Abstract: Marivaux devotes the last three parts of Vie de Marianne (1742) to the grey, dark story of Tervire : the young provincial aristocrat, who has become a nun, retraces her miserable childhood and dwells upon the experience of having been abandoned by her mother, who remarried and became wealthy. This has annihilated in Tervire a potential for desire and love, and conjures up a hellish vision of family relations in which parents seem to curse their children with a death wish. Marivaux offers his readers an unrivalled analysis of psychological distress through this portrayal in reverse of Marianne, which does not seek to seduce his readers.
