal to him by addressing him fondly.