Bonjour Tristesse

Cécile is the novel’s 17-year-old narrator and protagonist. Her introspective, emotionally fluid narration shapes Bonjour Tristesse’s distinctive tone. Intelligent and observant, Cécile exhibits both precocious insight and emotional immaturity. She opens the novel with a lyrical reflection, describing her emotional state as “a strange melancholy to which I hesitate to give the grave and beautiful name of sadness” (3). Right from this first line, she positions herself not merely as a participant in the novel’s events but as their filter and interpreter. Her narrative tone is ironic, poetic, and often unreliable, revealing as much through omission and evasion as through direct commentary.

At the core of Cécile’s character is a deep ambivalence about responsibility, identity, and control. She resents Anne’s authority and idealism, yet she longs for the stability and structure Anne represents. Similarly, while Cécile idealizes freedom and hedonism, she also experiences guilt and self-loathing when she believes she is too self-indulgent. Her confession—”I despised myself, and it was a horribly painful sensation, all the more since I was not used to self-criticism” (30)—captures her self-awareness but also her lack of emotional tools to navigate it. Her resistance to authority is less a declaration of principle than a reflexive defense against discomfort and change.