Abstract: The structuring principle in La Vie de Marianne is the absence of parents, that is, genealogy. It is the torment and, paradoxically, the advantage of the heroine. Despite her assertion of exceptionality in this domain, family dysfunction is in fact generalised : widows, orphans, ungrateful sons, defective brothers, and poisonous cousins. The character of Tervire concludes the fiction in a mortifying paroxysm of familial bonds.
