44 pages • 1 hour read
Prosper MerimeeCarmen
Fiction | Novella | Adult | Published in 1840A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Passion as an Overwhelming Force
Content Warning: This section of the guide describes and discusses the novella’s racist and inaccurate portrayal of Romani people and culture, which includes racist slurs. The novella also includes other instances of racism and exoticism, as well as depictions of domestic violence against women cumulating in murder.
The expression and depiction of passion is a key component of the Romantic movement, which arose against the idolization of reason that dominated the previous century. The primary narrative of Carmen is driven by passion; the main characters are motivated by their emotions, and the action of the plot is instigated by these passions.
The relationship between Don José and Carmen, the central focus of the novella, is an entanglement wholly governed by chaotic desire. From its inception through to its tragic conclusion, their entanglement is tempestuous and tumultuous; they clash, reconcile, and clash anew. Both Carmen and Don José know from the beginning that their relationship will lead to ruin, with Carmen predicting that she will lead Don José to be hanged. He nonetheless pursues her despite both their better judgement, and Carmen accepts him as a lover despite her contempt for him as someone who is not Romani and the trouble he causes her.
The novella shows the destructive nature of passion. Don José’s desire for Carmen lands him in prison and eclipses his ambitions for promotion, causing him to ignore roll call and disobey orders by allowing smugglers into the city. His jealousy and the violent wrath it inspires are more potent than his love for her. His jealousy plagues their relationship, and he is possessive and domineering to the point where he drives Carmen away and eventually murders her.
Don José was weak to his passions even before meeting Carmen; he pursued tennis over work and study and was banished for beating an opponent with his maquila. Violence is his first instinct when anger strikes, and he rarely manages to resist. This leads him to commit multiple crimes, murdering rivals for Carmen’s affection, including her husband, and abusing Carmen. His lack of control is juxtaposed with the narrator’s perpetual composure. Even when threatened by Carmen or Don José, the narrator remains calm and calculating; he seems to hold onto neither anger nor resentment. The narrator’s poise and matter-of-fact tone contrasts with Don José’s emotional volatility, highlighting it.
Don José is susceptible to all strong emotions, not only anger and desire, and expresses them freely. He weeps at the sting of Carmen’s rejection after they argue over granting the smugglers passage, and descends into melancholy following El Remendado’s death. Carmen too lets a wide range of feelings overcome rationality with little compunction; she frolics and cavorts as desire moves her, and laughs easily. She expresses desire unbound by conventional monogamy, frustration with Don José, and hatred for him once his love sours into possessive abuse. For Carmen, the freedom to act upon her emotions is a fundamental and necessary part of life. She chooses the truthful expression of her loathing over a life of lies or repression, and accepts death rather than be bound by Don José’s demands, the ultimate victory of passion over reason.
Exoticism and Racial Prejudice
Romani culture is a central focus of Carmen. Prosper Mérimée’s racist beliefs seep into all aspects of the novella and underpin his depiction of Carmen and the Roma people. In Chapter 4, he spells out these beliefs in detail. The narrator is essentially indistinguishable from the voice of the author in this chapter. He provides racist and offensive generalities that he ascribes indiscriminately to the Roma people in their entirety. These inaccurate and offensive generalities include physiological characteristics, personality, and behavior. He offers specific anecdotes to illustrate these claims, and analyzes the Romani language despite having little first-hand experience with it. The tone of the chapter is paternalistic and colonialist, othering the Roma people and misrepresenting their culture from a position of perceived superiority. Such an attitude is typical of a man of Mérimée’s upper-class background at the time, and was used to justify and motivate much of the rampant imperialism of Western European countries.
Racial prejudice is also evident through the first three chapters of Carmen, shown through the descriptions and actions of Romani characters rather than expressed outright. Carmen embodies many of the negative stereotypes ascribed to Roma; she is sexually promiscuous, cunning, and follows the Calé code of conduct rather than the laws or social conventions of wider society. The lodgings of Roma are shown consistently to be sparse and poor, as well as poorly maintained, harking to Mérimée’s assertions that Roma live in desperate, miserable poverty and lack basic hygiene. Mere association with Carmen leads Don José into a life of crime, and Carmen’s refusal to change their lifestyle keeps him from seeking redemption in the New World.
The setting of South Spain was a prime location for exoticization, particularly due to its diverse folk traditions and the presence of cultural and linguistic isolates such as Basques and Roma within the nation’s borders. Such prejudice is common in the literature of the Romantic movement. This is due in part to racism being an unapologetic norm of the time period and engrained in the social context that fostered the movement. Additionally, exoticism—the exploration and idealization of foreign places, cultures, and peoples from the perspective of the white Western outsider—was a key characteristic of Romanticism.
Power Imbalances in Relationships and Society
Carmen reflect the inequalities that affected several areas of life in 19th-century Europe, which was rife with oppression. Women were disenfranchised, with no financial independence, few rights, and very little in the way of opportunities. Minority ethnic groups were oppressed across Europe, the transatlantic slave trade was still at work until the 1870s, and racist dogma about the innate superiority of white people was widely accepted as fact. Economic disparity between the working class and the wealthy elites was astronomical, with power and riches concentrated in the upper echelons of society, and crushing poverty widespread among the common folk. Such power imbalances are depicted in the interactions, experiences, and attitudes of the novella’s characters.
As a woman, Roma, and member of the working class, Carmen was born into one of the least privileged demographics possible. She generally lives in poverty and relies on her cunning, skills, and connections to survive. She wields the meager power afforded her out of necessity, and exploits the men around her for her own benefit. Depictions of other Romani women such as Dorotea and the proprietress of the Venta del Cuervo illustrate the alternative to her life of crime and seduction—abject poverty.
The narrator emphasizes inequalities in society. As a member of the wealthy French elite, he is in a position of significant power and privilege. This is most evident when he offers to use bribes or influence to pressure Don José’s captors into releasing him.
Although Don José was born into a position of power and privilege as a male member of wealthy nobility, he dies powerless and imprisoned. He follows the archetypical downward trajectory of a classic tragic hero, falling from grace due to his own fatal flaws, in this case, his passion for Carmen. He slips lower and lower on the social ladder through the course of Chapter 3, bleeding power as he does, until he reaches the bottom. He retains a crumb of privilege in that his method of execution is to be the garotte rather than the gallows.
Power dynamics and inequalities exist in the interpersonal relationships shown through the course of the novella, most strikingly in the romantic entanglement between Carmen and Don José. Before their involvement, Don José had her under arrest and briefly held near-ultimate power over her. She manipulated him in self-defense, his susceptibility giving her an upper hand through the beginning of their relationship. She is more experienced than he and dictates the terms of their interactions, using and abandoning him according to her whims. Even after they flee the city together, her ability to seduce powerful men and her familiarity with the smuggling lifestyle keep her on top. It is only after the death of her husband that the balance shifts and she willingly subjugates herself to Don José as her new Rom/husband according to the customs of her people.
When she withdraws her consent to be dominated along with her love, Don José tries to reinforce traditional power dynamics between them through violence and coercion, culminating in his threats to murder her. The murder itself is a matter of fate according to Carmen, and therefore beyond either of their control. By choosing and accepting death rather than submission, she ultimately robs Don José of the power his violence might win him.
