Mentoring subversions An exploration of success and failure in two mentoring relationships in Marie NDiaye’s Mon cœur à l’étroit and Trois femmes puissantes

Mentoring in the corporate or academic world is informed by an ethical code to which mentor and mentee subscribe. This essay explores two fictional mentoring relationships, which, judged in terms of the mentee’s increase in self-awareness, are successful. Yet their ethical foundation, read against good practice in non-fictional mentoring, is dubious in many respects. These fictional relationships invite us to question the motivations that lie at the base of real-world mentoring relationships.