Sarrasine

Violence is a prominent motif throughout the main plotline, particularly in the relationship between La Zambinella and Sarrasine. Sarrasine uses violence as a means of expressing his emotions and as a method of attempting to woo La Zambinella. His very first impulse of attraction to La Zambinella manifests in an urge to use force: “Sarrasine longed to rush upon the stage and seize that woman. His strength, increased a hundredfold by a moral depression impossible to describe […] insisted upon manifesting itself with deplorable violence” (Paragraph 91). When his rationality and scruples are overcome by drink, Sarrasine surrenders to his lust and attempts to rape La Zambinella, an attack that only La Zambinella’s own threat of violence forestalls. Sarrasine kills a snake in order to impress and protect La Zambinella, foreshadowing the cardinal having Sarrasine killed to protect La Zambinella from him. 

Such examples create a strong connection between violence and traditional masculinity, particularly implying that acts of violence are intrinsically linked with romantic pursuit in a society that figures men as lustful and aggressive and women as modest and passive. It thus contributes to the novella’s critique of gender norms, developing the theme of